How to Write a Vision Statement for Your New Business

1 in every 12 businesses closes each year. In order to survive in such a competitive market, you need a vision and a strategy.

Want your business to start with every advantage? By learning how to write a vision statement, you can set yourself up for long-term success. A vision statement will help you determine your goals and stay on track to accomplish them.

A strong vision statement can also rouse your employees and inspire them to take action!

Keep reading to learn how to express your company’s values in a well-written vision statement.

 

#1 Know Your Goals

The first step in learning how to write a vision statement is determining your company’s goals. Writing down your goals will help you break them down into smaller steps. From there, it’s a lot easier to accomplish the goals you have for yourself and your team.

When writing your goals, consider where you want to end up in the future.

Then, consider the steps you need to take to get there.

When determining your goals, make sure they’re SMART. This stands for “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.” A clear SMART goal will help you focus your time and energy on a goal you can accomplish.

The more detail you give your goals now, the easier it is to form your company’s vision statement.

 

#2 Determine Your Values

What concepts are important to your company as a whole? When learning how to write a vision statement, you need to know your values. Otherwise, you’re not setting a vision that matters to the future of the company.

Sometimes, values are as simple as “convenience.” In other cases, you might want to make the value more specific: “providing convenient ways for families to communicate.”

Exploring your company’s values will help you discover what matters now and in the future.

In fact, this process might help you realize your current values aren’t accurate. Make sure to choose values that are important to your company’s vision as a whole.

Once you have your values, set them beside your goals. Understand how your goals and values overlap with one another.

These are the first two ingredients for creating a strong vision statement.

 

#3 Connecting the Mission to Your Vision

What’s the difference between a vision vs mission statement?

Your mission statement considers the company’s day to day processes. It also involves your current goals, which your employees are already working to accomplish.

Your vision statement, on the other hand, gives the company an idea of where you’re going. While the vision extrapolates from the mission, it extends further by considering where you’re going and what you’ll do in the future.

Strategy, the third component, considers how you’re getting there.

In order to write a strong vision statement, you need to consider your current mission.

What is your team working on now? What are your day-to-day goals? Then, consider where your goals will take you five, 10 years from now.

That will help you determine how to write a vision statement.

 

#4 Keep it Simple

Employees who can’t find meaning in their company’s vision have engagement scores of 16%. By clarifying your vision, you can keep the entire time on the same page. Then, you can work together as a team to turn that vision into a reality.

A complicated vision statement, however, will only manage to confuse your employees.

Instead of everyone staying on the same page, your employees will stretch in different directions. This can make it difficult for you to accomplish your goals as a whole.

In this corporate leader spotlight, you can see how one entrepreneur transformed his vision to make his goals a reality.

Writing a simple, specific vision statement will:

  • Ensure everyone understands your vision
  • Help the entire team support the vision

If you’ve written a rough draft of your company’s mission statement, take a look at it. Where can you trim details down? One sign of a complicated vision statement is that tries to reach too many destinations.

Remember to consider your goals. What single “destination” can these goals altogether help you reach? You can also concentrate your efforts on the direction that will take the company as far as possible.

Then, consider which parts of your vision are necessary to help you reach this destination.

 

#5 Specify

Read over your rough draft again. While learning how to write a vision statement can seem easy, it’s also easy to overcomplicate it.

Once you’ve simplified your vision statement, make sure it’s specific as well. An ambiguous vision will cause you and your employees confusion. If you show your team the company’s vision statement, they should all share the same interpretation.

To determine if your vision is specific enough, read it aloud. Is there any other way to interpret the words? Reading the vision aloud will help you visualize the words on more concrete terms.

Then, set it aside. Come back to your vision in a week or month and see if you interpret it differently.

 

#6 Think Forward

Remember, your vision statement is supposed to give your company the chance to aim forward. For a strong vision statement, you need to remain forward-thinking.

How will you keep your vision sustainable? As your company grows with time, is the vision scalable as well?

If your vision can’t survive sudden growth, it could hold your company back.

 

#7 Time it Right

The last step for writing an effective company vision statement is to consider your timing. Create a timeline that breaks your goals and vision into pieces. Remember, your goals and long-term vision should overlap.

Now that you’ve reached this last step, look at your rough draft again. Implement these different components into your vision statement to create your final draft!

A Peek into the Future: How to Write a Vision Statement

Now that you know how to write a vision statement, you can get your entire team on the same page. Then, you can all work together to turn your vision into reality. Start achieving your goals with a vision statement that will lead the way!

Explore our resources for helpful tools that can boost your business!

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