examples of a vision statement in education

How to Write School Mission and Vision Statements

Cultivating a sense of shared educational values, goals, and ideals for a school is one of the primary ways that leaders can inspire positive outcomes in their institutions. In fact, research shows that a positive school culture—defined as the collective values and beliefs of a school’s staff—can:

• Increase attendance rates and academic achievement
• Elevate school morale significantly
• Improve staff wellbeing
• Reduce aggressive behavior in students
• Lessen teacher turnover

One way that educational leaders can establish and encourage a positive culture that benefits everyone on campus is by creating well-written school mission and vision statements. Such statements set the tone for staff and students alike, making the purpose of the school clear and inspiring everyone to join together in realizing it. Learning how to write school mission and vision statements is an important step for educators who want to lead their institutions to succeed.

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Why School Mission and Vision Statements Matter

Mission and vision statements help to set the course for a school. These statements communicate core educational values, speak to the culture of the institution, and provide faculty, staff, students, and community members with ideals to reach for in participation with the school. 

In addition to communicating what is important to a school, mission and vision statements can also be useful for creating unity on campus. A clear mission and vision statement communicate to everyone involved at the school what they are collectively aspiring to attain. When individuals share a purpose, they may be more likely to trust one another, engage in collaboration, and have a positive experience in the school setting. 

When it comes to teachers, in particular, mission and vision statements can be effective in a few ways. First, being aligned on a mission and vision can help prospective candidates and hirers determine if a teacher is a good fit for the school. Additionally, teachers—who are often overwhelmed and overworked—can look to their school’s mission or vision statement for guidance in prioritizing their tasks and setting their focus when many things call for their attention at once. Finally, teachers can benefit from strong school mission and vision statements when it comes to their relationships with fellow teachers as well as with students, as the common language and purpose of the statements provide common ground for those relationships. 

Students may experience several key benefits of school mission and vision statements, too. The Values Education Good Practice Schools Project found that well-written vision statements can improve student-teacher relationships. The project also discovered that students in schools with good vision statements that truly impacted the day-to-day culture of the school enjoyed more calm and focused class activities. Lastly, students were more empowered to develop self-regulation and self-management skills in schools with strong vision statements. 

What Are the Differences between Mission and Vision?

While school mission and vision statements have some overlap, there are a few key distinctions between the two. 

The primary difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is that a mission statement describes the school’s current and/or founding identity and the key values that characterize the school as it is in the present. A vision statement, on the other hand, looks forward to the future. Oftentimes, a mission statement will begin with a phrase like “[School name] is…” while a vision statement might begin with “[School name] will be known for…”

In other words, a mission statement is largely a definition of the school, answering questions like:

• What is important to this school? 
• How does this school seek to reach its objectives?
• What are the fundamental traits, cultural influences, or beliefs of this school?

A vision statement, on the other hand, answers questions such ask:

• What does this school aspire to accomplish in the years to come? 
• What does the school want to become known for doing?
• How would this school define future success?

While school mission and vision statements will likely arise from the same core values, they serve two different purposes. The mission statement speaks to the school’s operations in the present. The vision statement speaks to the school’s hopes and intentions for the future. 

Who Should Be Involved in Writing and Approving School Mission and Vision Statements? What Is the Process Like?

Experts agree that gathering insight from a diverse population can help create the best school mission and vision statements. By including various groups of people connected to the school—including teachers, students, administration, parents, and community members—education leaders can ensure that they are gathering as comprehensive of a perspective as possible. While it’s important to hear from a variety of people, education leaders should take care not to grow the group too large, as it could become difficult to find consensus or be productive.

Once a group has been established, discussion can begin. Educational values are a good place to start. Through data, anecdotes, and personal perspectives, group members can share their perceptions of the school’s current values or the values that should be prioritized. Identifying strengths and opportunities for growth can be insightful as well. 

From there, the group members can discuss what their hopes are for the future of the school. What outcomes might the school’s educational values help produce? What does the school want to be known for in 5, 10, or 20 years? What are the school’s current priorities, and how might they be reordered for greater success? 

Once a group has gathered, identified the school’s values, and discussed hopes for the future, then it is time to write the first draft. 

How to Write a Mission Statement

At this point in the process, it is likely that there could be several pages of notes filled with ideas, values, and hopes for the future that the group has produced. This is exactly what is needed in order to write a mission statement, but condensing the content into a succinct sentence or paragraph may feel daunting.

Reading the mission statements of other schools and organizations may be helpful at this stage. Consider, for example, the Marymount University mission statement:

Marymount is a comprehensive Catholic university, guided by the traditions of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, that emphasizes intellectual curiosity, service to others, and a global perspective. A Marymount education is grounded in the liberal arts, promotes career preparation, and provides opportunities for personal and professional growth. A student‐centered learning community that values diversity and focuses on the education of the whole person, Marymount guides the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual development of each individual.

Notice that this mission statement fulfills several key objectives:

• Communicates a value system (Catholic)
• Sets priorities (intellectual curiosity, service, global perspective)
• Establishes an educational framework (liberal arts)
• Describes the community (student-centered, diverse, holistic)

At the elementary school level, a mission statement may read something like:

Our school fosters a love of lifelong learning by guiding each student to build foundational academic skills that will contribute to their ongoing success and by encouraging creative collaboration in an inclusive environment.

This statement makes clear that the school values the love of learning, basic skill development, and cultivating a positive community. 

How to Write a Vision Statement 

School vision statements should align with the values communicated in school mission statements, but they need to communicate forward thinking as well. The Marymount University vision statement reads:

Marymount, a leading Catholic university, will be nationally recognized for innovation and commitment to student success, alumni achievement, and faculty and staff excellence.

This statement:

• Succinctly describes the school (a leading Catholic university)
• Sets the scope for success (national) 
• Establishes goals to attain (recognition in student success, alumni achievement, faculty and staff excellence) 

A high school vision statement may read something like:

Our school will develop critical thinkers who model an inclusive spirit and graduate prepared for success in a profession or higher education.

This statement communicates that critical thinking and inclusivity are prioritized educational values at the school and that employability and admission to college are the standards for success.

Lead in Education with Vision and Values

Do you want to develop a school mission statement that clearly communicates the educational values of the institution you lead? Are you interested in setting academic standards, establishing a campus culture, and doing the work to produce positive future outcomes as an education leader? If so, the Marymount University Online Doctorate in Education program can help you reach your professional goals.

Created for working professionals, Marymount’s flexible online Ed.D. allows students to personalize their coursework according to their vocational goals. Students in the program cite many personal benefits , including building relationships with fellow students and faculty members, honing their project completion skills, and improving their research abilities. 

Student Alexander Gagnet says, “What I love best about the program is the care and attention the faculty put into the success of all the students. You really feel wanted and appreciated for your hard work and effort.” 

Students also appreciate the way that the program allows them to meet their personal and professional obligations while in school. 

“Not to be ignored is the fact that the online program allows you to be who you are AND be a student,” explains Marie Gemelli-Carroll . “It is a key benefit to be able to do classwork on your own time as long as you meet the assigned deadlines.”

Are you ready to further your career by earning a doctorate in education? Marymount University’s online Ed.D. features a practical curriculum and is a top program choice that will prepare you to lead positive change in education. Click here to connect with an enrollment advisor . 

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47 Best Teacher Vision Statement Examples

A teacher vision statement ( often also called a mission statement ) is a statement that a teacher often puts within their teaching philosophy portfolio. This is often submitted in job applications to show your skills on a teaching resume .

It can also be a vision that a teacher sets for themselves at the beginning of their school year to motivate and guide them as they go about setting up their classroom culture.

Vision statements reveal the teacher’s personal values , teaching philosophy, and personal goals .

The following are a list of vision statement examples for teachers of all age groups: preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, and college students.

Teacher Vision Statement Examples

Preschool and kindergarten teachers.

My vision is to …

• …help children to develop the cognitive, language, physical and social skills required to succeed in their formative years.
• …create play-based learning environments where children can learn through different types of play .
• …help inspire students to develop the self-confidence required to succeed in school in the coming years.
• …promote a cooperative play environment where students learn not only from their teachers but each other.
• …develop a Montessori-inspired learning environment that is rich in resources and gives students the chance to learn through active play.
• …encourage engaged and creative minds through ongoing and daily student-centered active-learning lessons.
• …prepare students for big school by giving them the social and communication skills that they will require in the next stage of their lives.

Read Also: A List of School Mission and Vision Statement Examples

Elementary Teachers

• …support children as they discover and explore new ideas in a safe, welcoming classroom environment.
• …support children to become confident and capable members of society.
• …be an inspiring and empowering force in children’s lives so they are excited and motivated to learn.
• …help all children find a sense of purpose in their lives through education.
• …ensure all lessons are student-centered and differentiated so that all students get the support they need.
• …utilize humanist and socio-cultural principles so students can learn through discovery in safe and collaborative environments.
• …ensure assessment, pedagogy and curriculum are student-centered so that learning is always relevant to the lives of my students.
• …develop an inclusive classroom atmosphere in which all students learn to appreciate and respect the diversity in their class.
• …show all boys and girls that they can be anything they want to be if they put in the effort and have the mindset to achieve.
• …promote both hard and soft skills in my students, including STEM skills and important emotional skills such as compassion, resilience and work ethic.
• …give students the cross-curricular foundations for a successful life as active members of their chosen communities.

Read Also: A List of Teaching Philosophy Statement Examples

Middle School Teachers

• …raise kind, caring and compassionate young people with the skills to apply their values in their lives outside of school.
• …help young people find their passion and path in life.
• …ensure all children regardless of gender, race, ability or social class have the opportunity to succeed in my classrooms.
• …create a collaborative learning environment where students learn from and inspire one another.
• …develop a forward-looking, technologically enhanced, and motivating learning environment.
• …acknowledge and appropriately reward hard work and self-growth.
• …be a positive and constructive role model for all students who enter my classroom.
• …raise students with the thinking and learning skills that they require in order to continue to learn well after they have left my classroom.
• …inspire a lifelong love of learning by creating lessons that are exciting, authentic, engaging, and relevant to the lives of my students.
• …to create visible and real change in the lives of all students in my classroom, be it cognitive, social, or personal.

Read Also: A List of Education Slogans, Mottos and Taglines that Pop!

High School Teachers

• …help my students identify the passions that they will pursue in their final years of schooling and beyond.
• …help students to develop individuality as they near the time to go out into the world and serve their fellow citizens.
• …help students to develop important democratic values of youth citizenship , community and equality.
• …create the leaders of tomorrow with the skills required to succeed in the 21st Century .
• …facilitate a culture of learning and risk taking in a challenging yet safe educational setting.
• …set high expectations for all my students so they come to class engaged and excited to learn every day.
• …encourage critical thinking that enables students to become powerful and thoughtful leaders for their school and community.
• …prepare students for their next steps beyond high school, including in the workforce, their communities and their personal relationships.
• …develop resilient social actors who have the self-belief and skillset required to overcome challenges in life.
• …provide students with the academic foundations that will put them in good stead to achieve in college.

Read Also: 59 Core School Values Examples

College Professors

• …prepare students to be change makers in their professional workforces after graduation.
• …help students identify and solve the major challenges facing civilization in the coming decades.
• …encourage open minds and creative thinkers who will meet the challenges of their generation.
• …encourage college students to embrace enterprise, self-confidence, creativity and social justice in all their endeavors.
• …inspire free thinking and individualistic mindsets among students and teach them to be gamechangers in their chosen professions.
• …create a culture of innovation and inquiry and show students that they are powerful actors in society.
• …promote the virtues of scientific method, research and scholarly inquiry so students can bring important critical thinking skills to their pursuits outside of college.
• …inspire the minds of a generation.
• …cultivate partnerships between my students and industry so that they leave university with both workforce ready skills and the social capital required for gaining meaningful employment in their fields.

Read Also: Is Being a Teacher Worth It? (Why I Quit a Good Job)

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Final Thoughts

A teacher vision statement is an important document that shows what you value. It should reveal both your pedagogical skills and beliefs, and your personal values.

The above examples are one-sentence vision statements. You may wish to mix and match the above statements so you have a full-sentence statement of your vision. Or, underneath your one-sentence vision statement, provide a list of 3 – 5 aims that show how you will go about achieving your vision in the school year to come.

Good luck with your vision statement and (of course) with your teaching goals this year!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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Finding Your School’s Mission and Vision

A former principal explains how mission and vision statements differ and why creating them is crucial to a school’s success.

Most first-year or veteran principals who are newly assigned to their school eventually must affirm the school’s existing mission and vision statements or engage stakeholders in a process of revising them. Sometimes, those statements incorporate and reflect district-wide beliefs, values, ideals, and goals.

When I was a new principal, I struggled with mission and vision statements. I didn’t understand the difference or how to utilize them. Regardless of what I might have learned about them in my preparatory classes, I was overwhelmed by day-to-day challenges. So as a result, any of the existing statements developed by the previous administration and posted throughout the school meant little to me.

That changed, however, when the parent of one of our school’s students with a disability, Billy (not his real name), stumped me one day with this question: “Why does this school exist?” Her son had intense needs. I had spoken with her numerous times but now wondered what had prompted the question. As we talked about why our school existed and what we hoped to achieve—for her son and everyone else—our discussion suddenly helped both of us form a much more meaningful concept of mission and vision. 

Our school’s mission (why we existed) was to teach.

Our vision, reflecting shared beliefs, values, and specific, purposeful goals, was the summation of desired outcomes we wanted, along with strategic plans to achieve them.

Billy’s mother eloquently stated, “I just want three things from this school. First, I want my son to learn the basic skills that he will need to get a job someday.” (As I listened, I was thinking to myself that I certainly wanted the same for my daughters.) “Two, I want him to develop good, appropriate social skills so that when he grows up and buys the house next to yours, you won’t want to move.” (I was really listening now.) “And third, I want him to learn to appreciate the finer things in life so that he doesn’t grow up to be a couch potato.” (Wow, she had clarified a vision for her son that any parent should want for their child.)

Missions and visions

The more I thought about it—then and since—the universal mission of every school is to teach. Academics, social skills, creative thinking, healthy living, good choices, and much more. We can embellish the concept of teaching with fancy words that signify academic achievement, physical growth, personal development, wisdom, virtues, transformations, etc., but it all boils down to this: The reason that schools exist is for teaching. Everyone is free to choose their own descriptive words of purpose, but I preferred succinct, easy-to-remember, and personalized wording. And Billy’s mom had helped me shape our mission and vision. 

As I discussed the mission with my staff, we rallied around the ideal that our primary focus was to teach—academics, behaviors, social skills, and aspirations in ways that were most timely, appropriate, individualized, and effective for every child. I helped my staff reflect on their practice and question themselves—if what they were doing didn’t teach, why were they doing it?

My advice for principals—regardless of the wording of your mission statement—is to understand these two basic concepts:

• Your mission is why you exist.
• Your vision is how you accomplish goals. 

Many vision and mission statements are closely related and often used interchangeably. When both are well conceived and meaningful, they can drive your school community’s focus. However, many are often not as effective as they could be. 

At my school, once we agreed that our purpose was to teach (mission), we turned our attention to fulfilling the beliefs, values, and goals embedded in what Billy’s mom had asked for her son (vision). The three visionary targets remained the same, regardless of where each child started.

Academics became more individualized with rigor while teaching the concept of grit. The development of a schoolwide code of conduct (focused on quality work, respect, safety, and kindness) resulted in more effective, personalized ways of teaching social skills and positive behaviors. And so that no student would become a couch potato, we infused the arts and extracurricular activities into every aspect of school that we could think of, teaching and coaching their meaning and value. 

I’m forever indebted to Billy’s mom. She helped me and my staff conceptualize, personalize, and solidify our thinking, define our “why” (mission), and teach to meet the needs of every student. Parents rallied together with me and my teachers around those three stated expectations (vision) from our school—so concise and clear that we have never forgotten them, and never will.

I hope every principal encounters someone like Billy’s mom. When you do, listen, collaborate closely, and learn. Together, you’ll develop the most meaningful awareness of why you do what you do.

