Company Mission and Vision: What They Are and How to Define Them

At some point, every startup or small business reaches a moment when routine takes over every good intention. Tasks, deadlines, meetings, clients, bugs… and suddenly you wake up one morning no longer asking yourself “How can I do my job better?” but rather “How can I survive until Christmas?”

We live in a fast-paced world, one that moves at the speed of light: new technologies, new trends, and the constant need to stay up to date so as not to be forgotten, to remain relevant.

How do we stop all this? How do we step off the merry-go-round? The short answer is: we can’t. It’s impossible to ignore all of this and still stay at the top of your game.
But we can make sure it all has meaning — find the compass to follow even when deadlines pile up, nights are sleepless, and relationships with colleagues become strained.
And that’s exactly what identifying your mission and vision is for.

What Mission and Vision Are: Meaning and Differences

A company’s mission and vision are the foundation of any business. They define what you do, why you do it, and how you do it. In essence, they are the expression of the company’s core values — the principles that guide action.

Without a clear understanding of what drives you as a company, you risk losing the bigger picture.
Every step, without a guiding star, becomes heavy and uncertain. Every decision, without a clear and shared direction, turns reactive instead of strategic.

That’s why many businesses have found focus by establishing their mission and vision. These concepts encapsulate what the company cares about and what it aims to communicate — as in the case of Nike, which proudly states its desire to inspire every athlete, specifying that “if you have a body, you are an athlete.”

Meaning of a Company Mission

The mission is the reason the company exists. It defines what is concretely done on a daily basis in the present. It answers the question: What do we do today, and why does it matter?

Defining the mission highlights the company’s raison d’être — the reason to get up in the morning and do what we do.

Some examples of company missions:

• Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
• Ikea: “To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible can afford them.”
• Coca-Cola Italy: “To create masterpieces of taste by offering our consumers quality beverages made with unique ingredients, carefully selected and given an iconic touch.”
• Barilla: “Barilla offers a range of quality products that are tasty and safe. Barilla believes in the Italian food model that combines high-quality ingredients and simple recipes, offering unique experiences for all five senses. A sense of belonging, courage, and intellectual curiosity inspire our way of being and identify the people we work with. Barilla has always tied its development to the well-being of people and the communities in which it operates.”

As these examples show, the definition of a mission can vary in length and style — some are more idealistic, others more practical. Ultimately, every organization sets its own standard, though it’s generally wise to keep the mission concise, so it can be recalled easily in moments of doubt.

But a good mission isn’t complete without its counterpart: the vision.

What Is a Company Vision

The vision is more aspirational and long-term — the ultimate goal. It defines the “dream big” perspective: the lasting impact the company wants to create, the direction it aims to move toward, and the world it envisions shaping. It answers the question: What change do we want to bring to our environment and to the world?

The vision becomes the guiding light for future decisions that shape the company’s growth.

Some well-known examples of company visions:

• Ikea: “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”
• Airbnb: “Belong anywhere.”
• Google: “To provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
• Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”

It’s clear how the vision aligns with a company’s direction. Take Amazon, for example: its vision matches its efficient customer service and vast product offering.
At the same time, its positioning differs from that of other e-commerce platforms like Etsy, which focuses more on the human and artisanal aspect.

To summarize, the differences between mission and vision are:

What Mission and Vision are NOT

It might be tempting to think that a company’s mission and vision are simply branding strategies. And indeed, many articles treat them that way — as a way to present a nice image to customers, to display trendy company values, or to engage in some green-washing or rainbow-washing when convenient.

However, as we saw at the beginning of this article, this approach misses the point. When a company loses sight of its path, mission and vision should serve as the anchor to return to, not as marketing tools.

Another thing mission and vision are NOT? They’re not immutable. In a constantly changing world, it’s unrealistic to think that your work, its goals, its methods, or its ultimate purpose will remain the same forever.

Think of Microsoft’s example. After its founding in 1975, Bill Gates expressed the company’s vision as “a computer on every desk and in every home.” It sounded ambitious , even utopian, at the time. But fifty years later, when that goal had essentially been achieved, Microsoft’s vision evolved, shifting toward new frontiers.

What to Do When Mission and Vision Are No Longer Relevant

The Microsoft example shows that no matter how ambitious your goals are, a day may come when they’re no longer current. Mission and vision shouldn’t live as untouchable statements — they need to be tested, reaffirmed, lived, and revisited.

Context changes, teams change, priorities shift. And suddenly, the words you once knew by heart — the ones that defined you — sound hollow. They’re no longer shared or lived; they no longer speak to your team, or even to you. It happens to everyone: losing clarity, not knowing which path to take.

That’s where the Sprint Check comes in — a program Mabiloft offers to startups and SMEs to help them find their direction. Through a hands-on approach, we help you rediscover your “big why,” without fluff or wasted time. Simply fill out the questionnaire, and within 72 hours you’ll receive a personalized report.

You’ll also schedule a free call, during which we’ll build a 90-day roadmap together and everything you can do to regain control and realign with your company vision.

How to Create a Mission and Vision Statement

In his famous TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, Simon Sinek points out something that all great pioneers have in common, from the Wright brothers to Martin Luther King Jr. They weren’t necessarily the people with the best tools, the most talent, or privileged access to the masses. What they did share was a distinctive way of communicating.

The Golden Circle theory proposed by Sinek identifies three layers:

• the what — what you do,
• the how — how you do it,
• and the why — the motivation behind it.

According to Sinek, most people know what they do and probably how they do it, but very few can clearly articulate why they do it. And people (and companies) tend to communicate in the same way — from the outside in, starting from what’s most obvious.

Those who truly inspire and influence others, on the other hand, are the ones who have a crystal-clear sense of their why and know how to communicate it.
A perfect example is Apple and its iconic slogan: “Think different.” Apple immediately makes its stance clear — it declares, implicitly: “We are the innovators, the nonconformists, and we challenge the status quo.”

Mission and vision, therefore, become the way to define your motivation — so you can share it with your collaborators, your customers, and anyone willing to listen.
Once again, not as a way to sell, but as a way to know where you’re going.

How to Find Your Mission and Vision

In his book “Find Your Why”, written with David Mead and Peter Docker, Simon Sinek offers a practical workshop method for discovering one’s motivation. However, it’s important to keep in mind that within an organization, there are often multiple “whys”: each individual has their own, each team has its own beliefs and traits, and of course, there’s one overarching purpose at the organizational level.

To uncover the why, Sinek’s model suggests:

• Collect significant stories, by asking questions that help recall impactful moments.
  Examples include: “When did you feel you made a real difference?” or “Describe a moment when you felt proud.”
• Identify recurring themes within those stories.
  For instance, a shared pattern might be pride in helping others or the joy of creating something new and beautiful.
• Formulate your why in the format: I do this in order to achieve that.
  Sound familiar? The first part often reflects your mission, and the second part your vision.
• Refine your answer through discussion, testing what resonates most with the team — the words and ideas that feel authentic to the company’s core.

We at Mabiloft also faced the challenge of rediscovering our motivation and explicitly formulating our mission and vision. To do it, we sat down together, and each of us brought our own version of both statements.

Reading them aloud, we noticed recurring words and ideas that appeared across different versions. After several rounds of reworking, we finally reached a shared formulation — one that satisfied everyone. Today, it hangs on the wall in our office, always there to remind us why we’re here.

And if you ever feel stuck — if you no longer remember why you do what you do, if you’ve lost sight of your company’s foundations or direction — you can always turn to our Sprint Check. Our experts will help you identify your project’s strengths and weaknesses, offer practical advice, and outline a clear path to transform your business in just three months — completely free of charge.