The difference between a company’s Purpose and Vision

Words like “Purpose”, “Mission”, “Values”, and “Vision” can be confusing for most people. And in fact, you could ask three random CEO’s what each of those words mean to them, and you’d probably get three different answers.

Here’s how we define these words at Dragon Army:

• Our Purpose is the reason we exist.
• Our Vision is the company we are striving to become.
• Our Tenets provide the blueprint for success.
• Our Values guide us along the journey.

You’ll notice we don’t have a “Mission”. Our Purpose is the same as our Mission. I just prefer the word “Purpose” because I think its more clear. This is our purpose for being!

Ok, so our Purpose is the reason we exist, and our Vision is the company we are striving to become. How are those different?

I think of it like this: Your Purpose is the impact you want to make on the world. Your Vision is the company you will be in order to affect that change (or, in order to achieve your Vision.)

Dragon Army’s Purpose is to Inspire Happiness. I posted a deeper dive into this a little while back, but essentially we believe that inspiring happiness can have a positive ripple effect on the world, one person at a time. We can make this impact through relationships, our work, and doing good.

Now, our Vision is very different from our Purpose. Dragon Army’s Vision is to be sought after by the world’s best companies for our creative problem solving. We want to be the best company in the world at solving problems for our clients, specifically as it relates to how they connect with their customers in a connected world.

In a future post I’ll talk about our Tenets and how those impact all of this.

Photo by @johnallen_22