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What’s a Mission Statement?
As I prepare for my workshop on developing a mission statement, I am thinking about a common confusion.
What’s the difference, I’m often asked, between a “vision statement,” a “mission statement,” and a “positioning statement”?
Here’s how I sort it all out.
First of all, let’s remember that a statement is, by nature, public. Each type of statement is an opportunity for you to tell the world who you are.
The difference between them is, basically, the point of view from which you speak. In the vision statement, you speak from your own very personal point of view. What prompts you to make art? How do you see your work?
In the mission statement, you speak from your organization’s point of view (if you have an organization). What is the organization’s core purpose? What are its core values? What difference will it make in the world?
In the positioning statement (a fundamental part of the branding process), you speak from your viewer/listener’s point of view. What benefit does the viewer/listener claim from the art work? How does the viewer/listener experience the work as different from other work of its kind?
I see these three statements as complementary, not mutually exclusive.
Actually, I see an organic development from the aspiring young artist’s vision statement to the mission statement of a more structured enterprise, to the mature artist’s full embrace of the viewer in a positioning statement. Each statement requires progressively more conscious connection between the artist and her/his community. And isn’t that connection what it’s all about?
All best,
Ann
August 2005