Mission or Vision Statements, Goals & Objectives

Mission statements, Goals and Objectives are often used interchangeably in practice. In theory, these are different. All these three are different in characteristics and reasons of its existence.

Mission Statements.
It is the top level document defines the purpose of existence of any profit making or not-for-profit organization. It is very brief and formal document, everything is defined in such as way to communicate important messages to its stakeholders while keeping confidentiality of important business secrets to its competitors. It is the statement available for public. It communicates its generic business strategy, how they are different or distinct from others. Their values & beliefs, ethical responsibilities. It tells its employees what kind of Performances is expected from them. It serves as guideline to the formation of business goals, objectives and tactics. It describes products they sell and market in which they operate.

Mission statement is not required by law that is why every mission statements are different from each other in form and contents. This creates comparability problem for the stakeholders who want to deal with certain organizations.

 
It is also possible to have two mission statements one for internal and one for external purpose. There is no limit on the number of mission statements for the organization of any kind. Mission statements can be ideally be made when business is started. Some organizations may decide to make this later. Mission statements are only needs to be changed and updated when that business change it primary way of doing business.

Some are the Mission Statement of Some Well-known companies.

Google's mission
'To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'.

3M
"To solve unsolved problems innovatively"

Mary Kay Cosmetics
"To give unlimited opportunity to women."

Goals.
It is qualitative statement defines the desires of the business or not-for-profit organization. It is open ended document in the way it does not impose any limit regarding the level of achievement and time, e.g. we want to increase our sales. Goals are long-term in nature it does not provide any information so that organizational performance can be controlled. This is internal document, designed for the purpose of providing motivation to employees to act in a certain way.

Goals reflect the desires of management operating an organization. Goals are established to set long term direction of the organization. Goals do not consider what we are now and how much resources we have to pursue our goals, it refers to the path towards which we have to move.

Objectives.
It is quantitative statement defines medium to long term targets. It is close ended document in the way it define performance requirements in terms of percentage and times. It also imposes time limits to achieve these targets, e.g. sales to be increased by 20% or 5 times in 4 years time. Due to its quantitative nature it provides information for control purpose. The achievement of objectives can be linked to rewards schemes to encourage long term growth of the company.

Objective should be realistic to get acceptance to those who are expected to achieve them but challenging enough to motivate employees. Objective should be set taking account of organizations strategic position, resources and capabilities. Objectives are the statements require some strategic planning for its achievements.