Creating a School Vision Statement

by Gordana S | Aug 2, 2020 | Starting a School | 0 comments

Table of Contents

A Detailed Guide to Creating a School Vision Statement

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A school vision statement is a mirror image of the school’s purpose. If you tried to recall your high school vision statement right now, you likely wouldn’t be able to quite put your finger on it. Yes, it probably had something to do with those slogans and posters hung all over the school’s walls, talking about “global citizens,” “inspiring leadership,” “reshaping education,” or similar concepts, but that’s about it, right?

If you were like most high school students, you either never knew or forgot entirely what your school’s vision statement was. And the chances are that many of your teachers and other members of the school’s administration weren’t able to recite it word for word, either.

Now that you are starting your own school, you want to hit that nail on the head and devise the perfect vision statement that will inspire your staff, students, and the whole community. You need to put a lot of work in crafting your school’s vision — that way, you will achieve that every stakeholder in your school can recall it any time of day or night, and you’ll prevent it from becoming obsolete and a cliche.

Creating a school vision statement is a serious task. We’ll explain what it is, why it matters, how to go about writing it, and we will provide you with some examples to get your creative juices flowing. 

The Importance of a School Vision Statement

A vision statement is an essential public declaration that informs the community about the school’s purpose and its goals for the future. It usually explains what the founders and the staff envision the school to be and how they see it impacting the students, both throughout their school years and well into their adulthood.

The school’s vision embodies all the values that it strives to instill in its pupils and inspire in the community on the whole. It is an impactful declaration that should also serve as a powerful motivator for the school’s staff, unifying them in their approach to teaching and guiding the school’s decision-making.

Here’s an overview of the importance of having a strong vision statement that:

• Informs the community on the school’s core educational values
• Drives the staff toward a common goal
• Sets forth the expectations of the teachers, students, and administrators
• Establishes the teaching methods and the approaches to learning 
• Influences the syllabus and curriculum
• Informs decisions , especially in situations when it is difficult to reach a consensus — the choice can be made with what aligns best with the school’s goals
• Is essential for school accreditation or reform

The School’s Vision and Mission

The school’s mission and vision statements are deeply intertwined, so much so that it often happens that they are confused one for another, used interchangeably, or they become a single concept.

A vision is a goal that the school aims to fulfill in the future. It is a short declaration that exemplifies the shared beliefs and values of its founders and staff. A mission is an explanatory declaration of the actions the school is taking to reach its long-term goals, i.e., its vision.

In essence, a school first needs a clear vision to embark on a mission. All stakeholders — from the school’s personnel to the community members — should be involved in drafting these essential statements, joining together their values and aspirations. If all stakeholders at your school share the same vision, they will be on a common mission.

How to Write a Vision Statement for a School

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Keeping in mind the relevance of the school’s goals is the first step toward creating a school vision statement. Only then can the people involved in crafting it set out to compose the school vision declaration that will reflect the institution’s long-term goals in the best way.

To that end, the school vision statement has to be:

• Accurate. Your school’s vision needs to be in line with the idea behind your school, closely linked to why you started it in the first place and the change you see it making in your local community, as well as the educational system on the whole. Avoid bland, ambiguous catchphrases that have been done to the point of meaninglessness and that can be applied to any school or business, and make your vision true to you.
• Concise. While the mission is the more detail-oriented statement, the vision is a short and to-the-point declaration that is, nonetheless, worded in a way that makes a lasting impression.
• Memorable. Your school vision statement needs to paint a picture in people’s minds and etch it there. That will raise awareness of what the school is trying to achieve and how everyone can contribute.
• Inspirational. Craft a vision statement that shows how passionate you are about your goals. If it evokes similar emotions in your community, they will be more interested in participating in the school’s programs.

The importance of creating a school vision that resonates throughout the community is undisputed, but writing it is not as easy as it sounds. The process involves several essential steps, which we list below.

Get the Right People Involved

To make sure you get ideas from all stakeholders in the school, you need to cover all levels of its organization — its IT and HR departments, administrative personnel, instructors, the office manager, the principal — and the community, including the students and their families. You will need to select representatives from each group for the actual vision statement drafting stage, but you will also want to include a wider audience later on for feedback.

Brainstorm 

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To get a better picture of what everyone envisions the school achieving, ask some general but essential questions, and build from there in whichever direction the conversation goes. Some of the matters you can bring up include:

• What is your vision of the school in this district in five, ten, or 20 years?
• How do you see the staff, students, and the community benefiting from our school? Why does it make a difference for everyone involved?
• What is your ideal school like?
• What is different about our school in comparison to others in the area? Do we want to improve on that?
• What do we all have in common?
• Is there a specific niche that we can tend to? For instance, do we have specific conditions for students with disabilities, are we 100% eco-friendly, or do we have special mental health programs that we can offer to students and the community on the whole?

Draft the First Version

Now is the time to get the creative juices flowing and ideas going. Encourage conversation and debate to come up with a successful first draft that is an amalgamation of everyone’s vision and efforts. You may uncover the missing ingredient of the U.S. educational system and find a way to implement it in your school.

Make the Statement Pop

Everyone must be able to grasp the meaning of your school vision statement. To that end, avoid vague jargon-speak that everyone feels in awe hearing but that no one can understand or explain fully.

Keep your community in mind — what you need to strive for is a statement that they can relate to and that will get them involved instead of one that will cause their eyes to widen blankly and their heads to nod without determination. Such statements seem impressive initially but fail to inspire in the long run as no one is quite sure what they are all about.

Focus on these tips instead:

• Be specific. Avoid vague lingo that can safely cover all your bases. You should cut straight to the chase and say it as it is, e.g., we will create a welcoming atmosphere for students of all races and skin colors and provide them with equal opportunities in education .
• Be future-oriented. Your school’s vision is all about tomorrow. It is where you will do your utmost to get, which is why it should be written in a future tense. It is also a good idea to revisit your vision at the end of every school year and check how much closer you got to your goal. That provides for an opportunity to tweak your mission and the steps toward seeing your vision become a reality.
• Emphasize your strengths. Mention any specific programs that you have to offer, such as the mental health support mentioned above or anything else that makes your school stand out.

Get Feedback From the Community

Now the time has come to present the fruit of your hard work. Keep in mind that the drafting process can be a lengthy one, and even when you’re ready to show the results to your community, your school vision statement will still be far from finished. Depending on the kind of feedback you receive, you may need to recast the statement and reiterate your message if the stakeholders feel it’s incomplete.

Bear in mind that going through the feedback and revision processes is time-consuming, but it is just as vital as drafting the first version. If you include a broader community in creating the school’s vision statement, they will be more invested in seeing something they helped produce become a reality and will be involved in what’s going on in the school on the regular. That kind of sense of belonging and unity is surely worth some additional rewording, wouldn’t you agree?

School Vision Statement Templates and Examples

In case you need additional help, we can get you off on the right foot by showing you some examples of school vision statements that you can look up to. 

Grand Rapids Public Museum

“To inspire passionate curiosity and a deeper understanding of the world around us.”

Grand Rapids Public Museum is the role model for what reinvented high school education should look like. This school breaks down the barriers of the traditional classrooms by co-locating itself to the Grand Rapids Public Museum and its invaluable archives. 

It also partners with various local businesses and organizations to provide students with a community-wide classroom, inspiring them to learn from experience as much as from books and become problem-solvers and creative thinkers in the process. The vision statement above doesn’t go into detail, but it succinctly sums up the school’s primary goals.

Furr High School — An Institute for Innovative Thinking

“Furr High School envisions a world in which all young people prioritize academic excellence and environmental sustainability, becoming advocates for themselves and their communities.”

Furr High School is an educational setting that welcomes student-driven revitalization of the community. It fosters an environmentally friendly approach and a social justice standpoint, inspiring students to meet their academic goals and their area’s needs. Its vision statement focuses on those instrumental ideas that drive the school on the whole.

Da Vinci RISE High

“All disconnected youth in Los Angeles will secure quality education, training, and employment opportunities.”

Da Vinci RISE High ‘s vision statement exemplifies what we mean by accuracy to the T. This high school endeavors to bring equal educational opportunities and beyond to students who are disconnected and displaced and live in the Los Angeles area. It is an ideal place for those looking for a non-traditional learning setting or a flexible schedule. It strives to break down the barriers set by bureaucracy and marginalization and to boost its students’ confidence to go to college and achieve their career goals.

Elizabethton High School

“To create a 21st-century learning environment where everyone is held accountable, reaches for excellence, embraces community, displays resilience, and values integrity.”

Elizabethton High School was made for students by students. This exceptional, student-centered establishment caters to the needs that the pupils themselves identified as unfulfilled by traditional schooling . It focuses on community improvement and dealing with local problems, provides funding for student entrepreneurship, sculpting the youth into 21st-century businesspeople. We believe that this school’s vision statement hones in on that to perfection.

Compass Academy

“ Compass Academy will educate youth to be well prepared for post-secondary education, workforce training, and civic participation. Compass Academy will provide multiple pathways for students to achieve adult success. Students at Compass Academy will develop as lifelong learners who think critically to solve problems, as well as foster a lifelong commitment to serve the global community.”

Compass Academy is a high school that is an established educational innovator. It strives to help students develop their personalities and tune them for an unknown future. It promotes cooperation, problem-solving, and hands-on learning in order to teach students how to tackle problems and come up with innovative solutions. Its vision statement pinpoints the school’s main ideas perfectly.

The Debate on the Need for a Vision Statement

Going back to the point brought up at the beginning of the article, it is essential to acknowledge that many schools tend to “forget” their mission and vision declarations altogether. As important as they are to devise, with the passage of time and the staff turnover, the mission and vision of a school often fall into oblivion. 

That is why many people argue that spending a lot of time and effort crafting a school’s vision statement is futile. The skepticism arises from the fact that many schools end up developing in a way contrary to their visions, implementing different teaching methods and encouraging different learning strategies than those originally proposed in their founding documents and declarations. Such contradictions happen because the vision and mission of the founders change over time, but the statements do not, making their existence questionable at best.

For a proper reform of the American educational system, a stronger emphasis has to be put on the school’s vision, as well as its mission. The school’s administration, its teachers, students, parents, and all other stakeholders in the school’s community have to be aware of where the school is going and what their roles on that journey are. The school’s vision statement is much more than a vague string of powerful-sounding words — it embodies the school’s core values and is the foundation of all the actions it will take to guarantee a better quality of education for its students.

Break Out of the Status Quo and Initiate the Change!

There are schools that function from one day to another and from one academic year to the next. Then, there are schools, such as the ones mentioned above, that achieve greater things and help shape the future of education.

If you want to be one of the schools that trigger change, start with drafting an impactful vision statement. We strongly believe that it is the secret ingredient in the recipe for the innovation of the high school system in the United States.

Words are undoubtedly powerful, but if they don’t set people in motion, they remain just empty words . If your public vision declaration turns into actions successfully, your school could become a cornerstone of the educational system of the nation. 

Share your founding story , your drive, school culture , mission, and vision with us, and give us an account of what you’ve achieved so far. Even a small change is the much welcome shift in the right direction, and we want to support you on your way toward your end goal.

Your vision will become a part of our own as we share your story on our blog. Join our cause and let’s rethink high schools together! 

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Sample Instructional Vision Statements

An instructional vision articulates what teaching and learning should look like in a particular content area. Read examples from real districts.

An instructional vision articulates what teaching and learning should look like in a particular content area. While standards name the specifics of what students should know and be able to do and the instructional shifts within the standards describe the types of instruction the standards call for, an instructional vision is a district’s articulation of what students should experience daily and the overall goals for student learning. Having a clear vision for instruction will guide the adoption process and serve as a critical lens through which all potential materials are viewed.

What is this resource?

The real-life examples provided here show how some districts articulate their vision for instruction for specific content areas (ELA, math, and science). The examples range from high level to more specific. Notice how the vision statements are focused on what students are experiencing. This frame allows educators to direct all instructional resources toward a common goal.

How should this resource be used?

Use these examples as you develop your own instructional vision before you begin your search for new materials. Gather ideas from various stakeholders within the district to ensure your vision of instruction represents priorities across your system. Once you have a draft statement, take time to socialize the statement with stakeholders to gather feedback and develop a final draft. Note that your vision may shift a little every year as your educators learn more about students and the subject, and revisiting and confirming instructional visions is in itself a powerful activity.

Explore sample instructional vision statements >

Related resources.

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22 vision statement examples to help you write your own.

When launching a startup, founders typically have an idea of what they want to achieve — a vision of what success will look like. During the strategic planning process, it’s important to put this vision into concrete terms. Not only does a vision statement clarify your thoughts, but it helps employees and stakeholders understand what the business has set out to accomplish. No matter what the business, a good mission and vision statement can inspire and motivate employees to make that vision a reality.

Whether it’s your first or fifth business, writing a compelling vision statement can be challenging. Below, we'll share how to write a vision statement — one that inspires your employees and positively impacts your business — and we'll look at a few vision statement examples to help you get started. 

What is a vision statement? 

A personal mission statement and personal vision statement can be used to guide our decision-making and help us stay focused to meet our long-term goals. Company statements are no different. A company vision statement is one of your most important business documents, along with your mission statement and core values. Although it’s easy to confuse the three, each one is unique and serves its own purpose. 

Core values are the organization’s long-term beliefs and principles that guide employee behavior. A mission statement deals with “why” an organization exists, while a vision statement outlines “what” that existence will eventually look like. A mission statement has to do with what the organization is doing in the present, while a vision statement focuses on the future. Mission statement examples include L’Oreal’s “Offering all women and men worldwide the best of cosmetics innovation in terms of quality, efficacy, and safety.” Conversely, Disney’s vision for itself is “to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.”

Primarily intended for internal employees and shareholders, a vision statement describes what an organization aspires to be. It helps to think of a vision statement as part roadmap, part inspiration. By outlining a long-term vision, rather than just short-term goals, a vision statement helps give the organization shape and purpose. 

Why it’s important to have a vision statement.

Despite the importance of a vision statement, many companies choose to operate without one. Some simply combine their mission and vision into one general document. Others do away with the idea altogether, thinking that corporate visions are vague statements that serve no actual purpose. 

Furthermore, studies show that highly aligned organizations grow revenue 58% faster, and are 72% more profitable than ones that are unaligned. If an organization doesn’t have a vision or a clear idea of what it wants, it will greatly limit its opportunities and have a difficult time inspiring employees to stay committed.  

How to write a vision statement.

Writing a vision statement may seem like a daunting task. It’s read by every employee and shareholder, and greatly impacts the success of the organization. And a vision statement takes time and thought. When done well, a vision statement can provide the encouragement your company needs to achieve its goals. To streamline the process, keep the following steps in mind while crafting your vision statement:

1. Determine who will help write your vision statement.

When starting out, it’s likely you and your partners will be responsible for writing your company’s vision statement. Once you start hiring, you can ask managers and employees to contribute additional insights. Interviewing a range of individuals will help create a vision statement that integrates and speaks directly to the entire organization. 

2. Project your goals for the future.

Imagine your company five or ten years down the line. The outcome you envision — your dream for the future, your success as a company — should be captured in the vision statement. Keep in mind that the statement should only include the vision, not an actual step-by-step plan for implementing solutions. 

The following questions can help you clarify your vision: 

• Where do we want the organization to go? 
• What can we realistically achieve?
• What problem does the organization intend to solve?
• What are the changes we believe the organization can make for individuals? For the industry? 
• How will things be different if the vision is realized?
• What phrases or keywords describe the type of organization and outcome we want?

3. Stick to the specifics.

A generic vision statement — one that sounds like it could apply to any company — will not be enough to motivate your team. Vision works best when it’s specific and describes an end goal only your organization can provide. Don’t be afraid to dream big. A lukewarm vision will only yield lukewarm results. So it’s important to be bold, and even risky, when writing your vision statement. 

4. Keep it short and simple.

While it should be specific, a vision statement shouldn’t be overly detailed. It should be concise. Start by jotting down all of your ideas, and then pare those down to the essentials. Keeping just one or two key points helps create a clear vision that’s easy for everyone to focus on and fulfill. Stay away from technical terms and jargon, and use the present tense. Rather than trying to write something catchy, aim for clarity. A great vision statement works best when it’s simple, memorable, and inspirational. 

