Mission Statement Template: Free Worksheet with Examples (Word, PDF, Google Docs)

What's Included in This Mission Statement Template

The worksheet runs 21 pages, with space provided for your notes. Inside you'll find:

• Four steps, four questions each: the work you do, the customers you serve, the difference you make, and the commitment behind it. Each step opens with an example of the types of answers most new owners give and compares that to what a better answer looks like, and an explanation for why the answer is better.
• A fill-in-the-blank pattern that turns your answers into two clear sentences.
• A strike list of 18 over-used words that show up on too many corporate about us pages.
• Three checks that your draft has to pass before you call your mission statement done.
• A copy-and-paste prompt for any AI assistant, if you want a second opinion on your wording. (Recommended)
• The whole worksheet filled in by Sarah, the owner of Evergreen Office & Medical Cleaning, from her first rough answers to her finished mission statement.

There is a clear pattern for any good mission statement. The pattern is provided below. By filling in the blue fields with your own answers, you'll have a rough first draft in a few minutes. Our mission statement template, which has step by step instructions, is what turns that rough draft into something that will differentiate your business from your competitors.

What Is a Mission Statement?

A mission statement is one or two sentences saying what your business does, who it does it for, and what those customers get from you that they couldn't get from a competitor. Most good business mission statements run 25 words or fewer.

The mission statement is a standard section in a formal business plan, but a lender is not the most important person who'll read it. Your people read it to understand what kind of business they've joined. For Evergreen, a new cleaner who hears it on her first day understands why the schedule is built the way it is because the mission is based on it. Your customers read your mission statement and will judge whether you're living up to what you've promised.

That's why the mission statement template forces you to clarity that promise. Anyone can write "We provide quality cleaning services." It's true, and it can be said by every cleaning company in town, so it tells people nothing about why they should choose your business. 

A Filled-In Mission Statement Example: Evergreen Office & Medical Cleaning

Sarah owns Evergreen Office & Medical Cleaning. She cleans offices and medical suites in the evenings with two part-time cleaners, and it's the same business example you'll find in the Business Plan Financials Workbook, so her numbers and her mission statement tell one story.

Her first answers were no better than anybody else's. Her commitment, at first, was one word: "Integrity." The image here shows where each of her four answers started and where it ended up.

The four questions under each step are what made the difference. One of them, "What do people assume you do that you don't?", turned up the fact that people hear "cleaning" and picture housekeeping. Another sent her to the phone, where her longest customer said: "I don't have to explain the room to anybody. It's the same two women every week and they know where everything goes."

Her finished lines went into the pattern next. The work and the customer became the first sentence, and the difference became the second: "We clean offices and medical suites in the evenings for small medical practices that can't have cleaners in the building during patient hours. We assign the same two cleaners to your building, so nobody has to explain the room." That's 39 words. It's long, but it already says something no other cleaning company in her town was saying.

She made two changes to fine-tune her sentences. She cut "after the last patient has gone home," because her customer line already tells the reader the work happens once patients have left. And she added seven words to the end of the second sentence, which you'll see in her finished statement below.

She also had to choose between two unique differences that she had identified. The unannounced monthly inspection was every bit as real as the assigned crew, and one customer had named it as the reason they stayed. Sarah went with the crew because it's what her customers mention most often. The inspection didn't go to waste. It's the kind of detail that belongs on her about page and in what she tells a new cleaner on day one.

From there, Sarah reviewed her mission statement for over-used rules (see strike list below) and made sure a competitor couldn't make the exact same claims, which took her draft to 20 words. Then, she wrote her commitment line underneath it.

Look at what the last seven words are doing. "So nobody has to explain the room" is her customer's phrase, almost word for word. The reason somebody should pick you is often in something a customer already said, in better words than you'd have chosen.

How to Write a Mission Statement in Four Steps

Set aside about an hour to complete this exercise. Understand you may also need to make one or two short phone calls to get some outside perspective from either an existing or prospective client, or other trusted source.

Each step in the mission statement template has four questions, and short phrases are fine for answering each question. You'll finish each step with one line, and three of those four lines will eventually become your mission statement.

The Commitment Line: What Goes Underneath

The mission statement template leaves you with two pieces, and they do different jobs.

