Mission and vision both relate to an organization's purpose and are typically communicated in written form. Mission and vision are statements from the organization that answer questions about what the organization is, what the organization's values are, and where the organization is going.

A mission statement communicates the organization's reason for being, and how it aims to serve its stakeholders, customers, employees, and communities (that is, in the form of social or environmental impact).

A vision statement is a future-oriented declaration of the organization's purpose. In many ways, you can say that the mission statement lays out the organization's purpose for being, and the vision statement says, based on that purpose, this is what we want to become.

Mission and vision statements play three critical roles:

• Communicate the purpose of the organization
• Inform strategy development
• Develop the goals and objectives by which you can gauge the success of the organization's strategy