What are we trying to become?: Lena's Bakery Ltd now has three shops and nine staff. At the first meeting of everyone together, a new baker asks a simple question: what are we trying to become?
Lena talks for five minutes. Marco talks for five more, and says something different. Nobody could repeat either answer on the way home.
That night Lena writes one sentence about the future: what the bakery should look like in ten or twenty years if everything goes right. A sentence like that is a vision statement: a short description of what a business wants to become in the long term.
It is a picture of success, not a plan. It says where the business is heading, and leaves the how for later.
What a vision statement looks like
It looks far ahead
Ten years or more. Lena's three shops are today; the vision is the bakery she wants to have built long after that.
It aims high
It is meant to inspire (aspirational). A vision the bakery could reach by next summer would not give anyone a reason to get up at four in the morning.
It is short
One sentence that every baker can remember and repeat. If it needs a page, it is not a vision any more.
It says where, not how
No products, no prices, no numbers, no dates. Those change every year; the vision should not.
Lena's vision: "Every neighbourhood in our region with a real bakery at its heart."
Today the bakery has three shops in one city. The vision pictures dozens, across the region. It may take twenty years, and the bakery may never fully get there. That is fine: its job is to point the way.
Because it describes a destination rather than a route, a vision rarely changes. The shops, the menu and the staff will all be different in ten years. The picture of where the bakery is going should still be the same one.
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The vision tells the bakers where the business is going. It does not tell them what to do on Monday morning.
So Lena writes a second sentence, about today: what the bakery does, who it is for and how it does it.
Lena's mission: "We bake real bread by hand every morning, with flour from local farms, and sell it at prices a family can afford."
Every word describes something the bakery already does, every day, in all three shops.
That is a mission statement: a statement of what a business does now, who it serves and how, which is its purpose (the reason it exists). The vision is where the bakery wants to end up; the mission is the road it travels to get there.
The three questions a good mission answers
- What do we do? Bake real bread by hand every morning.
- Who is it for? Families in the neighbourhoods around each shop.
- How do we do it, and what do we care about? Flour from local farms, and prices a family can afford.
Vision statement
- Where the business wants to be in the long term
- Looks to the future, often ten years or more
- Answers: what do we want to become?
- Short and inspiring; rarely changes
- Lena: a real bakery at the heart of every neighbourhood
Mission statement
- What the business does now, for whom, and how
- Looks at the present and the next few years
- Answers: what do we do, and why do we exist?
- More detail; can be rewritten as the business grows
- Lena: bread by hand every morning, local flour, family prices
Do not swap them: Tense is the quick check. A sentence about what the business does today is a mission, however grand it sounds. A sentence about what it wants to become is a vision, however practical it sounds.
"To become the region's favourite bakery" is a vision. "We bake bread by hand every morning for local families" is a mission.
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Printed on every bag: Lena has the mission printed on every paper bag and painted on the wall behind each counter. The vision goes on the first page of the staff handbook.
Six months later, three shop managers are making the same choices without phoning Lena first. Something has changed.
Two sentences on a wall seem too small to matter. But written down and shared, they do real jobs for a business. Here are the five, each one at the bakery.
What the statements do for Lena's Bakery
They make the purpose clear
They set out what the business is trying to do (its aims). A new baker learns in one sentence what the bakery is for, before learning a single recipe.
They keep everyone focused
Three shops, one direction. When a manager wants to start selling burgers at lunchtime, the mission reminds everyone that the bakery is about bread.
They guide decisions
Goldcrust plc offers to sell the bakery frozen dough at half the cost of baking from scratch. The mission says 'by hand every morning', so the answer takes five minutes.
They tell stakeholders who you are
The mission on every bag tells customers why a loaf costs $4 and not $1.50. It tells the farmers who grow the wheat, and the bank, what the business stands for.
They motivate staff
Bakers who start at four in the morning work harder, and stay longer, when they believe in what the bakery is for. The vision gives them something to build.
The two statements share the work. The vision mostly gives direction and motivation: it is the picture people work towards. The mission does most of the daily jobs: it is the test a manager holds a decision up to, and the message a customer reads on the bag.
One job, shown at the business: Any of the five jobs is an advantage of having a mission statement. It becomes convincing when you show it happening: not 'it guides decisions', but 'it let the managers turn down Goldcrust's frozen dough in five minutes, because the mission says by hand every morning'.
The frozen-dough winter: Picture a hard winter. Flour prices are up, and the manager of the newest shop quietly starts baking Goldcrust's frozen dough to save money.
The bags still say 'by hand every morning'. In February a customer spots the frozen-dough boxes by the back door, and posts a photo.
A statement is only worth what the business actually does. When the actions match the words, the statement builds trust. When they do not, it does worse than nothing: customers feel misled, staff stop taking it seriously, and the bakery's name suffers. Mission and vision statements have limits, and these are the five that matter.
| The limit | What it looks like | At the bakery |
|---|---|---|
| Words not matched by actions | Customers and staff stop trusting the statement and the business | The frozen-dough shop, with 'by hand every morning' on every bag |
| Too vague to guide anyone | Words any business could use, so no manager can test a choice against them | Goldcrust's 'To delight every customer, every day' would fit a bank or a gym |
| Hard to measure | Nobody can prove the statement made any difference | Did the bags bring customers in, or was it the sourdough? |
| Costly to change | A new statement has less force than one people have believed for years | Rewrite it as 'good bread, fast' and the staff who believed the first one may not believe the second |
| Can go out of date | The business grows past what the statement describes | A mission written for one shop may not fit a chain across the region |
None of this means a business should not have the statements. It means writing them is the easy part. A business can, and sometimes must, rewrite its mission as it grows, but it then has to explain the change and live by the new words.
The test: Read the statement, then watch the business. If what it does matches what it says, the statement earns trust. If not, it costs trust, and a decision that goes against the statement carries that cost as well.
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How this comes up: Short questions first. In the longer case questions, a vision or mission statement is often quoted in the case.
The short questions
- State two purposes of a mission statement, for two marks.
- Explain one advantage for a named business of having a mission statement, for two, where the case quotes that business's mission.
Use the statement as evidence: In the longer case questions, use a quoted vision or mission statement as evidence: an option that goes against the statement costs the business trust.
The two-mark pattern
- Name the advantage. A mission statement guides decisions, keeps the business focused, tells stakeholders what it stands for, or motivates staff.
- Show it in the case. Use a fact from the case: where the statement is printed, who the staff are, or a decision the statement settles.
Two traps: The advantage must belong to the statement. 'Local flour makes the bread taste better' is an advantage of local flour, not of having a mission statement.
No case, no second mark. 'It motivates employees' is one mark. 'The bakers start at four in the morning because they believe in real bread by hand' is two.
Explain one advantage for Lena's Bakery of having a mission statement.
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