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Mission, Vision and Values

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.


Among the most frequent sources of confusion for managers – at all levels – are the distinctions between mission, vision and values.

As I started planning this article, I created a table for myself, to put my ideas down about how they compare. In the end, I decided that, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a table must be worth at least 500.

You can click on this image to get a full screen version of this table.

Mission, Vision, and Values

There is not much more to say

Your mission is a long-term definition of why you are in business, your vision sets out what you want to achieve within your strategic planning timescale, and your values determine the culture, behaviours and choices you want your business and its people to follow.

Values should drive your culture through every process: recruitment, appraisal, promotion, succession, procurement, development, sales, marketing, …

Mission should set up the basis for your values. Mission and values should help you find which of many possible visions is right for your business.

Mission, vision and values: one of those things that is fiendishly simple in concept, yet staggeringly hard to do well.

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