Most highly successful people share one important trait: focus. They know what their purpose is and what they want to achieve, and everything they do and say aims to bring them closer to their goals. But maintaining that intense level of dedication and drive takes effort.

When striving toward any goal, it’s important to find ways to remind yourself why that goal is so important to you so you can stay focused. Creating a personal mission statement gives you a way to identify your values, commit to your goals, and put yourself on a path toward success.

QUESTIONS FOR CREATING A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

To create your own personal mission statement, start by asking yourself these questions:

• What are my strengths and achievements? To know where you want to go, you first have to know where you have been. Take stock of the things you have already accomplished and the routes you took to get there. That process might help shed light on your personal strengths, which you can rely on to make even greater strides in the future.
• What matters to me? A personal mission statement summarizes the things you want to do, the person you want to be, and the life you want to live. It sums up your purpose in life. That vision will be hard to bring to reality if it doesn’t represent the things you find most important in life.
• Who do I want to be? Think about all the roles you play in life: Are you an employee, a parent, a friend, a spouse? Then decide what would be the best possible way for you to live up to that role. Your vision for your role could be totally different from someone else’s.
• What are my goals? What are the things you want most? This is your chance to commit to a goal and define your life's purpose. This could be something broad, like being an inspiration to others, or you could choose a very specific goal like becoming a millionaire by the time you’re forty. There is no such thing as a bad goal, as long as it challenges you and represents your values.
• How will I deliver on my promises? In other words, what will you contribute? What work will you do or what actions will you take to help you get you to your goals? This is the “how” part of how to reach your goals.

THE BENEFITS OF HAVING A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

There are many benefits to creating a mission statement to help you reach your goals:

• Defines who you are and what you want: For some people, this can be the hardest step of all. Writing your mission statement forces you to dig deep and really think about what matters most to you.
• Prioritizes for the big picture: We all may hope to achieve a variety of things, but a personal mission statement can help you put those things in perspective and decide which are most important.
• Builds confidence: Having a mission statement can help you feel more confident, because you know that everything you’re doing is getting you closer to a goal that truly matters to you.
• Creates focus: Many successful people write their mission statements down and look at them every morning before they start their day. Try it to stay focused on your goal, helping you go through your day with purpose and drive.
• Keeps you motivated: A personal mission statement can act as a reminder that, eventually, all your hard work will pay off. Reflecting on the end goal can help you put in that extra effort daily and give you the endurance you need to overcome any roadblocks that come your way.
• Simplifies decision-making: When faced with a choice between two opportunities, choose the one that helps you get closer to your goal.
• Helps you stay on track: A personal mission statement is a great way to spot your own weaknesses or areas that need improvement, because as a concrete statement of your values, it will be obvious when your own actions fall short of the standards you have set
• Holds you accountable: Having a personal statement and reflecting on it regularly is a great way to make sure you are continuously taking actions to reach your goals.

PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENTS FROM NAMES YOU MIGHT RECOGNIZE

High achievers in many industries live by a personal mission statement. Here are a few:

Gary Polson, CEO, Cydcor

“As CEO of Cydcor, I will assure the long-term growth and health of Cydcor and the opportunity by 1) attracting, developing, motivating and recognizing our people; 2) developing a culture of sustainable success; 3) overseeing the strategy; 4) focusing on the financial health of the field; and 5) building relationships with our key people and connecting with the newer people.”

Richard Branson, CEO, The Virgin Group

“To have fun in (my) journey through life and learn from (my) mistakes.” (Motivated Magazine, 2011)

Oprah Winfrey, CEO OWN

“To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.” (Oprah.com, 2009)

Amanda Steinberg, CEO, Dailyworth.com

“To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net-worth of women around the world.” (Forbes, 2014)

‍

Creating a personal mission statement is just one more way you can position yourself to reach your goals. Writing down your goals, values, and vision for your future is a form of commitment in itself, but creating a mission statement does not guarantee success. In order to make your mission statement work to your benefit, you must imbue it with importance. Whether daily, weekly, or monthly, check in with and remind yourself of your mission statement to keep yourself faithful to its message. Consider keeping it by your bedside, taped to your bathroom mirror, or posted at your desk. You could even use your mission statement as part of your social media profile as way to subtly invite others to hold you accountable as well.

While the act of creating a personal mission statement can help you learn a lot, committing to its message could help you transform it from words into reality.