Revisit your vision often as your company evolves.

A vision statement sets an organization’s sights on the future. However, once that future is reached, the vision needs to continue moving forward. Your vision statement is a living document, not a set of static sentences. It plays an important part in your overall strategic plan for a certain time frame. It should therefore be regularly updated to reflect your organization’s current purpose. 

Constantly communicate your vision.

Once you have a vision statement that articulates your end goal, make sure it’s clearly communicated. A vision is more effective when your entire organization takes it to heart. Commit the proper resources and time toward realizing the vision you’ve set. This can mean investing in seminars and training or launching a new product. It can also include offering the lowest possible prices, entering new markets, or exploring other areas of opportunity. A good way to help everyone align with a company's vision statement is by inviting them into the process. Ask for employees’ input, and suggest ways to incorporate the vision into their work. Then, make sure to recognize or reward individuals for their standout contributions.

Vision statement examples.

Sometimes, seeing what works for notable companies is just the inspiration you need to create your own vision statement. Below are some inspiring vision statements from today’s top companies:

Concept-based vision statements.

Some vision statements are based on concepts of what the company hopes to be or achieve in the future. This can be a general statement focused on customers, or a position the company wants to hold within the industry. Below are a few examples of concept-based vision statements:

• BBC: “To be the most creative organization in the world”
• Disney: “To make people happy.”
• Google: “To provide access to the world’s information in one click”
• IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people”
• Instagram: “Capture and share the world’s moments”
• LinkedIn: "Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”
• Microsoft: “To help people throughout the world realize their full potential”
• Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”
• Oxfam: “A just world without poverty”
• Shopify: “To make commerce better for everyone”
• Sony: "To be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.”
• TED: “Spread ideas”
• Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”
• Uber: “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion”
• Whole Foods : “To nourish people and the planet.”

Quality-based vision statements.

Other common vision statements are focused on internal goals. These include the type of products and services the company hopes to provide as they grow. Quality-based vision statements can also relate to company culture and operations. The following are some examples from actual United States companies in different industries:

• Amazon: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
• Avon: “ To be the company that best understands and satisfies the product, service, and self-fulfillment needs of women—globally.”
• Ben & Jerry’s: “Making the best ice cream in the nicest possible way”
• Ford: “People working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through automotive and mobility leadership.” 
• IBM: “To be the world’s most successful and important information technology company. Successful in helping our customers apply technology to solve their problems. Successful in introducing this extraordinary technology to new customers. Important because we will continue to be the basic resource of much of what is invested in this industry.”
• McDonald’s: “To move with velocity to drive profitable growth and become an even better McDonald’s serving more customers delicious food each day around the world.”
• Nordstrom: “To serve our customers better, to always be relevant in their lives, and to form lifelong relationships”
• Starbucks: “To establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.” 
• Warby Parker: “We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket. We also believe that everyone has the right to see.”
• Zappos: “To provide the best customer service possible. Deliver 'WOW' through service”

Keep a clear vision.

Even if it’s just a few sentences, a vision statement provides a lot of value. Not only does it outline the company’s desired outcome, but it can communicate intentions and hopes for the future. The best part is that a vision statement changes with your organization. When a vision is reached or updated, it’s time to create a new vision statement. This encourages everyone toward greater goals, and opens your company to more possibilities.

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30 Noteworthy Vision Statement Examples (+ Free Template)

The vision statement is the North Star of your overall company strategy, it is where you want to be as a business in the future. A good vision statement acts as motivation for employees and provides guidance on long-term goal setting.

Wondering why it matters? According to a January 2022 survey by Gartner, 52% of surveyed employees said the pandemic made them question the purpose of their day-to-day job. What can you get from unmotivated employees? Well, probably wasted money and slower business growth. But that’s a story for another day.

Let’s dive into this article, where you’ll discover:

Why Do You Need A Good Vision Statement?

What is a vision statement, vision vs. mission statement: what's the difference, how to write a company vision statement example, tips for creating your vision statement, 30 vision statement examples from top companies.

• Vision Statement Template And Resources

Turn Your Vision Into Reality With Cascade 🚀

Do you think a vision statement is just fluff with its only purpose to look good in the “About Us” section on the website?

Well, we beg to differ and so does Ryan Saundry, a General Manager in charge of Strategy & Value Creation at Asahi Beverages. Here’s why he believes a vision statement is crucial for business:

"If you look at many of the great examples of super successful companies over the last 10,15 or 20 years, there's one thing they have in common. And that’s a really simple, clear vision their business and people can understand and coalesce behind."

The reason why a good vision statement matters is that the people you are leading want to know the “why” behind your decision-making before they follow you.

If you are a disruptive business, your vision will have to be bigger and more badass than any other. And you need to figure it out to create engagement and followership from your stakeholders and team members.

On top of that, a vision statement plays an important role in the strategic planning process.

Vision statements have a directional role , meaning they guide the organization’s plans and strategies. In other words, a clear vision acts as your North Star that helps you set strategic initiatives and objectives while keeping the focus on the big picture. That’s why a vision statement should be a part of the company’s every strategic plan.

When you think about an organization's vision statement, it's not just about the business goals and how to achieve them (that's more like a mission statement). It's about looking at the bigger picture. Take Kellogg's vision statement, for example: " A good and just world where people are not just fed but fulfilled. " They're not only talking about sales here or about being the #1 company in their industry. It's about how they want to make a positive impact on society and improve people's lives.

The bottom line is that people follow leaders with vision and customers are loyal to companies with good vision statements that deeply resonate with them . That’s why your company’s vision shouldn’t be just an afterthought. After all, a memorable and engaging vision statement engages your people emotionally, causing them to work around and through obstacles, and inspires change.

📽️ Must watch : We’re sure you’ve seen it already, BUT if you haven’t, Simon Sinek’s TED talk “ How great leaders inspire action ” is a great resource to understand the importance of your vision statement, and the “why” behind your organization.

In short, a vision statement describes the desired future state of a business within a 5-10 year timeframe and guides the direction of the business's efforts. It is essentially the future objectives of a business. The vision statement is also the first step in building a highly-effective business strategic plan, since it sets the foundation to understand the direction of your business in the long-term.

While this is more of a general definition, let’s dig a bit deeper into it by looking at the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement.

If you hear 10 different people talking about mission and vision, you will most likely hear 10 different definitions. Taking a look at some of the websites and social media accounts, it's clear that many people confuse one for another. 

But here’s how Anita Stubenrauch, ex-Apple creative veteran, explains why you shouldn’t ignore the difference : 

Here’s what’s at stake: if we mistake mission for vision, we just might accomplish what we set out to do — and then stop there.

In other words, mistaking the vision for a mission statement might just stop your organization from achieving its true growth potential.

Let’s settle this battle once and for all: 

• A vision statement is a long-term, idealistic state of the FUTURE that doesn’t exist yet. It’s an inspiring, rallying cry that invites everyone who believes in it to contribute and become a part of it. 
• A company's mission statement is how the company chooses to pursue its vision - like a roadmap . It is more specific and relates directly to the company’s products and services.

Let’s take a look at a few examples to illustrate the difference: 

Vision statement example: 

• HYBE’s vision: “To be the world’s top music-based entertainment lifestyle platform company.”  

Mission statement example: 

• Google’s mission statement: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” 
• Walt Disney’s mission: “The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.”

So, let’s repeat the key difference. A vision statement is a definition of a company’s future, while a good mission statement represents a roadmap that tells what the company will do to achieve its vision.

Here at Cascade, we've come across a LOT of vision statements while working with thousands of teams of all shapes and sizes, helping them execute strategies . Some of these vision statements are good, some are bad, and most come somewhere in between.

And that’s why we outlined a step-by-step process that will help you craft an effective vision statement.

You can check a complete guide here , but here’s a short recap of each step:

Step 1 - The outcome

Start by being exceptionally clear about what it is your organization actually does. Be careful to remain outcome-focused rather than output-focused.

Step 2 - The twist

What’s your unique selling point? Make sure to include it in your vision statement.

Step 3 - The quantification

One of the common problems with a vision statement is too specific. If we return to the basic definition, your vision statement should be a long-term, idealistic state of the FUTURE that doesn’t exist yet. That said - don't be too specific or apply specific metrics at this stage. 

You might want to refine your target audience or target market, but avoid adding financial projections or any numbers.

Step 4 - The human connection

One final trick you can apply to help make your vision even more memorable is to add a real-life aspect. This will allow people to conjure up a solid mental image to associate with your vision statement.

Below is a vision statement example we've created for a fictional bakery place using our vision statement formula !

Vision Statement Example

Our vision is to "produce and sell locally sourced cakes and pies that are so delicious and satisfying , that every customer who leaves our store does so with a smile ."

Can you imagine yourself standing in the middle of the bakery surrounded by the smell of fresh pastry, and with a smile on your face? We certainly can! And that’s the whole point. Your vision should be imaginable and desirable, like the one above.

Here are a few things you should consider when you start writing down your company’s vision statement: 

• Keep it short - max 2 sentences.
• It must be specific to your business and describe a unique outcome that only you can provide. 
• Use the present tense . 
• Keep it simple enough for people both inside and outside your organization to understand. No technical jargon, buzzwords, or metaphors.
• It should be ambitious enough to be exciting but not too ambitious that it seems unachievable. Here at Cascade, we recommend thinking 5 years into the future.
• Vision needs to align with the company’s core values that you want your people to exhibit as they perform their work. 

Following these tips and best practices should give you a solid starting point for creating a vision statement. 

👉🏻 Check out our step-by-step guide on how to write a vision statement.

💡Pro Tip: Writing your vision statement is an iterative process, so don't worry if you don't get it right on the first try. A helpful practice is to brainstorm with a diverse group, welcoming various perspectives and refining ideas until you capture the essence of your organization's aspirations.

There are many good vision statement examples that have become widely recognized because they have some pretty amazing companies behind them. You should keep in mind that these are just a starting point. There is much more to the creation process of these vision statements than meets the eye. 

Let’s look at some popular company vision examples: 

Microsoft is one of the most well-known technology companies in the world. Their vision is to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. 

This e-commerce giant’s vision is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online. 

Tesla ’s vision is to create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world's transition to electric vehicles. Their mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.

This world’s largest furniture retailer’s vision is to create a better everyday life for many people. 

Lego 's vision emphasizes the importance of play in fostering creativity, imagination, and educational development among children and adults alike: “A global force for Learning-through-Play”. 

Patagonia stands out among companies for consistently aligning its actions with its mission, values, and company culture around sustainability. Their mission statement is “We're in business to save our home planet.” However, they don’t have any official release on their vision statement. 

If we asked you what TED’s vision is, you’d probably know or at least imagine it. That’s because TED has a vision statement that’s short and sweet: “Spread ideas”. Though it doesn’t follow the secret formula we’ve shared, we can say it’s definitely memorable.

LinkedIn’s vision statement is “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” and their mission statement is “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

There is no official release of Starbucks ' vision statement, but here's one example of what it could look like: “To establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow." 

For inspiration, we are also adding their official mission statement: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

Disney 's vision statement is “to be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.”

Nike ’s vision is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world” - and here’s the brilliance when they add the commentary below “*if you have a body, you’re an athlete.”

McDonald's

This multinational fast food chain’s vision statement is “to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience,” and its mission statement is “to make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone.” 

Coca-Cola ’s vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body & spirit. It makes sense right? Just think about Coca-Cola’s famous ads like “Open happiness” and you’ll instantly see how they’re aligned with their vision.

Netflix’s vision is “To entertain the world.” On their website they complement this vision with what we could say would be their “manifesto”:

Whatever your taste, and no matter where you live, we give you access to best-in-class TV series, documentaries, feature films and mobile games. Our members control what they want to watch, when they want it, in one simple subscription. We’re streaming in more than 30 languages and 190 countries, because great stories can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere. We are the world’s biggest fans of entertainment, and we’re always looking to help you find your next favorite story.

🤔What’s a brand manifesto? A concise statement that captures the essence and values of a brand, aiming to create an emotional connection with the target audience and inspire loyalty. It communicates the brand's mission, personality, and desired impact on the world. Brand manifestos can take various forms, including written statements, videos, or visual representations.

American Express

American Express’ vision is to “Provide the world’s best customer experience every day.”

Zoom’s vision is “Video communications empowering people to accomplish more.” Yikes . It could definitely be more memorable and inspiring, right?

Warby Parker 

Warby Parker’s vision is to be one of the most impactful brands in the world by inspiring the next generations of entrepreneurs and consumers to transform the eyewear and eyecare industry through design and innovation. 

Oxfam is a global organization with a vision of a world that is just and sustainable. 

Southwest Airlines 

Their vision is “To be the world's most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.”

The Nature Conservancy

This nonprofit’s vision is “A world where the diversity of life thrives, and people act to conserve nature for its own sake and its ability to fulfill our needs and enrich our lives.”

Astellas’s vision is to be at the forefront of healthcare change to run innovative science into VALUE for patients.

This giant beauty company’s vision is  “to be the most inclusive beauty leader and contribute to a society in which everyone can live safely, peacefully, and equally.”

NASA , the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, embarks on a bold and awe-inspiring vision of “Exploring the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all.”

The legendary New Zealand national rugby team embodies the indomitable spirit of unity, excellence, and Maori culture. Their vision is: “Inspiring and Unifying through rugby”.

As a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry, Novartis ’ vision is to be a trusted leader in changing the practice of medicine.

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s vision is to enrich people's lives with programs and services that inform, educate and entertain by being the most creative organization in the world.

Leading global food company, Danone , is driven by a powerful vision ignited by words from their founder, Antoine Riboud: "There is only one earth, we only live once." Guided by this ethos, Danone is committed to bringing health to our planet and generations of people. 

This company is committed to creating a better world through health and wellness, and this is shown in their vision statement: “To be the leading partner in reimagining local healthcare and wellbeing for all.”

Toyota ’s vision is written slightly differently from the others we’ve seen. It’s a little longer than we’d recommend, but it serves the purpose:

“Toyota will lead the future mobility society, enriching lives around the world with the safest and most responsible ways of moving people. Through our commitment to quality, ceaseless innovation, and respect for the planet, we strive to exceed expectations and be rewarded with a smile. We will meet challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of people who believe there is always a better way.”

This global automotive supplier’s vision is to accelerate profitable growth and enhance our technology offer to become a leader in sustainable mobility and smart life on board. Its mission is to create and deliver high-quality and innovative products which comply with legal constraints and customer quality requirements.

In this example above, the difference between vision and mission is obvious.

Vision Statement Template And Resources 

Feeling inspired to create a good vision statement for your business? We have a collection of amazing resources that will help you create your own!

Need a bit more inspiration? Download our carefully curated collection of 100 world’s best vision statements sorted by various industries, including:

• Retail vision statement examples
• Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals vision statement examples 
• Food & Beverages vision statement examples
• Automotive vision statement examples
• Vision statement examples for Financial Services
• Manufacturing vision statement examples
• Airlines, Aerospace & Defense vision statement examples

Want to start working on your own vision statement? Look no further and download our vision statement toolkit that includes all resources you need to create an inspiring vision statement. Inside you’ll also find a vision statement template and a special workbook we’re using with our customers to align their vision with company values and company strategic goals.

Need a step- by-step guide? Read our thorough article on how to write a vision statement with extra tips, best practices, and formulas.

As Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, said :

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Every business needs an inspiring vision to spread ideas and make a difference in the world. However, even the greatest vision means nothing without execution.

Cascade is a global software company, consistently ranking as the world’s #1 strategy execution platform. At Cascade, we make visions happen by acting as the strategic brain of your organization, remediating the chaos of running your business so that you can move forward. 

Do you want to learn how to bridge the gap between vision and execution? Sign up today for a free forever plan or book a guided 1:1 tour with one of our Cascade in-house strategy execution experts and get your team moving toward your vision.

What’s the difference between vision statement and purpose?

