Concepts such as mission, vision, values and positioning are useless if they don’t serve a purpose.

Whitepaper Beyond Purpose

Purpose

It’s about why your company exists. The higher-order reason for your company, how it serves society. It’s an inspirational reason for being that inspires action that benefits shareholders and stakeholders, as well as local and global societies. But to go beyond that, it must also shape your ‘how’ and your ‘what’. Purpose sets out that what you seek to solve. The purpose of business is to solve the challenges of people and the planet profitably, and not profit from causing problems. A succinct, well-articulated brand purpose that everyone in the company knows and believes in is crucial to driving differentiation, relevance, and growth.

This sets ‘purpose’ apart from four traditional concepts for organizations; mission, vision, values and positioning.

Mission

Capturing the question of what operational activities the organization needs to enact in order to achieve the vision. It is directly linked to the strategy of the organization and is built on the values used to deliver the vision. Likewise, it is practical and descriptive in nature.

Vision

Describing the result you want to see from the successful delivery of your purpose. Simply put, it captures what future success looks like. It is about the future, where the company wants to go as a destination. Often a vision statement is more granular and defined by category and time. For example, a travel agency can set itself the vision of being ‘The most sustainable travel agency in The Netherlands for long-distance travellers by 2030’.

Vision statements are aspirational, high over and longer-term.

Values

Values capture the way your organization operates, underpinning corporate culture and behaviour. They often take the form of a series of bullet points that are short and simple, indicating expected behaviours and norms.

Positioning

This is who you are in the eyes of the outside world. Positioning ties it all together and creates the story of who you are and why you exist. And it sets you aside from other players in your marketplace.