The mission statement makes the claim. The commitment line is the rule that keeps it true, and it goes underneath the statement rather than inside it.

Your people lean on the commitment line most. A cleaner standing in a dark office at nine at night, deciding whether the job is finished, needs a rule she can follow. Customers read it as well, and it's the part that shows you mean what you say.

Keeping the two apart also keeps your statement short. Sarah's commitment line is 25 words on its own. Folded into the mission statement, it would have pushed her past 40 words and buried the difference her customers care about.

A good commitment line passes one test: could the newest person on your crew act on it tonight without calling you first? "We value reliability" leaves the new recruit guessing. "When an assigned cleaner is out, the shift goes to someone who has already worked that building, either me or a cleaner cross-trained on it." tells her what happens and who makes the call. Write your commitment as something you do or refuse to do, and name the situation it covers, the same way step four of the worksheet asks you to.

Sharpen It: Strike the Over-Used Words

It's easy to use words that are common, and frankly over-used. Some of these words are used so often they 've become cliche'. Plus, you're aiming for 25 words or fewer so this review should help to get you there. Two passes are usually sufficient. 

Pass one is mechanical. Cross out every one of these words and phrases you find in your draft. All 18 turn up on Fortune 500 about pages, and not one of them tells a reader what the company sells.

The second pass takes more thought. Read your draft as though your closest competitor had written it and put their name at the top. Any phrase that would still be true for them comes out because that means it's not specific to your business.

Your customer often drops out in the second pass, and that's what you want. Sarah's finished statement never says "small medical practices," because "medical suites" already tells a reader who she works for.

Put Sarah's last two drafts side by side and you can see where the words went. Her second draft read: "We clean medical suites after hours for practices that can't have cleaners in during patient hours, with the same two cleaners assigned to your building." That's 25 words. Her final version dropped the clause about patient hours, since "after hours" already says it, and swapped "the same two cleaners" for "a crew assigned to your building."

The swap matters as much as the cut. You're getting very specific.

A crew assignment is a policy Sarah controls, which is the point of the Promise What You Control box back in step three, and it freed up room for her customer's seven words.

When you're cutting your own draft, cut the filler before you touch the difference. Words like "that," "very," "in order to" and "we strive to" can almost always go. The words that differentiate your business need to stay. If you're at 28 words and the only way to reach 25 is to lose the part that sets you apart, keep the 28. A short statement that sounds like every competitor's has still missed the point, so make sure you don't cut so much that you lose what makes you different.

Three Checks Before You Call It Done

All three checks have to pass. They're in the worksheet with space to write, and they're simple enough to complete in a short period of time.

First, does the opposite of your sentence sound like a real business? Write your sentence down, then write the opposite underneath it. Ask whether any real company would put that opposite on its own website.

The first sentence fails because no company would ever promise sloppy work, so promising quality tells a customer nothing. Sarah's passes because its opposite describes how most of her competitors work, and they'd defend it: one floating cleaner costs less to schedule than a two-person crew.

Second, could a new hire tell it's your company and no other? You can't check this one on your own without some level of bias, so don't. Hand your draft to whoever you hired most recently and ask: does this describe us, or could any company in our line of work say the same thing? Your newest people are the right ones to ask, because a lot of them worked for a competitor a month ago.

Third, can you say it out loud without looking? Close the document and say it. If you stumble, count the words. Sarah's runs 20. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be to remember. If it's past 30 words, you'll trip on it every time.

When a check fails, the sentence nearly always describes the work and stops there. "We clean medical offices in the evenings" is work only. "We clean medical offices in the evenings with the same two cleaners assigned every visit" is work plus a unique selling point. Go back to what you invest in step four, because that investment is your difference.

"When you discover your true mission, you will feel its power. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it."

- W. Clement Stone

Mission Statement Examples

Every example of a mission statement below is built on the same pattern as the mission statement template, with a commitment line underneath. The small business and non-profit examples were written for this page to show the pattern at work across different kinds of organizations; they aren't quotes from real companies. The famous ones at the end are quoted from each company's own website.