A vision statement and a purpose serve distinct but complementary roles in an organization:

• The vision statement outlines the desired future state or long-term aspirations of an organization, providing a clear and inspiring picture of what the organization aims to achieve.
• Purpose refers to the fundamental reason for an organization's existence beyond financial gain, representing its deeper meaning, societal impact, and core mission. It goes beyond profitability and focuses on making a positive difference in the world.

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Vision statement template and 40 vision statement examples, a vision statement is a clear articulation of your organization’s bold future state—meaning where you want your organization to be in 5-10 years..

As you embark upon your strategic planning process, your vision statement is the foundation of your organization’s long-term goals and day-to-day activities. Knowing where to start when creating your vision statement can be tricky, but we’ve got you covered! We’ll cover the basics of vision statements, how they differ from mission and values statements, and how you can build your own using our vision statement template. As you work through the creation of your own vision, browse 37 of our favorite vision statement examples and learn some best practices.

Pro Tip: Without a clear vision statement, you’ll have a difficult time communicating that vision of your future to your team and to the people around you.

What is the Purpose of a Vision Statement?

Your vision statement is the big, bold declaration that defines what you seek to accomplish or where you want to be in the next 5-10 years. It is foundational to your strategic plan and should not be overlooked in the planning process, as it articulates and crystalizes your future state.

What is the difference between a vision statement, a mission statement, and guiding principles?

While this is a common mistake, an organization’s vision can be confused with its mission statement. They are not interchangeable, as each has a clear purpose. Missions express why you exist and what you do; visions paint a bold picture of your future, and company values outline how you expect your team to behave.

A company’s vision articulates where you’re going.

A company’s vision statement is a forward-looking declaration that outlines your organization’s aspirations for the future, typically spanning multiple years. It asks (and answers) the fundamental question, “Where are we going?”

Your vision statement is your big, bold, lofty aspirations all wrapped up in a clear and memorable sentence. Your vision may feel, in some ways, a bit out of reach and overly ambitious, but that’s okay- it’s supposed to be! The primary purpose of creating a vision statement is to provide direction and inspiration, setting a clear and ambitious target for what the organization aims to achieve.

A company’s mission statement articulates why you exist.

Unlike a vision statement, which answers the question, ‘Where are we going?’ a company’s mission statement focuses on why they were created. A mission statement asks the question, “Why do we exist?”.

It describes the organization’s current purpose and reason for its creation. Your mission is essentially your statement that defines the purpose of the work you do. It should provide the context for all the decisions made within the organization and be useful for both internal and external audiences.

Again, this statement would ideally be clear, succinct, and memorable, as it will be something that you’d share with your customers, employees, and stakeholders.

Guiding principles define how you will behave.

Your guiding principles or company’s core values are the uncompromising principles or standards by which you guide your decision-making. They inform your approach to growth and impact. These can also serve as the clear guardrails and principles that keep your organization growing with quality and integrity.

They define the clear behaviors you expect of your organization and your team as you pursue your big, bold vision.

These elements make up essential aspects of your strategic plan and are not interchangeable. Each element is foundational and has a clear purpose. Missions are what you do conversationally, visions paint a bold picture of your future, and values outline how you expect your team to behave.

What are the benefits of a compelling vision statement?

There are several benefits to incorporating your vision statement into your strategic plan. Some key benefits that a well-defined business vision statement provides are:

• Directional Guidance: Your vision statement acts as a compass, guiding strategic planning and decision-making by defining the desired end state.
• Motivation and Inspiration: A compelling vision can inspire and motivate stakeholders, including employees, customers, and investors, by providing a sense of purpose and direction.
• Unity and Alignment: A vision statement helps align the efforts of all team members, fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose.
• Strategic Framework: Your vision statement serves as a foundational element in the strategic planning process and helps to shape the objectives, strategies, and action plans that will drive the organization toward its envisioned future state.
• Decision-Making Clarity: With a clear vision, decisions can be evaluated based on their alignment with the desired future, ensuring that actions contribute to long-term success.
• Differentiation: A distinct and ambitious vision can set an organization apart from its competitors.

Does every organization need a vision statement? Absolutely!

A vision statement is not just a declaration of long term future intentions that is only shared during yearly board meetings or during fund-raising events; an inspiring vision statement is a strategic tool that benefits an organization by providing direction, inspiring stakeholders, fostering unity, guiding decision-making, and differentiating the organization from its competitors.

Vision Statement Template & Visioning Canvas

Coming up with a big, bold vision that encompasses your goals for the next 5 to 10 years may seem like a daunting task. Prior to drafting your vision statement, you need to go through a few ‘visioning’ exercises to determine what your vision for your organization actually is. To help you build a vision statement that matters, we’ve created a visioning guide and attached an easy-to-follow visioning template. Click here to download !

How to write a vision statement

The first step to narrowing down your vision for your organization is to ask yourself and your team these two questions:

• What does success look like for us in the future?
• How will that differ from how it looks today?

These questions are a good way to put your team in the mindset of thinking about where you are today versus where you want to be tomorrow.

When thinking of your ideal future state, it may help to think about your team’s common goals in relation to four specific areas: people and organizational suitability, operational excellence and innovation, customer growth and retention, and financial results and impact.

Pro Tip: You may recognize these four areas in a balanced scorecard, which is exactly what it is. When you outline what the future would look like in these four areas, it will paint a clear and well-balanced picture of your overall vision for your organization and provides some guidance of where you want to focus your development efforts.

The best way to do this exercise is to follow this canvas to guide your exercise and with each matrix, ask yourself two questions; “What does success look like (in this area)” and “How is it different from today?” For each perspective you explore, write supporting vision descriptors, aka “min-visions,” that will ultimately support your larger vision of success.

These help your organization clearly understand your ideal future in all areas of your organization. Use the template provided in the canvas above to complete the following vision descriptors:

People and Organizational Suitability

The first perspective is internally focused based on our equity in our people and organizational stability. This includes areas such as organization structure, size, and capabilities, as well as overall company culture and skills.

What does success look like for your people? Think about your organization’s structure, size, capabilities, and culture.

Mini Vision: Have a growing team of 200 people who are passionate about changing our industry.

Operational Excellence and Innovation

The second area focuses on operational excellence, and innovation. This includes such concerns like facilities, processes, technology, innovation and environmental impact.

What facilities, technology, innovations, or environmental impact are needed to achieve that vision? How will it help you get there?

Mini Vision: Scale our infrastructure to increase output by 50%.

Customer Growth and Retention

This area focuses on the market/customer-facing perspective of growth and impact. Areas of concern could include the services, customer service, products, benefits, and value proposition that your organization brings to the market.

What does the volume, number of customers, geographies, or products/services look like once you reach your destination?

Mini Vision: Become a top player in our market, positioned as ‘innovators’ in the minds of our customers.

Financial Results and Impact

Finally, this perspective focuses on a financial perspective, and includes concerns such as social impact, sustainability, profitability, and revenue growth.

What is the revenue growth, profitability, or social and community impact achieving this vision will help achieve?

Mini Vision: Achieve sustainable, profitable growth by increasing profits by 10% year over year over the next 5 years.

OnStrategy Vision Statement Example

Now that you have the four areas filled out, , you can use the vision statement template we’ve created as a guide to write your own . Begin by setting a target date or year to accomplish, followed by the phrase ‘we envision’ paired with your organization’s desired future state. Finally, end your statement with a ‘why’ to give your team vision a reason and purpose. Fill in the blanks to help write your vision statement:

• By: Insert the year or timeframe

This doesn’t have to be explicitly stated in your vision statement, but you should have a timeline in mind as you draft it.

• We envision: A phrase that helps frame your vision statement.

Again, you don’t have to explicitly keep this phrase in your vision statement once you’ve drafted it. But starting your vision statement drafting process with this phrase can help put you in the right frame of mind.

• Verb: An action verb in future tense
• Impact: Description of future impact on the world

We envision being the #1 choice for premier organic, sustainable foods by changing the way produce is grown and sold in North America.

6 Characteristics of a great vision statement:

• An ideal vision statement at least five years in nature or longer, but no longer than 10 years. You need to have flexibility to pivot if your company or end goal changes, so 10-year vision might be too long.
• Your vision statement needs to be unique to your organization, sound like no one else’s, and stays true to what sets your organization apart
• Vision statements are set in the future tense and have a powerful action verb.
• A great company vision statement is directional. Again, we’re not there today but are moving towards our ideal future with forward momentum.
• A good vision statement is audacious. Visions are big and broad with high-reaching thoughts.
• Finally, a strong vision statement is descriptive.

40 Sample Vision Statements

Now that you have a template to help create your vision statement, we’ve put together a list of 37 of our favorite vision statement from organizations around the globe. First, we will jump into some of our favorite vision statement’s from OnStrategy client’s:

OnStrategy Clients:

#1– Experience Kissimmee

To be the recognized leader in destination marketing by promoting Kissimmee and Central Florida’s tourism experiences to the world.

Get the Free Guide to Create a Clear Vision and Future State

#2– bright path labs.

Bright Path Labs’ vision is to bring our advanced manufacturing technologies to the entire pharmaceutical industry where our cutting edge and proprietary chemical production techniques can significantly contribute to solving some of today’s biggest healthcare challenges, including:

• Improving the resiliency of domestic supply chains and the affordability of medicine
• Reducing the risk of life-saving drug shortages
• Supplying increased access to medicine for underserved and overlooked patient populations.

#3– Keystone Health Care

To become the preferred provider of Emergency Medicine and Hospital Medicine services by embracing dynamic healthcare challenges and focusing on controlled growth in select markets.

#4– Patagonia

Making the best product matters for saving the planet.

#5– Cleveland Metropolitan’s School District Engagement Division

CMSD is the number one choice in Cleveland; families enroll and remain with the District because they feel welcomed, valued, supported, and meaningfully engaged as partners in students’ success.

#6– The City of Reno

We are a thriving urban center known for our world-class colleges, vibrant culture, diverse outdoor activities, and innovative industries.

#7– City and County of San Francisco Department of Technology

We envision being a trusted leader and global example in providing innovative technology services and solutions to all CCSF agencies, the people of San Francisco and worldwide.

#8– Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department

We envision becoming the trusted, respected, and sought-after community partner by serving our citizens and taking care of our employees.

For-Profit Vision Examples

Serve people worldwide with the joy of expanding their life’s potential by leading the advancement of mobility and enable people everywhere in the world to improve their daily lives.

#10– Hyundai

Progress for humanity. We’re here do the right thing for humanity.

#11– Porsche

The brand for those who follow their dreams.

Providing a new space that makes life more convenient and enjoyable by realizing superlative mobility based on innovative people-oriented, eco-friendly technologies and comprehensive services.

#13– Microsoft

Microsoft’s vision statement is to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Lead the future of Streaming TV by creating new and familiar experiences for our viewers, amplifying bold voices, and challenging our diverse builders and creators to push the boundaries of storytelling and technology.

#15– Netflix

Becoming the best global entertainment distribution service.

#16– Verizon

We create the connections that shape the future. Verizon is transforming how people, businesses and technologies interact, setting the stage for the next Industrial Revolution.

…To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

#18– Google

Google’s vision is to provide access to the world’s information in one click.

To create a better everyday life for the many people.

This vision goes beyond home furnishing. We want to have a positive impact on the world– from the communities where we source our raw materials to the way our products help our customers live a more sustainable life at home.

Healthcare Vision Statement Examples

#20– Renown Health

Renown Health, with our partners, will inspire better health in our communities.

#21– Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota

Be the customer’s first choice by reinventing ourselves and the system.

We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company in the world.

#23– Johnson & Johnson

To help people see better, connect better, live better.

#24– Mizuho

Our aim is to be a world-leading medical equipment supplier committed to meeting and exceeding the expectations of our clients.

Guided by our purpose, CVS Health® is building an entire world of health care around each and every person we serve, no matter where they are on their journey.

#26– AstraZeneca’s Vision

Driven by innovative science and our entrepreneurial culture, we are focused on the delivery of life-changing medicines that are fueling growth and contributing value to patients and society.

Education Vision Statement Examples

#27– Harvard

Harvard College sets the standard for residential liberal arts and sciences education. We have committed to creating and sustaining the conditions that enable all Harvard College students to experience an unparalleled educational journey that is intellectually, socially, and personally transformative.

We will be an innovative and adaptable community of educators that creates a seamless and transformative experience for all Brown students by equipping them to succeed academically, empowering them to be in community together as their authentic selves, and supporting them in developing skills for life after Brown.

#29– Stanford’s Vision

We are expanding avenues of discovery across all fields while creating new pathways for applying knowledge where it is needed in the world.

#30– Michigan State College of Literature, Science, and Arts

We are a diverse intellectual community, working together to reimagine the world and create positive, purposeful change.

#31– The University of Nevada, Reno

The University of Nevada, Reno ‘s vision is to educate and graduate the best-prepared, confident leaders for the state, national, and global community; to be a nexus for research and creativity that focuses on vital issues of our time; and to serve as a catalyst for the betterment of our society.

#32– Los Angeles Unified School District

L.A. Unified will be a progressive global leader in education, providing a dynamic and inspiring learning experience where all students graduate ready for success.

#33– Clark County School District

Our vision is for all students to graduate from high school having the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to achieve academically, prosper economically, and contribute in a global society.

Non-Profit Vision Examples

#34– Global Fund for Children

The Global Fund for Children, envision a world where all children have the opportunity to learn, grow and thrive. This vision can be turned into reality with the help of grassroots organizations.

#35– St. Jude

To accelerate progress against catastrophic disease at a global level.

#36– Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

All youth achieve their full potential.

#37– Nevada Humane Society

Our vision is that all pets have a healthy, happy life.

#38– Boys and Girls Club of America

Provide a world-class Club Experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who enters our doors, with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle.

#39– Habitat for Humanity

A world where everyone has a decent place to live.

#40– American Red Cross

The American Red Cross, through its strong network of volunteers, donors and partners, is always there in times of need. We aspire to turn compassion into action so that…

• …all people affected by disaster across the country and around the world receive care, shelter and hope;
• …our communities are ready and prepared for disasters;
• …everyone in our country has access to safe, lifesaving blood and blood products;
• …all members of our armed services and their families find support and comfort whenever needed; and
• …in an emergency, there are always trained individuals nearby, ready to use their Red Cross skills to save lives.

For a deep dive on Vision Statements, check out our post on all things vision .

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Creating a Vision Statement for Your Child

Imagine raising your child as a beautiful, scenic, adventurous road trip. Destination: adulthood. Once there, your child may engage in a number of different activities — leisure, community engagement, college, trade school, employment, supported employment. The key to a successful trip is to sustain high expectations for your child so they have as many options as possible once they’ve arrived. Which opportunities does your child need during their journey to learn the skills necessary for living a meaningful, fulfilling, self-directed life? What beliefs and barriers will need to be removed to provide your child with the most dynamic path?

You have mapped out 13 stops along the way — grades K–12. Your child will need to develop important skills at each of these stops. At each stop, the IEP team joins you until you arrive at the next one. Some of these team members ride along to several stops with you; others are there for just one. At each stop, you and the team identify strengths, set goals, and determine the barriers to learning and the types of services and supports needed to get to the next stop, and ultimately the final destination.

What are the most important skills your child will need as an adult? How can the goals set at each stop along the way build off of one another so that your child can be successful? What barriers exist that inhibit learning? When barriers are identified, what alternative routes can you provide so that your child is able to reach the same destination or achieve the desired goal?

Seeing the IEP process as a series of stops on the way to a meaningful, fulfilling, self-directed life will help the IEP team consider each IEP annual goal and objective as a stepping stone, and each service and support as a guidepost. When you sit down to prepare for your child’s IEP (or to write an introductory letter about your child to their teachers), take time to write a few sentences about your hopes for your child and what you believe they can achieve. What are their lifelong objectives? Once you’ve identified the opportunities you’d like for them to work toward, think about what goals you’d like to focus on this year. How can you build an IEP that will support your child in achieving and building toward those goals?

When the team takes the time to envision and reflect on your collective hopes for your child, it makes the IEP more than just a document, but a tool for optimizing a child’s success and life outcomes. (Learn more about creating strength-based IEPs here .)

What is a vision statement and how do I create one?

