This past weekend, the BalanceDo team got together for an all day strategy session. We do these once every three months. The idea is to get together, talk about what we’ve accomplished, what our goals are, and what we plan to get done.
This one was the first meeting under our new official name. We recently federally incorporated as “BalanceDo Business Management Software Inc.”.
In addition to naming our board members and our executive team, prioritizing work, and having some good barbeque (from the Crazy Canuck in Waterloo), we spent some time going over the BalanceDo Mission and Vision.
We think that mission and vision statements are really important for any company.
These are the values and ideals that your company stands for. That’s why it’s important to look at all of the decisions your company makes through the lens of the Mission and Vision statements.
The Mission Statement:
The mission statement and vision statement are intended to be internal documents that define the organization’s purpose and objectives. The vision helps you to define the key measures of the organizations success.
While this is an internal tool, one of the BalanceDo team’s principles is transparency, and to that end, here’s our mission (besides, the best way to learn about something is to see it in action):
The BalanceDo Mission
BalanceDo is devoted to helping small business succeed.
Our mission is to provide simple tools to help your small business understand your customers, provide insights into your cash flow, and communicate with your customers professionally and efficiently.
The Vision Statement:
A vision statement is a little bit different than the mission statement. It also defines the purpose of the organization, but it speaks more to the values of the organization. If the mission is the “what” you will do, then the vision is the “how” you will do it.
The BalanceDo Vision
BalanceDo’s vision is to create a simple, customer focused product that creates value people are happy to pay for.
We will create trust by creating a product that is simple, with design and customer focus, through transparency in our communications about how we have built both our product and our company, and by being honest about our need to be a profitable business in line with our end users’ goal to make a living wage.
Our corporate voice is that smart, confident and practical friend you go to when you need a second opinion on something who always leaves you thinking “That’s a great idea”.
Our statements took a couple of weeks of back and forth emailing, and about an hour to really nail down and fine tune.
This is how we are running BalanceDo. It was important to us that we figure out what our values are, what is important to us, and what kind of a company we want to build while we’re still in the relatively early stages. Understanding what kind of company we want to have in the future, helps us to make sure we’re building the right company right now.
One of the tasks that we prioritized really high was creating an “About Us” page on the site that will speak to who we are, and what we believe in. The Mission and Vision statements for BalanceDo will be very prominent there.
Your Takeaway – Make sure you have mission and vision statements in order to build the company you want, and not simply the company you end up with. Use your Vision and Mission statements to weigh the decisions you make. When you are building features or products, creating new partnerships, or looking at new markets, always ask yourself “Does this fit into our vision and mission”?
Using your mission and vision statements to weigh choices and ideas really helps you focus your business, and gives you the tools you need to tell your business story and get your message out there, while focusing you on building the right things, for the right audience, at the right time.