Small Business Mission Statement Examples

Look at how each one is built. The plumber, the bike shop and the bookkeeper each name a customer narrow enough to turn people away. Each difference costs the owner something: a plumber who can't hand a job to whoever's free, a shop that loses a paid repair slot, a bakery that gives away bread it could have sold at half price the next morning.

Famous Mission Statements, Run Through the Three Checks

Large companies write mission statements for a different audience than yours, so don't copy their style. They're worth studying, however, to see how the three checks hold up for a much larger organization.

Mission Statement vs. Vision Statement

A mission statement describes what your business does today, for whom, and why they pick you.

A vision statement describes where you're headed: what the business looks like in five or ten years if the mission works.

Sarah's mission is about tonight's route. A vision for Evergreen might read: "By 2030, four assigned crews, each with its own route of small medical practices, and Sarah running the business instead of a route." Her mission tells a new cleaner what to do this week. Her vision tells a lender, a future partner or a senior cleaner where their work is taking the business.

You don't need a vision statement to write a business plan, and the worksheet doesn't cover one. If you write one, do it after your mission statement. A vision built on a vague mission tends to be vague too.

Where Your Mission Statement Goes

A mission statement that lives only in your business plan isn't doing the job it was written for.

Sarah's mission statement serves a purpose in three places.

1. It opens her business plan, inside the executive summary. That's the use everybody thinks of first, and it's the least important of the three. The executive summary has room for one line, so the commitment line goes in the company description section of the business plan instead, where it serves as evidence to a lender about your personal dedication.
2. It comes up when she hires new staff, because a cleaner who hears it on her first day understands why the schedule is built the way it is.
3. And it's taped inside the supply cupboard door with the commitment line underneath, where the crew sees both every shift.

Come back to your mission statement whenever the business goes through significant change: a new service line, a different kind of customer, a partner buying in. The four questions will still work to help you identify the need to make any changes. 

Common Mistakes in a Mission Statement

Most weak mission statements come from a handful of mistakes, and every one of them is easy to catch once you know where to look.

• Writing the mission statement alone. The difference your customers value is often something you just assume everyone does. Two phone calls to existing or prospective customers can highlight competitive advantages you might otherwise miss.
• Over-used corporate words. "Innovative solutions" and "exceed expectations" fit every company, so they tell a reader nothing about how your business is different.
• Promising an outcome you can't control. "The same two cleaners every week" breaks the first time somebody quits or calls in sick. Promise the policy instead. "The same two cleaners are assigned every week"
• Trying to include every customer. If nobody is left out, the statement is weak because your target customer can't tell if you are uniquely qualified to serve their needs.
• Stuffing the commitment into the sentence. Your commitment rule belongs underneath the mission, where it can be specific without making the mission statement too long to remember.
• Confusing a mission statement with a slogan. A slogan is written to be catchy. A mission statement is written so your people know what to do and if you're a good match.
• Filing the mission statement and forgetting about it. If your crew has never heard what the mission of the business is, the was just exercise you completed, nothing more.

The Rest of the Business Planning Toolkit

The mission statement template is one of seven free tools built to work together on a complete business plan.

• Business Plan Template and Guide: The written plan for your business, with a step-by-step guide to every section that is required by a prospective lender. A business plan should be completed whether a loan is required or not to ensure all key factors going into the business are fully vetted.
• Business Plan Financials Workbook: Projects your first year from three input tabs and builds all three financial statements for you, including the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cashflow.  Evergreen, the business in this worksheet, is the worked example.
• Balance Sheet Template: What the business owns and owes on a single date, with the ratios a lender calculates built in.
• Income Statement Template: Whether the business made money over a period, from sales down to net income.
• Cash Flow Statement Template: Where the year's profit went, and whether it turned into money you can spend.
• Business Plan Appendix: Where your supporting documents go, including full financial statements a lender may ask to see.

Download Mission Statement Template

P PDF

W Word

D Google Docs

Want the entire leadership tools library? Subscribe to our free newsletter and we'll send you a link to every tool on this site, all on one page, sorted by leadership phase. Every tool is free to download on its own page. The library just puts them in one place. Plus, you'll never miss out on updated or new tool announcements. 

Your privacy is important to us. We never share or sell email addresses.