“A vision statement is what we want out of life for our child and what our child wants out of life,” says Dr. Caitlin Solone, education advocate, teacher educator, and faculty at UCLA. Unfortunately, vision statements are not automatically included in IEPs; in fact, Dr. Solone has never seen them included in any California school district, which is all the more reason for us to advocate for their inclusion. If vision statements were incorporated into every child’s IEP, we as parents would have a new way to communicate goals to the IEP team and receive more effective support. As one parent put it, a vision statement represents a “stepping stone to a successful life.” Vision statements can also serve as an introductory letter for your child's teachers and providers!

In this clip, Dr. Solone breaks down how a vision statement is helpful and gives examples of what they can look like.

When you’re writing your statement, consider using these kinds of phrases:

• Obtain meaningful employment
• Volunteer in the community
• Take part in meaningful social activities
• Develop meaningful friendships
• Pursue post-secondary educational opportunities

“Establishing a vision statement early [in a child’s life] helps the IEP team stay grounded in what matters and the destination where you and your child want to go,” Dr. Solone said. Transition plans later in a child’s school career often include similar ideas as a vision statement, but as Dr. Solone tells us, this “transition period” really starts before kindergarten, because K–12 education in its entirety helps students transition into adulthood.

If your child’s school does not include a vision statement in their IEP, you can request that it go into the parent comment section or addendum, or be added as its own section. Dr. Solone recommends asking your child’s IEP team if they’d like to collaborate on the vision statement with you, but it’s perfectly acceptable to write it on your own if there is resistance from the team.

Practice writing a vision statement before your next IEP meeting. Write at least one goal you would like your child to work on in the coming year that will help you reach the end goal you envision for your child. Dr. Solone created this template to help:

Try this visualization exercise

When you need inspiration for your child’s vision statement, follow Dr. Solone’s instructions in this video .

• During our live chat with Dr. Solone, one parent visualized her son picking up his backpack and happily going to school without fear of bullying, shaming, or being left out.
• Think of one word that describes how you want others to view your child. Multiple parents said they wanted their child to be seen as capable, independent, and happy, creative, artistic, imaginative, or kind.

Adding long-term goals to an IEP

Once you’ve written your vision statement, you may want to consider adding long-term goals for your child to their IEP as parent input and/or used to scaffold other IEP goals. This is actually transition planning , but it can start as early as preschool or anytime after. For kids with significant support needs, long-term goals can help your entire IEP team stay on track with your vision.

Education Advocate Lisa Carey gave us these examples of long-term goals that she adds to her child’s IEP as parent input:

By completion of high school/transition services:

• He will have a strong motivation to attend post-secondary education with a desire to learn and a love of learning.
• He will have acceptable social behavior. This includes following rules, getting along with peers and accepting supervision.
• He will be able to participate in a personal interview with minimal adult support.
• He will have self-help skills and be able to function in a dorm or apartment with minimal supervision.
• He will be able to independently communicate basic needs and wants.
• He will have social communication abilities in order to promote and facilitate meaning relationships.
• He will accurately take daily medications with minimal adult support.
• He will be able to safely and independently get around campus.
• He will have basic safety skills in unsupervised setting including being able to identify and respond appropriately to dangerous situations.
• He will understand money and be able to purchase items independently using both cash and/or debit/credit card.
• He will be able to navigate and use public transportation safely and effectively.
• He will use technology to keep track of needs and social information such as the time, appointments, calendar, due dates, contacts, etc.
• He will know how to ask for help and how to find a helper if needed.
• He will independently know how to use communication devices such as a telephone, iPad or computer to communicate with people not in the same location as him.

Carey says, “I use these when I can to scaffold. These are not the actual goals for a young kid, but we can break these down and scaffold with these being the end goal. It also lets the IEP team know from the beginning that college is the goal for this child.”

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Contributors Dr. Caitlin Solone , Education advocate, teacher-educator, and Academic Administrator for the Disability Studies program at UCLA

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Creating a Vision for Education Leadership

• February 12, 2018
• Articles , Current Issue: Volume 19 Issue 1 , Educational Advances
• Published: December 14, 2017
• DOI: 10.5811/westjem.2017.11.35301

Background Objectives Curricular design Impact/effectiveness

Academic emergency physicians are driven to become master clinicians while honing their skills in mission areas such as education, research and administration. Many faculty members try to pursue the triple threat of education, service and research; however, excellence in all three areas is difficult to achieve. The first step to excelling in the education domain is to clearly define one’s goals and articulate a strategy to achieve them. To be successful, you must define your vision, mission and core values (VMCV).

As the field of emergency medicine (EM) matures, its education leaders are increasingly recognizing the importance of defining personal and shared visions, core purpose (mission) and core values. In The Leadership Challenge , Kouzes and Posner explain “you must clarify your own vision of the future before you can expect to enlist others in a shared vision.” 1, 2 The authors also summarize the benefits of leaders in organizations who are focused on the future, which includes achieving better performance outcomes both individually and as organizations. It comes as no surprise that most academic medical centers, medical schools and some emergency departments have developed shared visions and mission statements and have identified their core values. These statements highlight the core values of the institutions. Leadership experts such as Warren Bennis, Stephen Covey and Peter Senge emphasize the importance of developing your personal vision for life. 3, 4, 5

This brief innovative report will provide tools and examples to articulate a vision statement for education leadership and the steps needed for implementation. The objective of this innovation is for the readers to develop their own vision, mission and core values, and to begin to consider how they will develop their strategy and platform for implementation. While these VMCV may be aligned with your organization’s VMCV, it is important to define your own. Examples of VMCV from education leaders will be presented. This concept is based on a workshop from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) in 2017 that was developed by key education leaders in the field of EM.

This education innovation defines each domain of vision, mission, and core values. The reader is then directed through the steps to define their individual domains. Additionally, nine education leaders worked together to clarify their personalized statements.

Education leaders will be able to understand the definitions of VMCV and use these tools to create their personal VMCV.

Education leaders will adjust their VMCV to align with that of their division, department or organization.

Education leaders will use their VMCV to aid in decision-making and developing their strategic plan and future goals.

CURRICULAR DESIGN

This educational advance leads learners through the process of defining VMCV and then asking participants to determine their own vision, mission, and core values. This is then followed by participants determining their implementation strategy.

Developing Your Vision

Your personal vision should be the future state you hope to achieve. The vision statement should incorporate the future state and should be a positive, aspirational view of how the future will be better. Collins and Porras defined the vision as consisting of a core ideology and an envisioned future where the core values are the guiding principles. 6, 7 They went on to challenge people to create BHAGs, or “Big Hairy Audacious Goals,” emphasizing that vision statements need to be something to strive for about 10 years in the future.

A stepwise approach can be helpful for developing a vision 8, 9 starting by contemplating your purpose in the context of a positive future full of possibilities. This theme can be determined by asking yourself to describe your burning passion or what gets you up in the morning, or what do you envision every time you think about the future? Try and align the vision with that of your organization so that one builds on the other. Your vision should go forward several years and be inspirational, bold, exciting and define your burning passion. Transformational leaders are forward thinking, idealistic, possibility-thinkers and dreamers.

Nearly all recommendations for developing one’s vision incorporate consideration and reflection of one’s past, present and future. 1

Review of one’s past should especially include themes, patterns, experiences, and beliefs that have helped contribute to one’s successes. Past experiences and successes also help define your most important core values. Attending to the present permits one to take inventory of hot topics or areas where futuristic change is clearly needed. Noting the specific details as well as the patterns pointing toward the future are keys to attending to the present. 1 The future can be considered by asking yourself what you want to accomplish and why? Dreaming or imagining the limitless possibilities in the future is particularly important in times of rapid change.

The final step is using these reflections, considerations, and ideas to articulate succinctly your one-sentence vision statement and then reviewing this often for direction, motivation and inspiration.

Examples of visions include that of Oprah Winfrey, founder of the Oprah Winfrey Network, who articulated her vision this way: “To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.” 10 Amanda Steinberg, founder of DailyWorth.com wrote her vision: “To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net-worth of women around the world.” 10

Developing Your Mission

The mission statement or purpose should be a concise statement that describes how you will get there and your reason for being. This is the path by which you will achieve your vision. The mission statement should describe what you want to be and do in your profession and how you will accomplish your vision. It should answer questions about what you will do, who it is for and how you will do it. The most classic examples of a core purpose can be seen from organizations such as the Walt Disney Company: “To make people happy;” and Merck & Co Inc, “To preserve and improve life.” 2

Developing Your Core Values

Core values help to align your vision and mission and should include the 3–5 values that serve as your guiding principles. Collins and Porras describe organizational core values as the “essential and enduring tenets of an organization.” 6 The core values of Disney are “imagination and wholesomeness.” Kouzes and Posner describe individual core values as the deeply held beliefs – the values, standards, ethics, and ideals – that drive you.” 1 You will use these core values to guide decisions and actions. They are your personal “bottom line.” 1

Developing Your Implementation Strategy

Your strategy is the method by which you will achieve your vision and mission. This is the practical part of the plan where you think about the goals to be achieved and how you will get there. It is focused on the methods that you feel will be important for accomplishing vision and mission. It is your blueprint that will incorporate specific goals for your success. Your platform is the media or milieu in which you function most effectively. For example, for many education leaders, their platform is social media, while for others it is their personal learning network. 11, 12

IMPACT/EFFECTIVENESS

The table displays the VMCV of several education leaders. Each is unique and approaches education from a different perspective. Some of the education leaders focused more at an organizational level, while others were more narrowly focused. Recent evidence has demonstrated a positive association between well-written mission statements and non-profit healthcare sector performance and firm performance. 12, 13 The Gallup organization’s research has demonstrated “success-promoting” and “margin-boosting” benefits of focusing on mission. 14 They believe that mission drives loyalty, fosters customer engagement, improves strategic alignment and brings clarity by guiding decision making.

In a study by Berg he described an intense commitment to “making the world a better place” that was “almost spiritual” in an organization when symbiotic visions and goals could drive employees and organizations. 15 Similar recommendations regarding the importance of aligned vision, mission and values have surfaced in healthcare as well. 16 In a publication by pediatric program directors, personal mission statements were recommended to maintain focus and aid in decision-making and strategic planning to empower academicians to make appropriate trade-offs and reach for new opportunities that were well aligned, while eliminating or declining things that were not. 9

This innovation provides a stepwise approach for readers to define their vision, mission, and core values. Several examples are described. In general, following preparation, a 60- to 90-minute session like that of the SAEM can be used to develop an initial draft of these statements. Evaluations of the SAEM session noted that all participants noted increased ability to describe vision, mission, strategy and platform afterward. A similar session was used by first-year medical students during “Mission Statement Day.” 17

First, it is important to remember that the process of creating these statements is not necessarily straightforward. Sometimes it is difficult to identify the key features that belong in the VMCV. Although most references describe the importance of vetting these statements to peers, mentors or supervisors, 9 it can be unsettling to share these intensely personal statements for fear of criticism. It is particularly hard to create a BHAG. The time spent struggling with the VMCV is time well spent. This investment of your time will help you find a direction by which you can influence and lead in your focus area of education.

Second, it is important to remember that the VMCV are not static. While you may choose to stand with an original vision, it is common to have adjustments as the context changes. Therefore, returning to your statements can be helpful especially in times of transition, as well as to reset or reframe your goals. Finally, some leaders choose to keep their VMCV private while others espouse them publicly. Regardless of how open you choose to be with your VMCV, it is most important that your behaviors demonstrate these statements. Moreover, most leaders operate within a social network; therefore, ensuring that the people you work with know your VMCV is key to teamwork and success.

Section Editor: Ed Ullman, MD

Full text available through open access at http://escholarship.org/uc/uciem_westjem

Address for Correspondence: Daniel R. Martin, MD, MBA, The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, 760 Prior Hall, 376 W 10 th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210. Email: [email protected] 1 / 2018; 19:165 – 168

Submission history: Revision received June 15, 2017; Accepted November 4, 2017

Conflicts of Interest : By the West JEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. Sally A. Santen has received an AMA Grant; Accelerating Change in Medical Education

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7. Collins JC, Porras JI. Built to Last Successful Habits of Visionary Companies . 2002.

8. McCurdy FA, Marcdante K. Setting a personal career direction. J Cardiovasc Manag . 2003;14(2):18-21.

9. Su-Ting T Li, Frohna JG, Bostwick SB. Using your personal mission statement to INSPIRE and achieve success. Acad Pediatrics . 2016;17(2):107-9.

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• May 2, 2023

20 Powerful Examples to Inspire Your Perfect Vision Statement

• --> Written by Jill Holtz

Boards are responsible for the who, what, when, where, and why of the organisations they serve. Prescribing a purpose to a charity or not-for-profit organisation is a public commitment to prioritising that organisation’s goals. Boards that outline their goals and plan out how they intend to achieve them will keep board members on track to attain those goals, resulting in a clear vision paving the way for a smooth execution.

What is a Vision Statement?

A vision statement is what introduces the organisation’s purpose to the world. It is crucial for the success of an organisation, yet some not-for-profit organisations do not make the effort to declare a vision statement. It is a written document or statement that describes where an organisation is going and what it will look like when it gets there.

A quality vision statement is aligned with the not-for-profit’s mission, core values, and culture. It is clear, concise, and forward-thinking, while also covering a broad range of topics.

Boards looking to create their first vision statement, may want to consider various questions:

• What is the organisation’s purpose?
• What goals can the organisation achieve?
• How does the mission statement align with your core values?
• How does the vision statement align with the board’s culture?
• Do your long-term plans have the capacity to pan out?

Why is a Vision Statement important?

The board relies on the vision statement when making strategic plans and decisions. Staff and volunteers also look to the vision statement for long-term direction; donors read it when deciding whether to support your not-for-profit or charity.

A vision statement is designed to be shared and something to be proud of. It communicates your organisation’s values and commitment to achieving its goals.

Don’t Let Bad Vision Blindside Your Board

The most notable difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is the timeframe. A mission statement is all about what is happening now. A vision statement, on the other hand, is all about what could happen in the future from actions that leaders take now.

When it comes to an organisation’s vision statement, it’s all about substance, not size. A good vision statement can be any length, what matters is how clearly the goals are stated. Outlining various goals in the mission and vision statements can help determine which objectives will end up as short-term goals and which fall under long-term goals.

The Difference Between Setting Short and Long-term Goals

Short-term goals are often small projects that pop up or little bursts of progress made by inching towards a larger goal. Long-term goals often take over a year to accomplish, maybe even up to five or ten years, so it is important for charities to track their progress along the way.

Understanding the difference between short-term and long-term goals must be a top priority for leaders. It is important to differentiate between the two as longer-term goals will require more strategic planning to accomplish.

What is Strategic Planning and How Does It Relate to The Vision?

“Strategic planning is a systematic process that helps effective leaders set an ambition for their business’ future and determine how best to achieve it,” according to Northern Ireland Business Info ; the primary purpose of strategic planning is to connect the dots between the organisation’s mission, vision, and plan.

Just as there are benefits for charities setting short term goals, such as the ability to break down larger goals turning them into smaller and more manageable tasks, there are many benefits of setting long-term goals for your charity. The UK Charity Commission outlines guidance for trustees to make sure charities act in a way that moves their organisation closer to its intended mission as they execute their plans.

