You know that your mission statement needs to be clear, concise, and provide direction for your small business. However, you’re unsure how to compress your mission into a sentence or phrase that is both inspiring and powerful. Enter the mission statement generator.
What Is a Mission Statement Generator?
A mission statement generator is an online tool that you can use to help create your mission statement. Simply enter a little bit of information about your small business and, within seconds, you’re provided a mission statement.
This made-for-you statement can then be proudly displayed on your website and social media pages, in your employee handbook, and anyplace else that you’d like. (Put it on your office wall or make it your screensaver for a daily reminder of what you are working toward.)
How a Mission Statement Generator Works: The Process
Every online generator has its specific steps you will need to follow but generally begins with you entering relevant information about your small business. This can include:
- The name of your small business
- The industry you’re in
- Services you provide
- Your target customer
- The business’s “personality” (i.e. creative, sophisticated, thoughtful)
Once all of the required information is entered, the system generates a mission statement to consider. Some online generators have a button you can push if you want to see more options.
But, Do Mission Statement Generators Actually Work?
Some online generators are better than others. But it helps to think of a mission statement generator as more of a tool that is designed to help you come up with your mission statement.
Sure, they may provide a few words or phrases that resonate with you and your team. They might also offer a direction that you hadn’t previously considered.
However, most mission statement generators don’t collect enough information to supply the perfect, ready-to-use mission statement. Instead, they are more of a way to stoke your creativity.
Free Mission Statement Generators to Try
If you feel like you’ve hit a wall in creating your mission statement and want to give an online generator a try, here are a few free options to consider:
- Almost Anything – This site asks a few questions (such as what service you provide and your core values), then puts your answers in sentence form for a customized mission statement.
- HoneyBook – Like most free online business tools, this site does require you to provide your email address to receive a customized mission statement. So, if you’re looking for a generator that you can use without adding yourself to an email list, you might want to pass on this one.
- ComfyChair – One benefit of using this generator is that you don’t have to hand over your identifying information. The con is that you also don’t provide any information about your small business. Instead, a generic mission statement is displayed. If you don’t like it or feel that it doesn’t apply to your business, you click on “Thank you Sir, may I have another?”
- Netinsight – This generator is one step above ComfyChair in that it does ask for your business name, but that’s it. And all it does with your name is place it above a randomly generated mission statement that may or may not reflect your mission. (This may be a good option if you like to play the slots because you have to “spin the wheel” to have your mission generated and it plays typical slot machine sounds. If the first option doesn’t move you, click “play again” to see the wheel and hear the sounds before receiving another random option.)
Mission Statement Generators That Are More a Formula Than a Generator
While some mission statement generators do their magic behind the scenes—you enter your small business’s information, click a button, and your statement appears on your screen—other online generators are so upfront and transparent that it’s like you’re doing the work yourself. Or, maybe you really are doing the work yourself.
For instance, Whole Whale, a company that offers analytical and marketing services to socially conscious companies and nonprofits, offers a mission statement generator that is realistically more of a formula you can follow than an actual generator. It requires deciding what type of impact you want to make, who you want to make that impact for, and how you intend to do it.
The formula looks like this: “Our mission is to (input the impact you want to make) for (input who you want to impact) by (input what core actions you will take to make the impact).”
Joe-ks.com is a similar formula-based option. When you use this site, you create your mission statement by selecting from a variety of pre-determined openers, adverbs, verbs, adjectives, nouns, conjunctions, and closers (in that order) to come up with a statement for your small business.
For example, based on the options, your mission statement might say, “It is our business to (opener) professionally (adverb) create (verb) leading-edge (adjective) intellectual capital (noun) so that we may continue (conjunction) to solve business problems (closer).”
The value of using these types of online generators, er formulas, is that it taps into your creativity or the creativity of your team versus asking a computer program to be creative. The con is, if you’ve been struggling to come up with your small business’s mission statement, this type of do-it-yourself process might not help you get unstuck because you’re still doing all of the work.
The Bottom Line
Here’s the deal: if you’re looking to a mission statement generator to do all of the heavy lifting for you, providing the perfect mission statement for your small business in seconds and neatly wrapped in ribbon and bow, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Conversely, if you want a program or formula that can help you create your own mission statement, many of these options will work.
In the end, creating the best mission statement for your small business still falls squarely on your shoulders. A mission statement generator is just another tool to help you with the process.