The difference between vision, mission and positioning

Mission, vision and positioning… they are all big picture, stragetic concepts. They are all vaguely related to branding… so what’s the difference between them?

That’s start with positioning.

When I ask someone what their positioning is, I want to hear a noun. Generally a noun with some modifiers, but fundamentally I want a noun, and I want it to be under 8 words (even 8 words is somewhat long). It’s not a complete sentence. So:

A cloud native IDE

A privacy engineer platform

A context aware policy engine

Are all examples of positioning. They are short. They are also meant to describe a product as it exists right now. This isn’t about the future. It’s what’s in hand at the moment.

Let’s move to mission. This is about the change you want to make in the work, often what you want to build. This isn’t about being on a mission to build a billion dollar company — in fact, it’s useful to think of your mission as totally unrelated to commercial success. What is the change you want to make in the world?

Missions are generally internal-facing. They are a gut check, a way to verify with yourself and your team that your actions are in line with what your stated goals are.

— You do have to be aware of your positioning when determining your mission. If you’re changing your positioning dramatically, you might also need to change your mission. However, the bar is somewhat higher for changing your mission than for changing your positioning. While changing your positioning every 18 months or so isn’t bad, and could even be good if you’re a fast-growing startup with a lot of changing pieces. But once you’ve settled on a broader mission, you want to think a couple times before making a switch.

Mission statements are full sentences… they are statements. Like:

Our mission is to empower developers to create software that respects users’ privacy.

Our mission is to make programming more accessible by lowering the learning curve.

What about visions?

Of these three, vision is the most abstract. What will the world be like in 5, 10 years if you achieve your mission?

So: Our vision is for all software to be privacy-focused by default.

Visions don’t have to be grounded in the reality of the present moment. Your positioning does.

On the other hand, when you think about your vision and your mission, we’re not talking about market share. Save that for your investor pitch — if you want your vision and mission to be useful in a marketing sense, as a way to focus the company and give it a sense of purpose, it is about a change you hope to achieve, not the financial success you hope the company gets.