Social Business Plans

Vision and Mission - an overview

Once you've researched your market, you can then move on to defining what you want to achieve.

There are countless ways to do this, and as always, the important thing is to find a way that makes sense for you. In this section we've outlined an approach which works for us, and which other people who have been on our Starter for Ten course have found useful.

The basic idea is that there is a hierarchy from

Vision to Mission to Objectives to Activities

In each section, you go into more detail about what you're going to do. Your timescale will also shorten (vision will be long-term, mission will be medium to long-term, objectives will be short to medium-term, and activities will be short-term).

There's a logical link between each section - so that each of your activities will achieve one or more objectives, and each of your objectives will help you to achieve your mission. By achieving your mission, you'll work towards a big, long-term vision.

Of course, once you're up and running, your business won't appear this simple. But it really helps if you can have some clarity about what you're trying to achieve. If everyone in your social business shares your vision, understands your mission, and knows what they need to do (objectives and activities) then you'll have a real chance of success.

Have a look through the different blog entries in this section. Then, work out what's the best way for you to do this. You may find it useful to get a big sheet of paper, some post-it notes and some pens, and write down whatever comes into your head when you ask yourself the question:

What do we want to achieve and how are we going to achieve it?

You can then organise your thoughts into some kind of structure - along the lines of the Vision, Mission, Objectives and Activities structure that we suggest.

Vision

Writing your vision is your opportunity to think BIG! In fact you can do more than think, you can dream. What will the world (or at least the bit of the world that you'll have an impact on) look like once you - and others like you - have worked your magic?

So if you're a recycling business, your vision might be "a zero-waste economy". Or if you run a crime-reduction initiative, it might be "No crime - and no fear of crime - in our area." Or, to think a bit bigger, if you were running the United Nations, your vision might be "a more peaceful, prosperous and just world."

Think big - when things get difficult it will help to be reminded why you do what you do (and what joins you to other people who share similar visions). A well-defined vision can also inspire other people to join you and help you to work towards your vision.

Mission

You'll know by now that we think that there's a lot of language misuse in the business world. The mission statement is the natural habitat of such adulterated language. Never have so many words come together to mean so little. The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator will provide you with plenty of examples of how not to write a mission statement.

So what is a mission statement for? Your mission is your fundamental reason for existence. In other words, why do you do what you do?

This is probably the reason why mission statements contain such nonesense. Many shareholder-driven businesses exist to make money for shareholders - but they create a mission which says something else (perhaps because they want to feel better about themselves) Anyone who works for the business knows the score - and as a result the mission statement becomes a joke.

As a social business, you shouldn't have this problem. In most cases, your mission statement won't state exactly what you do - instead it outlines what you aim to achieve, in doing what you do. So if you recycle furniture, your mission probably won't read "to recycle furniture". Instead, it will say something like "To reduce the amount of waste which goes to landfill and provide local people with work." In other words, running the furniture store is a means to an end.

In writing your mission statement, have a look back at your answer to the question "What market am I in?" You'll remember that to identify your market, you asked yourself "what does my customer need?". In a social business context, that question could be re-phrased as "what social need am I meeting?" The social need that you're meeting should be the same as your (social) mission.

It's worth spending a bit of time trying to get this right, but try not to fret too much if you don't come up with something short and snappy. But do your best to make sure that it makes sense to someone reading it for the first time.

Your mission is important - but what will make the real difference is if you, and everyone who works with you, knows your mission, believes in your mission and works tirelessly to achieve it . This is why social enterprises are sometimes referred to as mission-driven organisations - a whole team of people being driven by a clearly communicated mission is a powerful thing indeed.

Here are a few examples of mission statements we've come across which we found interesting - from social enterprises, charities and for-profit businesses: Oxfam, Ben and Jerry's, ASDA, CREATE Liverpool, the Fifteen Foundation, and, finally, Enron (to remind you that it's what you do that matters, not what you write on the page).

Objectives

One of the reasons this part of business planning can become a little confusing is that lots of different words are used to mean more or less the same thing. Some people will call objectives aims, others will call them goals, and they may also be referred to as targets. It really doesn't matter what you call them, as long as you know what they are, and why you need them. For us, they are the next level down in the hierarchy from Vision, to Mission, to Objectives (next will come Activities). Each level gets a little more detailed.

Your objectives are the key things that you want to achieve, in order to achieve your social mission. They will give the reader a feel of the means that will achieve your end.

At start-up, you'll probably find it most useful to concentrate on short-to medium-term objectives - ie the next 18 months/2 years/3 years - whatever makes sense for you. Anything beyond that is probably just guess-work at this stage. What are the key things that you want to achieve in this timescale?

Some social enterprises find it useful to organise their objectives into social and financial objectives - or even social, environmental and financial objectives. This reflects the fact that they judge success by a double or triple bottom line - as opposed to the single bottom line (profit) by which conventional businesses have been traditionally judged.

If you organise your objectives in this way, it can help you to identify whether there is a good balance between what you're trying to achieve socially, and what you're planning to achieve financially. If there's lots of talk about the good you're going to do, but not about how you're going to make money, then you may need to think again.

There are no hard and fast rules about what makes a good set of objectives. It's worth remembering that your objectives are a key part of your business plan - once you're up and running you should regularly be referring to your objectives to see if you're on the way to achieving them (by undertaking your activities - next section). So as a result, you want to keep them fairly simple - so if you've got more than six or seven objectives, it might be worth asking yourselves whether you're trying to achieve too much.

If you do a good job of defining your objectives, it will be a lot easier to undertake social accounting in the future - as social accounting is basically about assessing how you are achieving your objectives - and letting others know about it. Successfully achieving your social objectives is the added value for which your customers or investors may be happy to pay a premium.

The Furniture Resource Centre have a good set of objectives - which they report against in their award-winning social accounts:
Download who_and_what_we_are_for_200506.doc

We couldn't write about objectives without mentioning the word SMART - which is an acronym which reminds you to set objectives which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. In other words, don't set yourself daft objectives which you've got no chance of achieving (and which you won't know if you've achieved or not)! We found a good exlanation of SMART objectives on this blog.

Activities

This is where you go into detail about what you're going to do in order to achieve your objectives.

Many people who are reading your business plan won't be too interested in the level of detail that you'll get into in the activities section - but it's crucial that you have a clear sense of what you'll need to do to achieve your objectives.

Having a good think about what you'll actually do will also help you to set a more realistic budget - if you try to visualise yourself doing things, you'll find it easier to work out how much it will cost to run your business.

In theory, everything you do should help you to achieve an objective. Of course, real life isn't like that, and you're bound to get involved in some things that achieve absolutely nothing. But if you've got clarity about what you're doing (well defined actitivies) and why you're doing it (clear objectives) then you've got a better chance of keeping on track and achieving your social mission.

For this section, we suggest writing down the key things that you'll need to do to achieve each objective. The level of detail will increase the nearer you get to actual "delivery" - right down to the "to-do" list that you'll have when you're getting on and doing all of this!

And whilst we're on the subject of getting on and doing it, we highly recommend the book Getting things done - which has lots of ideas on how to keep focussed when you've got 100 things to do - which is the usual state that most entrepreneurs find themselves in at start-up stage!