Trustees should:

• Understand the purpose of their charity as it is stated in their charity’s governing document
• Plan how best to serve the charity’s purpose to achieve the mission
• Be prepared to relate all activities back to the purpose

20 Examples of Vision Statements to Inspire You

We have picked out vision statements from different not-for-profits in the UK, Ireland, Africa and elsewhere to give you inspiration as you craft yours:

• Oxfam – For a more equal future.
• Holywell Trust – For a truly inclusive shared future.
• Danish Refugee Council – For a dignified life for all displaced.
• International Rescue Committee – For a high-impact, cost effective solutions that help people affected by crisis.
• Sentebale – For all children and young people in Southern Africa to be empowered, healthy and resilient.
• Ireland’s National Autism Charity (AsIAM} – For Ireland to be a country where every Autistic person is accepted as they are.
• Credit Europe Bank – To support midsized corporates and commodity trading companies in developed and selected emerging markets to make them feel empowered.
• The Halo Trust – For a world where people can thrive in peace and dignity without fear from the impact of conflict.
• Nedbank – To be the most admired financial services provider in Africa by our staff, clients, shareholders, regulators, and society.
• University of Lagos – To be a top-class institution for the pursuit of excellence in knowledge, character and service to humanity.
• POTSUK – To optimise the health and quality of life of everyone impacted by Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.
• University of Cape Coast – To be a university with a worldwide acclaim that is strongly positioned for innovative teaching, research, outreach, and professional development.
• Visionary – For a world in which people living with sight loss can access what they need at local level where and when they need it.
• Red Sea Global – To become the world’s most responsible developer, by trailblazing new global standards which see built environments become enablers for social and ecological transformation.
• British Red Cross – For a world where everyone gets the help they need in a crisis. More than 21,500 volunteers and 4,100 staff at the British Red Cross work together to help individuals and communities prepare for, cope with, and recover from emergencies.
• United Nations – To keep peace throughout the world, to develop friendly relations among nations, to help nations work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease and illiteracy, and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms, to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations to achieve these goals.
• Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) – To influence, to inspire, and support the credit union movement to achieve all its goals – social, economic and cultural – while always respecting the individual’s rights and dignity.
• University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education – To be a global centre of excellence for lifelong learning. Courses will be underpinned by the best teaching, research, and support for learning to meet the needs of diverse, ambitious and intellectually curious students. Staff and students will work together within and beyond Oxford to foster a vibrant learning community attentive to the importance of promoting sustainability and social justice.
• Santen – To become a social innovator in ophthalmology and address social and economic issues related to eye health by strategically exploring advancing technologies and collaborating with key leaders around the world. Underpinned by its people-centric values, Santen aims to ultimately deliver happiness with vision – a life with the best vision experience for every individual.
• Habitat for Humanity Great Britain – To underpin every objective, project, and partnership we pursue. We put belief into action. With courage, passion, and drive, we find practical solutions. We believe in accountability. We treat every partner with transparency, honesty, and candour. We believe in self-reliance. We place integrity and mutual respect at the heart of everything we do. We believe in collaboration We deliver on our mission through partnership. We believe in continuous improvement. We focus on learning, sustainability, and innovation to exceed expectations.

These examples show us there’s loads of variety when it comes to which values the charity and not-for-profit organisations are choosing to include in their vision statements. Leaders need to consider the strategic planning that is needed to carry out the mission and determine whether their vision statements are realistic. Once everyone agrees on the vision statement it should be saved along with the mission statement in your board management system like BoardEffect for board members to refer as needed.

Jill is a Content Strategy Manager at Diligent. Her strategy background and content expertise working across a variety of sectors, including education, non-profit and with local government partners, allows her to provide unique insights for organizations looking to achieve modern governance.

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What Is a Vision Statement? 25 Vision Statement Examples

Table of Contents

What is a vision statement, what is the purpose of a vision statement, vision statement vs. mission statement, vision statement vs. purpose statement, 25 vision statement examples, how to write a vision statement.

A vision statement almost sounds mystical. But it’s not supernatural, far from it. Rather, a vision statement is a foundational business document.

There’s a lot of paperwork that clutters the office of any organization, but the vision statement is unique from the rest. Often confused with a mission statement , the vision statement has a different purpose. A vision statement looks toward the future, but a mission statement talks about what the company is doing in the present.

A vision statement is a business document that states the current and future objectives of an organization. A company’s vision must align with its mission, business plan , strategic plan, and organizational culture. A vision statement isn’t only used in business; nonprofits and government offices also use them to set strategic goals.

Vision statements aren’t necessarily set in stone. They can be returned to, reviewed and revised as necessary. Any changes should be minimal, however, because a vision statement is a guideline for a company’s strategic plan , so it must be thoroughly reviewed.

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The business vision of an organization might change over time, as companies adapt to their business environment and external factors that might affect their ability to achieve their mission. Using a SWOT analysis is a good way to gauge the internal and external factors that shape the business environment of a company.

A vision statement doesn’t have any particular length. However long it is, the vision statement is formally written and is used as a reference in company documents to serve as a guide for short and long-term strategic planning. The best way to learn about vision statements is to look at examples. We’ve gathered 25 vision statement examples from the best companies in the world to help you write your own.

As stated above, a vision statement is an integral part of an organization because it aligns with its mission, core values, and culture. It also guides the strategic plan because it sets future goals. Similar to a mission statement, a vision statement it’s a living document that’s referred to as a lodestar to lead a company to its next innovation and so, all the projects and programs executed by the project management office (PMO) should be aligned with it.

Related: Free Project & Tracking Templates for Excel

There are different approaches when it comes to writing a vision statement, as companies have unique core values. For example, a motivational vision statement will both motivate existing employees and also drive talent to the company. They’ll want to work at a place with a business vision that aligns with their personal values. A strong vision statement also works to help differentiate your company. All companies want to become profitable, but a company can create a unique vision statement that’s appealing to its customers and employees.

Free Vision Statement Template

Feel inspired? Ready to make your own vision statement? Download our free vision statement template for Word and start refining your vision. There’s even guiding questions to help you get started.

Why Is it Important to Have a Vision Statement?

Vision statements are one of the most important documents you can create for your business because they set a common goal for everyone in your organization. Once you get your employees on the same page, it will be easier to lead them toward success.

Types of Vision Statements

In addition to the traditional business vision statement, there are other types of vision statements, such as project, product and even personal vision statements.

Project Vision Statement

A project vision statement is used to guide a project, motivate the project team and further inspire those involved. Like any vision statement, it’s short but should be powerful to communicate the project’s aim. It’s not specific or directional but delivers the end goal of the project which must be aligned with the strategic goals of a company. In that sense, the project team can use the project vision statement as a guide to follow and help them make decisions that align with the overall project vision.

Product Vision Statement

A product vision statement is also a guide and a tool to motivate and inspire product development teams. It tends to look toward the future to expose where the product will be in a number of years. Therefore, a product vision statement goes beyond what the product is currently, but its vision shouldn’t be unrealistic. While there’s no standard length, like any vision statement, the product vision statement should be short and to the point.

Personal Vision Statement

A vision statement isn’t restricted to the realm of industry, you can make one for your own purposes. A personal vision statement simply focuses on your personal values, strengths and goals. While you can use a personal vision statement for your professional life, it’s also commonly focused on life-long goals. As with any vision statement, use it to keep you on track and make the right decisions to direct you to that transformational achievement. Then, you should make an action plan to make your personal vision come true.

The vision statement and mission statement are both equally important for a company as they complement each other and guide the direction of your company. The main difference between them is that the mission statement describes what your company does, while your vision statement explains what the company attempts to achieve in the future.

On the other hand, their main similarity is that they both need to align with your company’s core values and culture because all these elements make up your company’s identity and differentiation factors.

The vision statement comes before the purpose statement and it outlines where you want to be. First, you have to conjure it. You’re not there yet, but keeping the vision in sight allows you to get there in time.

A purpose statement is the why, it’s the reason you want to achieve the vision that’s your goal. You have to answer the question of why you want to achieve this vision. Therefore, the purpose statement is about the overall values.

There’s also a mission statement, which often joins these other two statements. The mission statement is about how you’ll achieve your goals. This allows you to make a plan, create steps to implement it and track your progress towards achieving that vision statement.

The best way to learn about vision statements is to look at real-life vision statement examples. We’ve gathered 25 vision statement examples from the best companies in the world to help you write your own. These examples prove that a vision statement isn’t a templated document that only differs from other organizations by the branded logo on top of it.

• IKEA: “Our vision is to create a better everyday life for many people.”
• Nike: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)”
• McDonald’s: “To be the best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.”
• Amazon: “We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection and the utmost convenience.”
• Walmart: “Be the destination for customers to save money, no matter how they want to shop.”
• Google: “To provide access to the world’s information in one click”
• Microsoft: “To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.”
• Facebook: “People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to them.”
• Coca-Cola: “Our vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body and spirit.”
• Starbucks: “Treat people like family, and they will be loyal and their all.”
• Tesla: “To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”
• Samsung: “Inspire the world with our innovative technologies, products and design that enrich people’s lives and contribute to social prosperity.”
• Netflix: “Becoming the best global entertainment distribution service.”
• Zoom: “Zoom is for you.”
• Patagonia: “We’re in business to save our home planet.”
• Oxfam: “A world without poverty.”
• Disney: “To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.”
• Instagram: “Capture and share the world’s moments.”
• LinkedIn: “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.”
• Meta: “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
• Shopify: “To make commerce better for everyone.”
• Uber: “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.”
• TED: “Spread ideas”
• American Express: “Become essential to our customers by providing differentiated products and services to help them achieve their aspirations.”
• Sony: “To be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.”

Every company has a unique vision statement, but the process is similar for most of them. Here are some steps to help you write your own.

1. What Are the Core Values of Your Company?

The core values of your company define its identity and how it interacts with the communities and the environment. It’s important to understand them to define your company vision.

2. What’s Your Company Mission?

Understanding what your company does and how it operates is essential to planning for the future.

3. Understand Your Company Culture

A strong company culture is an essential part of the success of any business. That’s why your vision must be aligned with it, otherwise, your strategic planning won’t work.

4. Identify Current Strategic Goals

Before you think about future goals, you must understand where your organization currently stands. Your vision might be a long-term plan that sets goals for the next 5 to 10 years, but those goals need to be realistic. You can use a SWOT matrix to get a better idea of the competitive environment of your business.

5. Define Future Goals

Think about what you’d like your company to achieve in the next 5-10 years based on the current status of your business and create a strategic plan to achieve your goals.

6. Write Your Vision Statement

Now that you have an idea of the main elements that are involved in the process of writing your vision statement, you can create one that fits your organization.

Best Practices for Writing a Vision Statement

There’s no template for writing a vision statement, however, a common structure for successful ones includes these traits:

• Be concise: This isn’t the place to stuff a document with fluff statements. It should be simple, easy to read and cut to the essentials so that it can be set to memory and be repeated accurately.
• Be clear: A good rule of thumb for clarity is to focus on one primary goal, rather than trying to fill the document with many ideas. One clear objective is also easier to focus on and achieve.
• Have a time horizon: A time horizon is simply a fixed point in the future when you’ll achieve and evaluate your vision statement. Define that timeline .
• Make it future-oriented: Again, the vision statement isn’t what the company is presently engaged in but rather a future objective of where the company plans to be.
• Be stable: The vision statement is a long-term goal that should, ideally, not be affected by the market or technological changes.
• Be challenging: That said, you don’t want to be timid in setting your goals. Your objective shouldn’t be too easy to achieve, but also it shouldn’t be so unrealistic as to be discarded.
• Be abstract: The vision statement should be general enough to capture the organization’s interests and strategic direction.
• Be inspiring: Live up to the title of the document, and create something that will rally the troops and be desirable as a goal for all those involved in the organization.

Because the vision statement is a foundational business document that will guide the company’s strategic planning direction for years to come, consider using project planning tools and brainstorming techniques to get input from everyone on the team. That way, you’ll get greater buy-in from the company, and you’ll widen your net for collecting business vision ideas.

Using ProjectManager to Write a Vision Statement

Writing a vision statement is a project in itself, and one that should be treated with some weight. A vision statement informs the direction, morale and spirit of the organization: you need it to be inspiring.

To help you craft the ideal vision statement, try ProjectManager . Our subscription model gives you several entry points. Then you can create collaborative task lists, so you can brainstorm with other leaders in the organization regarding your direction. Create a task, and add subtasks, so you can take everything into account when making your vision statement. Plus, you can add comments and files to tasks, so collaboration can stay focused and localized.

Once you’ve crafted a vision statement that inspires your team, the real work begins. To achieve that vision, you’ll need the right tools. ProjectManager is online project management software with tools like online Gantt charts, task lists and kanban boards to help you complete projects and make a name for yourself. Take a free trial of our award-winning software and see how it can help you realize your vision .

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• Business strategy |
• How to write a vision statement: Steps ...

How to write a vision statement: Steps and examples

The vision statement is designed to inspire employees, compel investors, and engage the imaginations of your customers. It paints a picture of your company's future and the impact you want your business to have on the world.

It takes work and creativity to write an inspiring vision statement. Here, we'll break down the elements of a great vision statement, guide you through the process, and walk through a few examples of excellent vision statements and explain what makes them great.

What is a vision statement?

A vision statement is your company’s guiding beacon. It zooms out to give perspective on the overarching reasons for your company's mission. Rather than articulating the specifics of your business operations, the vision statement describes how your company seeks to impact and improve the world around it.

Vision statement vs. mission statement

While both statements help define your company's character and personality, there are some key differences between a vision statement and a mission statement.

The mission statement describes what your company does in the present. It's comprised of three parts: what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. 

A vision statement outlines the company's long-term goals and aspirations for the future in terms of its long-term growth and impact on the world. Your mission defines what your organization does and what you stand for, while your vision statement speaks to your goals and ideals for the future. 

Characteristics of a great vision statement

Vision statements are like snowflakes—each one is unique to its company in length, form, structure, and scope. Your vision statement should reflect your company's personality. However, there are a few traits that all great vision statements share. No matter how unique a statement is in terms of size, shape, or structure, a good vision statement should be:

The purpose of a vision statement is to inspire employees, investors, and customers to believe in your company's mission. Great vision statements are aspirational and ambitious. They convey a sense of passion for the ideal future toward which the company is working.

Though your vision needs to be ambitious in order to be inspiring, it shouldn't be so far out of reach that it feels impossible. You want to choose something that your company will have to strive for, but a completely unattainable goal isn't a vision—it's a fantasy.

A vision statement connects your company mission to your goals, but it isn’t a goal in and of itself. If your vision statement feels too finite or specifically achievable, try to zoom out and broaden the scope of your vision.

Don’t try to cram every detail of your vision into your vision statement—be strategic in selecting the ideas that feel the most relevant and compelling to your stakeholders . You might dream of someday having offices in every major city in the world, but your vision statement should focus on aspirations that speak to your company's mission and purpose.

Vision statement writing tips

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind as you start writing your vision statement:

Collaborate. The vision statement should reflect the character of your entire company, and there's no better way to accomplish this than to write the statement alongside key members of your team. Gather leaders from across the organization to participate in vision statement brainstorms, and run drafts by these same people to get buy-in on your final vision statement.

Write first, edit later. Don't try to write a succinct, well-crafted vision statement right out of the gate. Put everything you think of down on paper, no matter how small. You may not see the value in a particular idea when it crosses your mind, but if you write it down anyway, it may spark better ideas later on.

Keep your own vision statement separate. Many people have personal vision statements that reflect their individual goals, and if you're a business owner, our own vision statement may overlap strongly with the vision of your company. It's important to keep your personal aspirations and your company's vision separate, so that your company's vision statement is something that your entire company can relate to and feel represented by. 

Avoid buzzwords and jargon. Using "industry-speak" makes a brand feel aloof and inaccessible, even to people within the industry. Plain language is always more powerful than jargon, so if you find yourself falling back on buzzwords, isolate the phrase in question and picture a friend or family member asking, "What does this actually mean?" Write or record the explanation you would give to that person and use that language to replace the buzzwords in your vision statement.

Avoid ambiguity. Vision statements don't have to be concrete the way a mission statement should be, but you want to avoid using words that could potentially be interpreted in a way that changes the entire vision statement's meaning. You won't be there to clarify or offer context to everyone who reads your statement, so it needs to be able to stand on its own.

7 steps to write your company's vision statement

There's a lot more to crafting a great vision statement than just writing a few sentences. In order to create a statement that's truly aspirational and inspiring, you're going to need to do a little bit of work. Here's our seven-step process to write a great vision statement:

1. Identify important stakeholders

Your vision statement speaks on behalf of your entire company, so make a list of co-founders, fellow executives, and high-level employees who can help you craft and refine your statement so that it represents your organization as a whole. Getting buy-in from company leaders is also a smart strategic move—the more they believe in the vision statement, the better they'll model it in their daily work and communicate it to their own departments and teams.

