Why EVERY business needs to define its values, mission, promise, voice and vision

When you’re working on your own or as part of a small business you’ll already have 101 things to think about and do every single day to just keep your business ticking over.

Taking time out to define what must seem like very arbitrary aspects of your business might seem on first glance to be like a waste of time, at best.

If you’ve worked for any large organisations over the past twenty years or so you’ll already have been exposed to things like:

• Mission statement
• Brand promise
• Voice
• Vision
• Values

And frankly, in large companies, they rarely work as intended. The culture of the organisation can often resist any top-down efforts to embed these lofty ideals. Publishing and publicising them can fail if a large employee base doesn’t believe that their leadership have really bought into them and they can be seen as tools of control.

In a smaller organisation however, there is real magic in going to work everyday with these five things underpinning every interaction with your customers, every business decision and every activity.

Even if it takes a year to complete, a committment to define these five things will shore up your business for years to come and will create a firm foundation from which to lead in your field.

VALUES

A value is what is considered important in life, what makes life worth living.

If your business is your own, the values you define for your company should complement those you hold yourself. Can you articulate your top 5 to 10 values that are most important to you? If not, it’s possible that you find yourself at odds with some of the business decisions you have to make.

With a defined set of values it’s much easier to chart a path through your business life and to know which opportunities will ultimately bring you the most satisfaction and help you to get a sense of self-worth from your business activities.

There are thousands of examples out there. Take a few hours out to research the values that other businesses have defined, noting the ones that resonate with you and categorising and ranking them to pick your top five or so. If you have a team you can easily do this activity together as a team building exercise.

They’re not carved in stone and you can try out any value set with a option to review and redefine at a later date.

MISSION

A well-crafted mission statement can be a strategic superpower. It should encompass what sets your business apart from every other business in your sector or niche. If your competitors could use exactly the same statement to define their mission, sadly you’ve missed the mark.

Work in the benefit that you bring to your customers, employees (or just yourself if you don’t have employees), your community and even the world. What does your business exist to do and how will it do it differently from anyone else doing the same thing?

Write and re-write. Review and revise. Show your draft to trusted friends or even benevolent strangers — there are plenty to be found hanging out online. When you have something that really defines why you do what you do, you have your own mission statement.

Refer back to your values and make sure they sit comfortably together. And again, you should commit to revisit this exercise at intervals in the future.

A mission statement is an internal tool. The external equivalent is the…

BRAND PROMISE

Your brand promise needs to be one to three sentences — max — that encompass how you aim to solve your target customer’s problem and why they should choose to buy from you over anyone else.

Your brand promise can become your strapline, or if it’s too long to use this way it should be one of the first things a potential customer sees when they visit your site or social media pages. It should be strong enough for you to feel good about spreading it in everything you do.

And as with every promise — it should never, ever be broken.

VOICE

Defining the tone and language to use in every business communication can help to strengthen your brand and set you apart from the pack. If you aren’t the only person who communicates on behalf of your business it will help your employees to know how they should be speaking with customers on your behalf.

And even if your business is just you, it will help provide a consistent and thoughtful approach. Taking the time to really think about how to speak to your customers will help to leave a positive impression and encourage repeat business and recommendations.

Research ‘brand personality adjectives’, pick the ones that work for your company and define how you will speak from there. Your voice should be aligned with your values and your target customer.

Review past communications with your new voice, set of values, mission and brand promise in mind. Could you have said it in a different way? Could it be clearer, friendlier, more open? Look at cases where you’ve dealt with an unhappy customer or had failed to convert a lead into a client. Look at how your competitors are speaking with customers on their social media pages and in their online communications. How could it be better? What ‘rules’ could you put in place to guide future conversations?

When you have your rules try re-writing some key business communications and run them by some loyal customers for their thoughts.

Finally, and possibly most important is…

VISION

A vision statement encompasses everything that you hope to build your business towards. It is a goal to aim for, a statement of growth and aspiration. By definition it doesn’t say where you are today — it defines the direction you are heading in and where you want to be in future. It provides inspiration for your strategy and it will help you to truly know which of the 101 activities vying for your attention today you should really be focusing on.

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The time taken to develop and define these five aspects of your brand will be the best investment you ever make. Try just one of them soon and see for yourself how impactful it can be.