Aggrey Jonathan K Bett

These concepts are interrelated but distinct in meaning and purpose. Here is what they are and how they differ.
Mission statement: A mission statement is a declaration that concisely explains why the company exists and what its purpose is. It is a broad but brief statement that communicates the purpose of the company's existence to stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, vendors and the community in which it operates. A mission should communicate the purpose and company's value, which motivates people to want to associate with it and must stir people's emotions and be believable. Its role is to inform and rally people to support the company's purpose willingly, which they see as a worthy course. A mission statement is action-oriented and is the source of the objectives a company seeks to achieve to fulfil the mission to reach the vision.

Honest Tea Company's Mission Statement is to create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages. A Hair Salon's Mission Statement might be To create hairstyles that make you feel good about your appearance.

Vision:  A vision statement is a proclamation of an organization's all-embracing ambitions and what it hopes to become once it achieves the mission. It is an imagination of an attractive future position worth striving to attain. It is an appealing image of what the company hopes to become or create. A vision is there to inspire and guide the company's owners and employees to reach greater heights. Here are some examples of vision statements:

Disney's vision statement is "To make people happy."

Hair Salon "Assist people to feel good about how they look"

Notice that Disney did not say, "To make the best amusement facilities in the World. Facilities are a means; the end game is to make people happy. The end goal should be the vision.

Values: The values statement is also called the code of conduct. The statements outline the company's beliefs and guide how you expect employees to behave towards one another, with customers, vendors and stakeholders. They provide the moral compass for the company and direct all actions in the organization. They provide the standards against which stakeholders judge the organization and its employees. Examples of values that an organization can espouse include accountability, honesty, respect, passion, trust, and teamwork. Values are challenging to abide by, and leaders must live and be seen to practice them even when they are easy not to and costly to uphold. Some companies go as far as requiring their vendors to abide by their values as well.

Objectives:  An objective is a target you want to achieve to reach a desired end. Synonyms include goal, aim, design, end, intention, intent, target and purpose. Goals and objectives are interchangeable because they are similar. However, a goal is a broad, intangible and long-term outcome, while an objective defines a short-term, tangible and measurable initiative to accomplish a goal. For example, a goal to "reduce costs across the organization to improve profitability" is intangible, but an objective to "reduce stationary costs by 20% by the end of one year" is tangible and leads to achieving the primary goal of improving profitability. A goal can have several objectives to execute and achieve. Goals and objectives follow from vision and mission and help to implement and attain the mission and vision of the organization. Objectives need to be SMART-specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.  

Strategies: Strategies are approaches, methods, ideas, concepts and creative and competitive efforts that an organization employs to compete successfully and achieve the entity's mission and vision. In contrast, objectives are desired outcomes that strengthen a company's economic position and survival. A strategy is a game plan explaining where to play and how to deliver these outcomes successfully. Objectives are end products, and strategy describes the means to attain those desired end products. Strategies contain creativity, competitiveness, and cost-effectiveness and promise better and more advantageous outcomes. Strategies are choice advantageous means to an end.

Actions: Actions are the day-to-day movements and steps required to execute the strategies to achieve the objectives. Action plans, or tasks or initiatives, are the specific concrete hierarchical (sequential) steps to implement daily, weekly, and monthly to achieve the organization's objectives, mission and vision. Actions are goals, objectives, and strategies turned into actionable steps to implement the overall design to realize the mission and vision. Actions like goals should be SMART and identify specific actions, responsible action parties (department, sections, units, and individuals), resources needed for each action, expected outcomes, and yardsticks used to ascertain achievement.     

Conclusion

Mission, vision, objectives, values, strategies, and actions are interrelated business concepts that flow from and reinforce one another. The vision creates the business idea and how it will look once it is up and running. Then, the vision statement pronounces where the entity wants to be in the long run in terms of excellence. The mission statement describes its purpose, what it is doing now and what it should do to achieve the vision. These two overarching aims are then reduced to objectives, strategies, actions and a strategic plan to document all these ideas for record, action and management to ensure execution. As to which comes first, vision or mission, you must first envision the business idea, then explain its reason for existence (mission), and then you can indicate its journey's end (vision) in terms of excellence. Vision and mission are intertwined. For a new business, vision comes first to envisage a business idea, followed by the mission and the vision statement to state what you want to become. If yours is an existing business, then the mandate (mission) is there already, and all you need to do is restate what you want the business to become in the future (vision).

The vision, mission, values and objectives guide an entity's work. They keep everybody fixated on what the company is doing and where it is going. They express how employees are required to behave. These statements are not meant to be restrictions that constrain creativity and invention. Their purpose is to guide decisions and behaviours to channel all efforts to attain goals effectively.