Make a second list of stakeholders that represent your vision statement's audience. This list may consist of personas rather than actual people, and should include:

Board members

Partner organizations

Different customer personas

Shareholders

Depending on your industry, this list may be longer or shorter; the main point is to write down a basic overview of the group of people you're writing for. If you're only thinking about your customers, your vision statement may not feel as relatable to employees or might not inspire potential funders to invest. Check your drafts against this list to make sure it feels applicable to all of your key stakeholders.

2. Start with a list of keywords

Ultimately, you're aiming to craft a few concise sentences—and the process of crafting those sentences will be a lot easier if you have a "word bank" of sorts to draw from as you write. Hold an open brainstorming session with your internal stakeholders to come up with a keyword list. 

Make sure your keyword list is comprehensive by subdividing it into smaller categories and making sure you have a good list of keywords for each. At a minimum, you should collect keywords related to:

Your product or service

Your mission and values

Your company's goals and initiatives

Your company's long-term strategic plan

Adjectives that describe your company, product, teams, community, and ideal future (e.g. expert, innovative, affordable, inspiring)

Adverbs that describe the way in which your company operates (e.g. flexibly, sustainably, cooperatively, fearlessly)

Just like your list of stakeholders, the number and type of keyword lists you should generate will vary depending on your industry and company. The important thing is to create a document filled with keywords that you can draw from as your writing, if you get stuck trying to communicate an idea, or if you need to replace some jargon-y text.

3. Answer foundational company questions

In addition to your keywords document, take time during your brainstorm to answer the following questions:

What is our organization’s main purpose?

What are our company’s main strengths?

What are our company values?

Why does what we’re building matter?

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

What is our vision for our company culture ?

What are our most ambitious goals?

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

What are our company wants? What about company needs?

If our company succeeded in everything it set out to do, how would the world be different?

4. Sort your answers by importance

By the time you're finished brainstorming, you should have a lot of stuff written down.Put all of this content aside for a few days, so that your mind is clear when you return for the next step: deciding what goes in your vision statement and what gets left on the cutting room floor.

Sit down with your vision statement tiger team and a highlighter and review everything you have written down. Highlight ideas and phrases that your group feels are the most important to your company, and cross out items that you're ready to eliminate from consideration (however, don't throw this content out entirely—everything you brainstormed can be helpful in creating other important documents, like your core values, roadmap, or business plan). 

5. Write your company's vision out longform

At the end of step four, you'll have a smaller "word bank" of your most important phrases, ideas, keywords, and answers to foundational company questions. Your next step will be to organize these ideas into sentences that flow logically and are ordered according to your company's priorities.

Right now, don't worry about length—focus instead on communicating your vision in a way that makes sense, touches all of the key points you want to include, and feels relatable to your stakeholders and your audience. It's much easier to edit a long but comprehensive statement than it is to bulk up a statement that's missing pieces.

6. Step back and evaluate

Before you go through the work of editing your vision down to size, take a step back and look at your vision paragraph from afar. This is another point where you may benefit from setting it aside for a few days and returning with fresh eyes.

As you review your vision paragraph, check for the following things:

Is it ambitious enough? Your paragraph should feel aspirational, not like a finite goal to be accomplished.

Is it too ambitious? Make sure you strike a balance between idealistic and unrealistic.

Does it accurately reflect your organization? Run your paragraph by internal stakeholders who weren’t involved in creating it, and as for their feedback on what may be missing, what parts may be unnecessary, or how certain ideas may be phrased more effectively.

Does it make sense? Have friends and family members read your paragraph to confirm that it makes sense to the average reader.

7. Write your final vision statement

Once you've adjusted your vision paragraph and made the changes you wanted to make, it's time to edit your vision paragraph down to a vision statement. In many cases, your paragraph may naturally shrink as you solicit and implement feedback from others, and you may even want to specifically ask for opinions on how your paragraph could be more concise.

Here are a few ways to shorten your vision paragraph:

Eliminate what's unnecessary. Now that you've stepped away from your paragraph a few times and gotten a few rounds of feedback, are there any phrases or ideas that don't feel as necessary as they did when you wrote it? Cut any parts that feel lackluster or less impactful than the rest of the paragraph.

Look for synonyms. Are there any areas where you used several words to say something that there's already a word for? For example, you might replace the phrase "give people the ability to," with "provide access."

Edit each concept individually. Chop your paragraph into sentences and chop your sentences into phrases. Pick up each small segment on its own and see if you can come up with a shorter way to phrase it. It helps if you evaluate the smaller segments out of order—hopping around or going backwards piece by piece will help you notice things that your brain smooths over when you're reading a full sentence.

When your vision statement is finished, bring it back around to your stakeholders to get final feedback and make any finishing tweaks. 

Vision statement examples

There's no way around it—writing a vision statement is hard, especially if it's your first time doing so. Before you get started, or if you get stuck and need to spark some new ideas, take a look at some of these example vision statements for inspiration. 

Note that not all companies have both a mission and a vision statement. Some companies combine the two into a single small paragraph that touches on tangible objectives (mission) as well as more long-reaching aspirations (vision). In some cases, companies won't label either statement, encasing them in a broader page dedicated to "purpose," "who we are," or another similar title.

Here, we've gathered mission and vision statements for a few companies that have publicly set both. 

Mission: To act in the public interest, BBC serves all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.

Vision: To be the most creative company in the world.

Mission: IKEA offers a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at low and accessible prices.

Vision: To create a better everyday life for the many people.

Southwest Airlines

Mission: Southwest connects people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel.

Vision: To become the world’s most loved, most flown, and most profitable airline.

Mission: Hasbro creates the world's best play and entertainment experiences.

Vision: To make the world a better place for all children, fans and families.

Mission: To make things universally accessible and useful, Google organizes the world's information.

Vision: To significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible.

Mission: To harness the next wave of innovation and solve customers’ toughest challenges, VMware uses disruptive technologies like edge computing, AI, blockchain, machine learning, Kubernetes, and more.

Vision: To build a sustainable, equitable and more secure future for all.

Use your vision statement to help you grow

A company's vision statement is a living document—it should adapt and change as your company achieves its business goals and sets new ones, grows in size, expands its offerings, and updates its mission. Revisit your vision statement once every year or so to make sure it still accurately reflects your company's ideal future; if not, adjust it! 

But for now, enjoy the fact that your vision statement is written. Share it with your team, announce it to your customers, and use it to proudly guide your company forward.

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Beat thrash for good: 4 organizational planning challenges and solutions

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How to use benchmarking to set your standards for success

How To Write A Vision Statement With Examples

Zoom, the video conferencing software provider, became one of the most well-known names in 2020. As people moved to a…

Zoom, the video conferencing software provider, became one of the most well-known names in 2020. As people moved to a remote work environment because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations turned to Zoom for video meetings.

Zoom’s vision statement is “video communications empowering people to accomplish more”. They have certainly been able to achieve this in recent times.

An organization’s vision statement reflects its future aspirations. It gives them a direction to where they’re headed. Employees, clients and investors seek an organization’s vision statement to understand the relevance of their goals. It helps them make decisions, stay motivated and keep going even during a crisis situation.

Discover examples of a vision statement and how to write a vision statement to help your organization or initiative stand out.

What Is A Vision Statement? 

Examples of a vision statement, how to write a vision statement, writing your way to success, what is a vision statement.

The best vision statement is one that enables an organization to realize its ambitions, dreams and goals. Your vision is what guides you to the future. Making things happen and achieving your goals is what it’s all about. Your vision statement appeals to the reader’s emotions. It’s more abstract and wide in scale, including aspirational statements that move people when they encounter them. Things that aren’t part of your vision statement are your goals, such as what product or service you offer and how you plan to offer them.

Here are some examples of a vision statement that are powerful, inspiring and emotionally appealing:

LinkedIn: “To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

PepsiCo: “Be the global leader in convenient foods and beverages by winning with purpose.”

Samsung: “To lead the digital convergence movement.”

Wikipedia: “A world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

Twitter: “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

These vision statements are clear and concise. They immediately strike a chord with the reader. Most of all, they’re honest and stand true. These examples of a vision statement can help you understand how to write your own.

Analyzing examples of a vision statement will show they have some things in common—from the crispness of their words to the brevity. Each statement is short, easy to understand and looks at the big picture.

Here’s how you can write the best vision statement:

Define Your Values And Goals

Your vision statement can be realized only when you define your goals and values for yourself. Make a list and think about where you want to go with them. For instance, if your values are empathy, community-building and compassion, you can think about helping people and creating a more inclusive world as part of your vision.

Write Clearly, Concisely And Compellingly

The statement has to be clear and concise; the intent should be compelling enough to attract attention. Write it in a few words to make sure the reader gets the idea without having to read long passages. A vision statement is effective when it’s short and sweet.

Avoid Difficult Words And Phrases

Nobody likes complex words or sentences. Something that’s engaging and easy to read will win over a puzzling statement packed with incomprehensible vocabulary. Make sure you read and reread your statement so you can make it as clear as possible.

Far Into The Future

A vision statement is all about the future and realizing your aspirations. Avoid making it relevant for the next few years only. Instead, think long-term. Think of it as your navigation tool. It’s meant to guide you on the right path when you waver.

Be Passionate

Your statement should reflect your passion. This means you have to make it as unique and tailored as possible. If there’s something you strongly believe in, you’ll have no trouble expressing it. The only thing left to do is to proofread your work to avoid errors and mistakes.

Writing the best vision statement may not look easy, but it doesn’t have to be so difficult either. You have to start some time, so do it today. You can ace this aspect of your professional life with practice, dedication and goals.

We know how relevant communication is in the workplace. Not only because you have to send several emails a day but also because you have to convey your meaning in just a few words. Harappa’s Writing Proficiently course will prepare you with business communication tools. Craft a compelling vision statement, write effective emails and communicate like an expert to make your mark!

Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as  Vision Statement ,  Mission And Vision Statement ,  the  Difference Between Visions And Goals  and  Examples Of A Personal Vision Statement  to deliver ideas with precision.

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Writing a Personal Statement

Preparing to Write

Brainstorming, don't forget, sample prompts.

A personal statement is a narrative essay that connects your background, experiences, and goals to the mission, requirements, and desired outcomes of the specific opportunity you are seeking. It is a critical component in the selection process, whether the essay is for a competitive internship, a graduate fellowship, or admittance to a graduate school program. It gives the selection committee the best opportunity to get to know you, how you think and make decisions, ways in which past experiences have been significant or formative, and how you envision your future. Personal statements can be varied in form; some are given a specific prompt, while others are less structured. However, in general a personal statement should answer the following questions:

• Who are you?
• What are your goals?
• How does this specific program/opportunity help you achieve your goals?
• What is in the future?

A personal statement is not:

• A variation of your college admissions essay
• An academic/research paper
• A narrative version of your resume
• A creative writing piece (it can be creative, though)
• An essay about somebody else

Keep in mind that your statement is only a portion of the application and should be written with this in mind. Your entire application package will include some, possibly all, of the materials listed below. You will want to consider what these pieces of the application communicate about you. Your personal statement should aim to tie everything together and fill in or address any gaps. There will likely be some overlap but be sure not to be too repetitive.

• Personal Statement(s)
• Transcripts
• Letters of recommendations
• Sample of written work
• Research proposal

Preparing to Write A large portion of your work towards completing a personal statement begins well before your first draft or even an outline. It is incredibly important to be sure you understand all of the rules and regulations around the statement. Things to consider before you begin writing:

• How many prompts? And what are they? It is important to know the basics so you can get your ideas in order. Some programs will require a general statement of interest and a focused supplementary or secondary statement closely aligned with the institution's goals.
• Are there formatting guidelines? Single or double spaced, margins, fonts, text sizes, etc. Our general guideline is to keep it simple.
• How do I submit my statement(s)? If uploading a document we highly suggest using a PDF as it will minimize the chances of accidental changes to formatting. Some programs may event ask you to copy and paste into a text box.
• When do I have to submit my statement(s)? Most are due at the time of application but some programs, especially medical schools, will ask for secondary statements a few months after you apply. In these instances be sure to complete them within two weeks, any longer is an indication that you aren't that interested in the institution.

Before you start writing, take some time to reflect on your experiences and motivations as they relate to the programs to which you are applying. This will offer you a chance to organize your thoughts which will make the writing process much easier. Below are a list of questions to help you get started:

• What individuals, experiences or events have shaped your interest in this particular field?
• What has influenced your decision to apply to graduate school?
• How does this field align with your interests, strengths, and values?
• What distinguishes you from other applicants?
• What would you bring to this program/profession?
• What has prepared you for graduate study in this field? Consider your classes at Wellesley, research and work experience, including internships, summer jobs and volunteer work.
• Why are you interested in this particular institution or degree program?
• How is this program distinct from others?
• What do you hope to gain?
• What is motivating you to seek an advanced degree now?
• Where do you see yourself headed and how will this degree program help you get there?

For those applying to Medical School, if you need a committee letter for your application and are using the Medical Professions Advisory Committee you have already done a lot of heavy lifting through the 2017-2018 Applicant Information Form . Even if you aren't using MPAC the applicant information form is a great place to start.

Another great place to start is through talking out your ideas. You have a number of options both on and off campus, such as: Career Education advisors and mentors ( you can set up an appointment here ), major advisor, family, friends. If you are applying to a graduate program it is especially important to talk with a faculty member in the field. Remember to take good notes so you can refer to them later.

When you begin writing keep in mind that your essay is one of many in the application pool. This is not to say you should exaggerate your experiences to “stand out” but that you should focus on clear, concise writing. Also keep in mind that the readers are considering you not just as a potential student but a future colleague. Be sure to show them examples and experiences which demonstrate you are ready to begin their program.

It is important to remember that your personal statement will take time and energy to complete, so plan accordingly. Every application and statement should be seen as different from one another, even if they are all the same type of program. Each institution may teach you the same material but their delivery or focus will be slightly different.

In addition, remember:

• Be yourself: You aren’t good at being someone else
• Tragedy is not a requirement, reflection and depth are
• Research the institution or organization
• Proofread, proofread, proofread
• How to have your personal statement reviewed

The prompts below are from actual applications to a several types of programs. As you will notice many of them are VERY general in nature. This is why it is so important to do your research and reflect on your motivations. Although the prompts are similar in nature the resulting statements would be very different depending on the discipline and type of program, as well as your particular background and reasons for wanting to pursue this graduate degree.

