I recently gave feedback to someone who was rewriting their vision, mission, and values. The draft wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was incredibly thoughtful and well-intentioned. It was just very… familiar.
It included a handful of phrases like “Clarity first”, “High standards”, and “Honest conversations”. Under the list of values was a list of things that “what we stand against”. You’ve seen this kind of wording before and that’s part of the problem.
When you write vision, mission, and value documents, the goal isn’t to prove you’re a good, reasonable agency or freelancer. That’s assumed. Everyone says they’re honest, collaborative, and high quality. The problem is that these words in themselves don’t differentiate you, and they don’t help a client understand how you actually work, or what’s going to change for the better if they hire you.
There’s an even more awkward issue, too. In some cases, stating positives explicitly create doubt. For example, saying “We are honest” often does the opposite of what you intend. We’re all supposed to be honest, so drawing attention to it can quietly trigger the question: why do they need to say that? Once that question is in someone’s head, they stop taking in new information and and go down the rabbit hole of trying to work you out instead. Most of the time the ‘too difficult’ light comes on and that’s the end of that potential lead.
Stating obvious positives can create doubt.
The same thing happens with vague, abstract language. Words like “meaningful”, “quality”, or “authentic” feel positive, but they don’t anchor to a real business outcome. Without a frame of reference, those words are purely subjective. They could mean something different to almost everyone and that means the reader has to do extra work to interpret all the possible conotations of what you might mean.
Instead, I try to write statements that describe a real behaviour, anchored to a real tangible result. It’s important to be unambiguous about what you do differently, and what that changes for the client, in a way that is easy for them to understand and imagine.
This is also why I’m wary of spending energy explaining negatives such as “what we stand against”. If you’re clear and specific about how you work, the exclusions are already implied. Saying “we build long-term brand foundations” makes it obvious you’re not chasing short-term wins. Saying “we involve your team in the thinking” makes it obvious you’re not operating in obscurity. Positive, concrete commitments are stronger and communicate more than lists of things you don’t like.
Negatives pull attention in the wrong direction.
There’s a very practical reason for this, especially in smaller teams. Vision, mission, and values often have to do double duty. They’re not just internal culture documents. They can get employed by staff when generating copy, editing content, sanity-checking messaging, and can guide the creation of real customer-facing assets.
In other words, these documents become tools. If the language you use is vague or abstract, people will fill in the gaps differently using their own experiences. That’s how inconsistency creeps in. If the language is concrete and outcome-driven, it’s much easier for someone to ask: “Does this page, this ad, this proposal actually match how we said we work?”
That’s why I tend to phrase these things for external consumption first. Not because internal culture doesn’t matter, but because it forces clarity. If a statement makes sense to a potential client who has never met you, it will usually make sense to a new team member, too. It reduces the chances of an error being carried forward into marketing, sales, or delivery.
The framework I use is simple. Less manifesto. More operating system.
Less manifesto. More operating system.
What that means in practice
The goal is to replace vague “virtue language” with principles that actually guide decisions. Principles that hold up when there’s a trade-off, or when things get messy, or when someone is under pressure and tempted to cut corners.
Here’s how I’d do it: The 6 step framework
1) Decide what this document is for
Before you touch the wording, decide what “good” looks like. If this is purely an internal culture piece, you can afford to be looser. But if this document is going to be used as a tool, then the standard changes. The question becomes: would this help someone make a decision on a real Tuesday afternoon, or would it just sound nice in a slide deck?
2) Pull vision, mission and values apart so each section has a job
This is usually where vagueness sneaks in, because everything starts sounding like everything else and everyone else.
A useful rule of thumb is simple. Vision is the change you’re trying to create if this all works. Mission is how you consistently create that change. Values are how you decide what to do when there’s a trade-off.
If you want a concrete model, here’s the difference in tone.
A vision reads like an outcome: “Clients feel calmer because they trust the website isn’t going to bite them every time they touch it.”
A mission reads like a repeatable approach: “We do this by combining clear planning, calm delivery, and ongoing support that keeps the site stable and improving.”
A value reads like a decision rule: “We show working drafts early, so decisions get made with context and nobody is surprised at the end.”
A vision reads like an outcome.
A mission reads like a repeatable approach.
A value reads like a decision rule
3) Write your vision as change, not a target
A vision that’s mostly a number is usually just a goal. It’s not that goals are bad. It’s that goals don’t help people make day-to-day decisions unless you translate them into what changes for clients and for the work.
A quick test is: if you removed the numbers, would it still make sense? If the answer is no, it’s probably not a vision quite yet.
A good vision reads like a before-and-after. For example: “Small teams stop firefighting their website and start using it as a reliable platform for growth.”
4) Write your mission as the way you work, repeatedly
Missions go mushy, now that’s a tongue twister, when they become beliefs. The useful version is closer to a handful of behaviours you can recognise in your week.
If you want an easy structure, try: “We achieve our vision by doing A, B and C,” where A, B and C are things you actually do in projects, not virtues.
For example: “We achieve this by making priorities explicit, documenting decisions, and building processes the team can keep using long after the project ends.”
5) Write values as behaviour plus outcome
This is the critical point. Take each value and ask: what would someone actually see you do if this were true? Then add the consequence. What changes because you do it that way?
Instead of “We value transparency,” try: “We show working drafts early, so you’re not surprised at the end of the project.”
Instead of “We believe in quality,” try: “We document decisions and trade-offs, so the project doesn’t drift and the reasoning doesn’t disappear.”
You can also make these more specific to how your work actually runs. For example: “We involve the people doing the day-to-day work in the thinking, so the plan survives contact with reality.” Or: “We prioritise stability over novelty, so improvements don’t create a new set of problems next month.”
If you find yourself writing a value that needs a poetic heading and then a paragraph explaining what it really means, treat that as a warning sign. It’s probably still too vague to guide behaviour. Even those examples above are on the verge of setting off my waffley content alarm, but I hope you get the point.
6) Remove the negatives and pressure-test every line
Once your commitments are clear, the “what we stand against” list is usually redundant. It’s also a bit of an attention sink. It pulls the reader into the wrong headspace where they start asking questions about your motives, rather than the positive value you add or the positive outcome you generate.
At that point, run two tests.
First, the copy-paste test. Could a competitor lift this line and put it on their site without changing anything? If yes, it’s probably too generic.
Second, the trade-off test. Would this line change what you do when you’re under pressure? If it wouldn’t change behaviour, it’s not really a principle. It’s just a nice sentence.
If you do all of this thoroughly, you nearly always end up with fewer words, sharper positioning, and statements that actually guide real work. That applies internally, and it applies externally too, because you’re no longer inventing marketing language. You’re communicating how you genuinely run your business.
If anything in this raises questions, or you’d like to talk it through in the context of your own vision, mission and values, feel free to get in touch directly on 01903 527927 via the contact page or read more about my website consultancy service.