ThemeStrategy & Direction
CardCard 35 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Mission & Vision

Your calling & what you want to become

Mission and vision are the most frequently stated and least frequently tested parts of the organization's strategic memory.

A mission statement tells people why the organization exists. A vision tells them where it is heading. Both matter, but what matters more for organizational memory is whether those statements actually reflect the thinking of the people leading the organization, and whether everyone has the same understanding of what they mean.

Capturing mission and vision is not about getting the words right. It is about documenting the interpretation: what the mission looks like in practice, which choices it has guided, and where it has been tested or revised. Without that context, the statement is decoration.

When leadership changes, mission and vision are among the first things to be re-examined. Having a record of how the current statements were developed, what alternatives were considered, and how they have been applied in real decisions gives the next leadership team something to build on rather than starting from zero.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Current statements

The mission and vision in their current form, with a note on when they were last reviewed and who was involved in articulating them.

What they mean in practice

Examples of decisions or choices where the mission or vision was explicitly used as a guide, so the statements are understood as tools rather than decoration.

Evolution & alternatives

Earlier versions of the mission or vision and the reasoning behind changes, including alternatives that were considered and why the current version was preferred.

Where they are used

The contexts where mission and vision are actively referenced: onboarding, hiring, strategy reviews, or product decisions, and whether those uses are consistent.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Can everyone in leadership articulate the mission and vision the same way, without looking it up?
Where has the mission been explicitly used to guide a real decision in the last year?
How has the mission or vision changed since founding, and what caused those changes?
Does the current mission still describe what the organization is actually trying to do?
Who was involved in developing the current statements, and is that process documented anywhere?

Things to notice

Mission and vision statements often reflect a moment in the organization's development that has passed; outdated statements that nobody updates become noise rather than guidance.
Capturing the words without capturing the interpretation means each person reads the statement differently, which can produce quietly divergent directions.
There is a difference between a mission the organization aspires to and one it is actively living; documenting only the aspiration can obscure where the gaps are.