Defining Corporate Culture

Corporate culture comprises some of the hardest to define aspects of your business: vision, values, philosophies, leadership, language, norms, beliefs, habits, and more. Because defining corporate culture is so challenging, though, many business owners overlook it altogether. Corporate culture exists, however, whether a company’s leadership actively takes a part in creating it or not. Business leaders who do not help shape their organization’s corporate culture run the risk of letting their businesses lose control of such an important facet.

Why is Creating Corporate Culture Important?

Creating a vibrant, easy-to-understand corporate culture can help organizations attract and keep top talent. It is critical to employee engagement and retention, and it can have an impact their happiness and satisfaction in the workplace. Creating a thriving corporate culture can also affect performance by instilling values relating to work ethic or by the way it shapes management styles. Culture can also influence the way your company is viewed by its competitors and industry.

How to Create Corporate Culture

It’s All About Authenticity: Defining corporate culture is valuable, but the definition must fit your unique company and its values. Don’t base your idea of culture on what competitors are doing, and don’t try to force your company culture to fit within a narrow definition based solely on what you’d like the company to be. Instead, take an honest assessment of your existing corporate culture, and define specific adjustments you’d like to make over time.

Corporate culture is something that permeates every aspect of a business, and changing it means changing employees’ feelings about the business, their understanding of what is expected of them, and a shared sense of the things that matter most to the business. Simply slapping a new label on your corporate culture won’t do much to change those deeply ingrained ideas. Shifting the perception of what your business stands for will take plenty of time, planning, cooperation, communication, and demonstrating that the company’s spoken values are much more than mere words.

Clarify Purpose: Start simply by defining your organization’s purpose. Then, ensure all employees and stakeholders understand that purpose, have bought into it, and are united toward fulfilling it. A clear definition of your corporate culture is pertinent to how effective it is.

Make Culture Part of Your Communications: Build a shared cultural vocabulary by reinforcing company purpose, vision, and values in all weekly and daily communications. Creating corporate culture means keeping it in mind when you set goals, announce achievements, plan events, and celebrate successes. Take advantage of company meetings as opportunities to reiterate core philosophies and unite the team. Weave culture into the visual design and layout of your workspace, as well. Prove your company’s stated values are more than just lip-service. For example, make sure your “green” business offers employees access to plenty of recycling bins, and avoid filling your business that touts “creativity and outside-the-box thinking,” with small cubicles, which literally box employees in.

Lead by Example: Call on your executive team to help define corporate culture. Other members of the organization will look to what the executive team does, not just to what they say, to determine their cultural reality. Setting the right example is critical when it comes to culture, so hold meetings to ensure your highest-ranking leaders are on board and fully committed to doing their parts.

Hire with Culture in Mind: Maintaining a specific corporate culture requires hiring not just quality people, but the right people. Communicate your corporate culture clearly during the interview process, just as you would other company goals, and make sure it fits with prospective employees’ own values and work style.

Grow Your Culture as You Grow Your Organization: When companies grow, culture becomes vulnerable because new employees bring with them new ideas, ingrained values, and past experiences. Set clear guidelines and provide reminders of cultural priorities to help maintain control of company culture during growth periods.

Get Everyone on Board: Make team members accountable for living up to the company’s standards and representing its values. Accepting shared responsibility for creating company culture gives employees a sense of ownership and purpose. Set clear expectations for employee behavior, and encourage managers to label and confront actions that violate company values. Make culture part of performance reviews, and address culture when measuring company progress as well.

Shape the Culture Around Your People, Not the Other Way Around: As company priorities and processes naturally evolve over time, the way you define your corporate culture may no longer fit. If your company’s value statements focus on the importance of in-person, face-to-face meetings, but 80% of your new employees now telecommute, it may be time to rethink whether those values still make sense. Don't try to force your people conform to a cultural definition that is no longer relevant. Instead, adjust your concept of corporate culture to fit your people and what’s important to them.

Corporate cultures are born with companies. They have lives of their own that go on whether business leaders intervene to help shape them or not. Defining and guiding corporate culture is about much more than words. It requires that companies and their leadership commit to a set of values and agree to a clear set of actions to weave those values throughout all of the core business functions. A thriving corporate culture is like a company’s soul: it is present in the way it does business, what it says about itself, who it hires, who it promotes, what it delivers to clients, and so much more. Business owners who understand the importance of corporate culture, can build happier, more engaged, better performing, and united work forces driven by people who understand their shared purpose.