A company Vision Statement differs from a Mission Statement slightly, because it focuses on the boots on the ground details, the actions. I found that working on developing a company vision statement was a little bit easier than the mission statement, but I still struggled with it because it’s my nature to riff on the details rather than high level goals and possibilities. There are a number of good references to use when writing statements like this, including the one I used from Asana - 7 Steps to Writing the Perfect Vision Statement.

In the referenced blog post from Asana they recommend that you answer a handful of questions, which I’ll go through the questions and my answers below. Knowing the answers to these questions greatly helped me focus on what the vision of my company is.

Let’s do this

Note: I won’t be cleaning these answers up for the purposes of this blog post, as it helps show the process a little more honestly.

What is our organization’s main purpose?

To help people identify toxins in their home that contribute negatively to their health, then provide remediation options, and then provide support through the process of remediation.

What are our company’s main strengths?

We care deeply about our customers. We take the time to learn their exact problems, collect data, research solutions, and provide a detailed plan on how to resolve the issues. We care about the health outcome for our customers, rather than just the numbers on a screen.

What are our company values?

I’ve already written this up on our GitHub: wesdottoday/iaq-consultancy.

Why does what we’re building matter?

Indoor Air Quality affects our health in a significant manner. Most people in the United States spend 90% of their time indoors, so this is more important than ever.

The capitalistic nature of our country ensures that products get to market quickly, but are not always tested to ensure the long term effects of the methods/means of production are safe for their customers.

Traditional home building methods rarely take into account air quality, toxins in the materials, bringing in fresh air, etc.

How do we want to make a difference as a company?

We want to empower each and every person to live the healthiest life they can.

What is our vision for our company culture?

We have a strong focus on empathy and love. We assume best intent from all employees and customers. We treat each other, our families, and our time with respect. Our families truly come first and we live that in our daily interactions and our employee benefits.

What are our most ambitious goals?

To improve the health of individuals in 100 communities in 10 years.

We want to see be involved in changing laws and regulation to ensure that people of all social-economic backgrounds are protected and are afforded safe places to live.

What impact do we want our company to have on the world?

We want to impact material production, building architecture, design, and laws, as well as offer education for individuals around the world about the health effects of the products they use.

What are our company wants? What about company needs?

We want to be the go to company when individuals can’t figure out what is wrong with their health. We want to work with doctors, contractors, architects, city officials, etc to ensure that we are surrounding individuals with the care they deserve.

Vision Statements

As a reminder, our Mission Statement is: “Building healthy communities starts with one: one home, one individual, one change.”

We will be using the Mission Statement and answers to the questions above to come up with our Vision Statement.

We build healthier communities by helping every person identify ways they can improve their indoor air quality, creating a healthier environment for them to live in.

This statement works because it describes what we do at a very high level, but it feels closer to a Mission Statement rather than Vision Statement. There are no real actionable items that describe how we make it a reality.

We work with doctors, contractors, politicians, and researchers to get access to the latest research and technology ensuring that our customers are benefitting from the best information available, leading them to happier, healthier lives.

A little verbose, but that’s okay because our overall vision is pretty grand. In order to do this right, we will need to work with a lot of people across many specialties: doctors, contractors, politicians, researchers, to ensure that we’re staying on top of the latest information, studies, and methods to create healthy environments for people. I’ll probably continue to iterate on this one for a little while, but this will be our operating Vision Statement for the foreseeable future.

So who are we?

Putting the Mission and Vision Statements together we get this:

Building healthy communities starts with one: one home, one individual, one change - We work with doctors, contractors, politicians, and researchers to get access to the latest research and technology ensuring that our customers are benefitting from the best information available, leading them to happier, healthier lives.

<3