There’s something beyond skill, talent, investment and resources that powers the most successful companies, and that’s a clear sense of where they are going and why. When you have a compass it’s not only easier to get to where you want to go, it’s also possible to take people with you.

I’ve written previously about how to write your mission statement, but since it’s easy to get confused between mission and vision, I thought I’d break it down.

Your mission statement describes why your company exists—it serves as both a guiding light for your team and a public statement of intention. Your vision statement describes your future impact—the result and effect of executing on your mission. In their simplest form a mission and vision can we summarised in a single sentence.

We do, make, create, serve, empower, inspire [ABC], [XYZ] will happen because we did [ABC].

Using this model we could describe the Airbnb mission and vision as follows:

Our mission is to build a community-driven hospitality company, that makes travellers all over the world feel like they belong anywhere.

Now it’s your turn.

Image by Michael R. Perry.