• This statement should illustrate your academic background and experiences and explain why you would excel in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (UMass Amherst - M.S. in Civil Engineering).
• Describe your academic and career objectives and how the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies can help you achieve them. Include other considerations that explain why you seek admissions to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and your interests in the environmental field (Yale - Master of Environmental Management).  
• Please discuss your academic interests and goals. Include your current professional and research interests, as well as your long-range professional objectives. Please be as specific as possible about how your objectives can be met at Clark and do not exceed 800 words (Clark University - M.A. in International Development and Social Change).
• Write a 500- to 700-word statement that describes your work or research. Discuss how you came to focus on the medium, body of work, or academic area you wish to pursue at the graduate level. Also discuss future directions or goals for your work, and describe how the Master of Fine Arts in Studio (Printmedia) is particularly suited to your professional goals (School of the Art Institute of Chicago - MFA in Studio, Printmaking).
• Your statement should explain why you want to study economics at the graduate level. The statement is particularly important if there is something unusual about your background and preparation that you would like us to know about you (University of Texas at Austin - Ph.D in Economics).
• Your personal goal statement is an important part of the review process for our faculty members as they consider your application. They want to know about your background, work experience, plans for graduate study and professional career, qualifications that make you a strong candidate for the program, and any other relevant information (Indiana University Bloomington - M.S.Ed. in Secondary Education).
• Your autobiographical essay/personal statement is a narrative that outlines significant experiences in your life, including childhood experiences, study and work, your strengths and aspirations in the field of architecture, and why you want to come to the University of Oregon (University of Oregon - Master of Architecture).
• Personal history and diversity statement, in which you describe how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. You may refer to any educational, familial, cultural, economic or social experiences, challenges, community service, outreach activities, residency and citizenship, first-generation college status, or opportunities relevant to your academic journey; how your life experiences contribute to the social, intellectual or cultural diversity within a campus community and your chosen field; or how you might serve educationally underrepresented and underserved segments of society with your graduate education (U.C. Davis - M.A. in Linguistics).
• A Personal Statement specifying your past experiences, reasons for applying, and your areas of interest. It should explain your intellectual and personal goals, why you are interested in pursuing an interdisciplinary degree rather than a more traditional disciplinary one, and how this degree fits into your intellectual and personal future (Rutgers University - Ph.D in Women’s and Gender Studies).
• Your application requires a written statement to uploaded into your application and is a critical component of your application for admission. This is your opportunity to tell us what excites you about the field of library and information science, and what problems you want to help solve in this field. Please also tell us how your prior experiences have prepared you for this next step toward your career goals and how this program will help you achieve them (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Master of Science in Library Science).
• After watching the video, please describe what strengths and preferences as a learner you have that will facilitate your success in this innovative curriculum. What challenges in our curriculum do you anticipate and what strategies might you use to address these challenges? (MGH Institute of Health Professions PT - They recently redesigned their curriculum)
• Your personal goal statement should briefly describe how you view the future of the field, what your goals are to be part of that future, and what brought you to pursue an advanced education degree in your chosen field. You may include any other information that you feel might be useful. (Northeastern PT)
• Personal Statement: In 500 words or less, describe a meaningful educational experience that affected your professional goals and growth and explain how it impacted you. The educational experience does not need to be related to this degree. Focus on the educational experience and not why you think you would be a good professional in this field. (Simmons PT)
• Personal Statement (500 word minimum): State your reasons for seeking admission to this program at this institution. Include your professional goals, why you want to pursue a career in this field and how admission to this program will assist you in accomplishing those goals. (Regis College Nursing)
• “Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to this type of program.” (AMCAS)
• Address the following three questions(Though there is no set limit, most statements are 1–2 pages, single-spaced.): What are your reasons for pursuing this degree? Why do you wish to pursue your degree at this institution? How do you intend to leverage your degree in a career of this field? (Boston University MPH)
• Please submit a personal statement/statement of purpose of no more than 500 words for the department/degree of choice. Professional degree essays require a clear understanding of the _______ field and how you hope to work within the field. Be sure to proofread your personal statement carefully for spelling and grammar. In your statement, be sure to address the following: what interests you in the field of _____ what interests you in a specific degree program and department at this institution and what interests you in a particular certificate (if applicable). Please also describe how you hope to use your ________ training to help you achieve your career goals. (Columbia PhD in Public Health - Epidemiology)
• Because each Home Program requires significant original research activities in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, we are interested in obtaining as much information as possible about your previous research experiences. Those who already have such experience are in a better position to know whether they are truly interested in performing ______ research as part of a graduate program. Please include specific information about your research experience in your Statement of Purpose. You may also use the Statement to amplify your comments about your choice of Home Program(s), and how your past experiences and current interests are related to your choice. Personal Statements should not exceed two pages in length (single spaced). Make sure to set your computer to Western European or other English-language setting. We cannot guarantee the ability to access your statement if it is submitted in other fonts. (Stanford Biosciences PhD)
• Your statement of purpose should describe succinctly your reasons for applying to the Department of ____ at ___ University. It would be helpful to include what you have done to prepare for this degree program. Please describe your research interests, past research experience, future career plans and other details of your background and interests that will allow us to evaluate your ability to thrive in our program. If you have interests that align with a specific faculty member, you may state this in your application. Your statement of purpose should not exceed two pages in length (single spaced). (Stanford Bioengineering PhD)
• Statement of purpose (Up to one page or 1,000 words): Rather than a research proposal, you should provide a statement of purpose. Your statement should be written in English and explain your motivation for applying for the course at this institution and your relevant experience and education. Please provide an indication of the area of your proposed research and supervisor(s) in your statement. This will be assessed for the coherence of the statement; evidence of motivation for and understanding of the proposed area of study; the ability to present a reasoned case in English; and commitment to the subject. (Oxford Inorganic Chemistry - DPhil)

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UT Austin Reinstates Standardized Test Scores in Admissions

AUSTIN, Texas — After four years of test-optional admissions for undergraduate applications, The University of Texas at Austin will return to requiring standardized testing scores, beginning with applications for the Fall 2025 semester. The University suspended the standardized score requirement in Spring 2020 due to limited testing availability during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our goals are to attract the best and brightest students and to make sure every student is successful once they are here. Standardized scores combined with high school GPA support this goal by improving early identification of students who demonstrated the greatest academic achievement, the most potential, and those who can most benefit from support through our student success programs,” said President Jay Hartzell. “Our experience during the test-optional period reinforced that standardized testing is a valuable tool for deciding who is admitted and making sure those students are placed in majors that are the best fit. Also, with an abundance of high school GPAs surrounding 4.0, especially among our auto-admits, an SAT or ACT score is a proven differentiator that is in each student’s and the University’s best interest.”

Last year, the University experienced an all-time high number of applicants — approximately 73,000. It is estimated that about 90% or more of these applicants took a standardized exam, according to a range of data provided by the College Board, which administers the SAT. Analysis of the University’s own data further revealed that on average, students who submitted standardized scores performed significantly better on those exams and in their first semester of college, relative to those who did not take the test or chose not to have their scores considered as part of a holistic review. Among the findings:

• 42% of the nearly 73,000 freshman applications for Fall 2024 asked to have their standardized scores considered in a holistic review (to “opt in”), while 49% of students applying under the state’s auto-admit rule (in the top 6% of their high school class) made that request.
• Those who opted in had a median SAT score of 1420, compared with a median of 1160 among those who did not.
• The higher standardized scores translated on average to better collegiate academic performance. Of 9,217 first-year students enrolled in 2023, those who opted in had an estimated average GPA of 0.86 grade points higher during their first fall semester, controlling for a wide range of factors, including high school class rank and GPA. Those same students were estimated to be 55% less likely to have a first semester college GPA of less than 2.0, all else equal.

The University has also demonstrated that knowledge of standardized test scores contributes to higher graduation rates. The ability to predict student success using standardized test scores and other factors spurred a major student success initiative in 2012, strategically directing assistance and resources to students with the greatest academic needs. In part due to these efforts, during the following decade, UT’s four-year graduation rate climbed to a record 74.5% in Fall 2023, up from 52% in 2013. The student success program was recognized in its early stages in New York Times Magazine.

The University will continue to conduct a holistic review and will consider standardized test scores and other performance metrics in light of each applicant’s background, including the strength and rigor of their high school. Standardized test scores will not change the admissions decision for automatic admits, of course, but will be used to match applicants to their choice of majors and to indicate who might benefit most from the University’s student success programs.

In addition to reinstating standardized scores, the University is making further modifications to the application process to strengthen holistic review and craft a stronger, more successful class. These modifications will also improve the application experience for prospective students.

• Introduction of a new Early Action program. This optional deadline will require application submission by Oct. 15, with a guaranteed decision communicated to applicants by Jan. 15. The regular deadline for applications will remain Dec. 1, with a guaranteed decision communicated by Feb. 15.
• Modification of the required essay. This will provide greater flexibility in topic choice and enable students to leverage responses used on other applications, while expanding opportunity for a more personalized response.
• Reduction in the number of short answer responses . This reduction from three responses to two will maintain the currently used major-related question, while creating a new prompt that allows students to highlight a specific activity of their choice.
• Introduction of a waitlist. Applies to students who are not automatically admitted. Most students will be notified as early as March 1 if they are admitted from the waitlist.
• Narrowed scope for letters of recommendation. Applicants submitting letters of recommendation will be strongly encouraged to provide those letters from sources outside of their high school. This reduces the burden of this work on high school teachers and counselors and allows University staff to better leverage other materials.

The University will begin requiring standardized test scores and implement other related changes during the Aug. 1–Dec. 1, 2024, application period.

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A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Creating value beyond the hype

Let’s deliver on the promise of technology from strategy to scale.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

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Apple unveils the new 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip

Blazing-Fast Performance with M3

• Game titles like No Man’s Sky run up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip. 1
• Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator’s Super Resolution feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon. 1
• Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon. 1
• Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon. 1
• Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50 percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery life. 1

World’s Best Consumer Laptop for AI

World’s Most Popular Laptop

• Two perfect sizes in a super-portable design : With a durable aluminum enclosure that’s built to last, the 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air have fantastic battery life, are incredibly light, and are less than half an inch thin, so users can work, play, or create from anywhere. The 13-inch model provides the ultimate in portability, while the 15-inch model offers even more screen real estate for multitasking. There’s a perfect size for everyone, from students on the go to business professionals who prefer a larger screen.
• Gorgeous Liquid Retina display : MacBook Air features a brilliant 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display with up to 500 nits of brightness, support for 1 billion colors, and up to 2x the resolution of comparable PC laptops. Content looks vivid with sharp detail, and text appears super crisp.
• Support for up to two external displays : MacBook Air with M3 now supports up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed — perfect for business users, or anyone who requires multiple displays for multitasking across apps or spreading out documents at the same time.
• Versatile connectivity : MacBook Air with M3 features Wi-Fi 6E, which delivers download speeds that are up to twice as fast as the previous generation. It also includes MagSafe charging and two Thunderbolt ports for connecting accessories, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
• Camera, mics, and speakers : With a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, users will look their best whether they’re connecting with friends and family, or collaborating with coworkers around the world. Users will also sound their best with a three-mic array and enhanced voice clarity on audio and video calls. MacBook Air features an immersive sound system with support for Spatial Audio along with Dolby Atmos, so users can enjoy three-dimensional soundstages for music and movies.
• Magic Keyboard and Touch ID : The comfortable and quiet backlit Magic Keyboard comes with a full-height function row with Touch ID, giving users a fast, easy, and secure way to unlock their Mac; sign in to apps and websites; and make purchases with Apple Pay — all with the touch of a finger.

The Magic of macOS

• macOS Sonoma : Users can now place widgets right on the desktop, interact with them with just a click, and even access the extensive ecosystem of iPhone widgets on MacBook Air. Video conferencing gets more engaging with great features like Presenter Overlay and Reactions. Profiles in Safari keep browsing separate between multiple topics or projects, while web apps provide faster access to favorite websites. And gaming gets even better with Game Mode.
• Enhanced productivity : All users, including business professionals, can take advantage of the expansive display on MacBook Air with Split View, or spread out across screens with support for up to two external displays. Features like Stage Manager also help users like students focus on the task in front of them.
• Better with iPhone : With Continuity, MacBook Air works seamlessly across iPhone and other Apple devices. Features like AirDrop allow users to share and receive photos, documents, and more across nearby Apple devices. Universal Clipboard lets users easily copy images, video, or text from an app on one Apple device, and effortlessly paste them into another app on a nearby Mac. Continuity Camera makes it easy for users to scan or take a picture of something nearby with their iPhone and have it appear instantly on their Mac. And Handoff lets them start a task like answering an email on one Apple device and easily finish it on another.
• Wide array of apps : MacBook Air comes with powerful apps built in, including FaceTime, Freeform, iMovie, GarageBand, and Photos, as well as productivity apps including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, making it easy for users to create amazing work. And with thousands of apps optimized for Apple silicon, all of users’ go-to apps run incredibly fast in macOS — including Microsoft 365 and many of their favorite iOS apps.

Better for the Environment

• Customers can order the new MacBook Air with M3 starting Monday, March 4, on apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app in 28 countries and regions, including the U.S. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting Friday, March 8.
• The 13-inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at $1,099 (U.S.) and $999 (U.S.) for education, and the 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at $1,299 (U.S.) and $1,199 (U.S.) for education. Both are available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray.
• The 13-inch MacBook Air with M2, available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, now starts at $999 (U.S.) and $899 (U.S.) for education.
• Additional technical specifications, configure-to-order options, and accessories are available at apple.com/mac .
• With Apple Trade In, customers can trade in their current computer and get credit toward a new Mac. Customers can visit apple.com/shop/trade-in to see what their device is worth.
• When customers shop at Apple using Apple Card, they can pay monthly at 0 percent APR for their new MacBook Air when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 percent Daily Cash back — all upfront.
• Every customer who buys a Mac from their Apple Store can enjoy a free Online Personal Session with an Apple Specialist, get their product set up — including help with data transfer — and receive guidance on how to get the most out of their new Mac.

Text of this article

March 4, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

The world’s most popular laptop is better than ever with even more performance, faster Wi-Fi, and support for up to two external displays — all in its strikingly thin and light design with up to 18 hours of battery life

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced the new MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip, taking its incredible combination of power-efficient performance and portability to a new level. With M3, MacBook Air is up to 60 percent faster than the model with the M1 chip and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air. 1 And with a faster and more efficient Neural Engine in M3, MacBook Air continues to be the world’s best consumer laptop for AI. The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air both feature a strikingly thin and light design, up to 18 hours of battery life, 1 a stunning Liquid Retina display, and new capabilities, including support for up to two external displays and up to 2x faster Wi-Fi than the previous generation. With its durable aluminum unibody enclosure that’s built to last, the new MacBook Air is available in four gorgeous colors: midnight, which features a breakthrough anodization seal to reduce fingerprints; starlight; space gray; and silver. Combined with its world-class camera, mics, and speakers; MagSafe charging; its silent, fanless design; and macOS, MacBook Air delivers an unrivaled experience — making the 13-inch model the world’s bestselling laptop and the 15-inch model the world’s bestselling 15-inch laptop. Customers can order starting today, with availability beginning Friday, March 8.

“MacBook Air is our most popular and loved Mac, with more customers choosing it over any other laptop. And today it gets even better with the M3 chip and new capabilities,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “From college students pursuing their degrees, to business users who need powerful productivity, or anyone who simply wants the unmatched combination of performance, portability, and industry-leading battery life, all in a fanless design, the new MacBook Air continues to be the world’s best thin and light laptop.”

Built using industry-leading 3-nanometer technology, the M3 chip brings even faster performance and more capabilities to MacBook Air. Featuring a powerful 8-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU, and support for up to 24GB of unified memory, the new MacBook Air is up to 60 percent faster than the model with M1 and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air. 1 It also features up to 18 hours of battery life, which is up to six hours longer than an Intel-based MacBook Air. 1 Users will feel the blazing speed of M3 in everything they do, from everyday productivity, to demanding tasks like photo and video editing, and software development. And with the next-generation GPU of M3, the new MacBook Air supports hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, offering more accurate lighting, reflections, and shadows for extremely realistic gaming experiences. It also includes the latest media engine with support for AV1 decode, providing more efficient and higher-quality video experiences from streaming services.

M3 takes MacBook Air performance even further:

With the transition to Apple silicon, every Mac is a great platform for AI. M3 includes a faster and more efficient 16-core Neural Engine, along with accelerators in the CPU and GPU to boost on-device machine learning, making MacBook Air the world’s best consumer laptop for AI. Leveraging this incredible AI performance, macOS delivers intelligent features that enhance productivity and creativity, so users can enable powerful camera features, real-time speech to text, translation, text predictions, visual understanding, accessibility features, and much more.

With a broad ecosystem of apps that deliver advanced AI features, users can do everything from checking their homework with AI Math Assistance in Goodnotes 6, to automatically enhancing photos in Pixelmator Pro, to removing background noise from a video using CapCut. Combined with the unified memory architecture of Apple silicon, MacBook Air can also run optimized AI models, including large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation locally with great performance. In addition to on-device performance, MacBook Air supports cloud-based solutions, enabling users to run powerful productivity and creative apps that tap into the power of AI, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.

More people choose MacBook Air over any other laptop, and M3 raises the bar yet again with its phenomenal combination of performance, portability, and capabilities users love:

Together with macOS, the MacBook Air experience is unrivaled:

The new MacBook Air is the first Apple product to be made with 50 percent recycled content, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets and, in another first for Apple, 100 percent recycled copper in the main logic board. MacBook Air meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, and is free of mercury, brominated flame retardants, and PVC. The packaging is 99 percent fiber-based, bringing Apple closer to its goal to remove plastic from all packaging by 2025.

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chain and the life cycle of every product.

Pricing and Availability

• Testing was conducted by Apple in January 2024. See apple.com/macbook-air for more information.

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