(Updated, March 2024)
A company vision is an important way to define the driving force behind your organization and connect your audience with your purpose over shared values.
These days, the company vision is a crucial component of setting up business operations, and while this applies to all industries, we know it to be especially palpable when potential patients are visiting local physical therapy practice websites.
Across our work in physical therapy website design and development, we’ve found through user testing that, once a user has reviewed the home page on a physical therapy website, they are most likely to navigate to the About page next. When asked why, users stated they wanted to see how the brand represents themselves.
So, how do you establish a company vision statement that captures your brand experience?
7 Steps to Create Your Physical Therapy Vision Statement
Your vision statement is your forward-thinking purpose – something meaningful that excites employees and inspires patients. It is not your mission statement, to be clear. Your mission should be more in line with the day-to-day activities performed to achieve that vision.
As an over-simplified example, your vision can be to improve the health and wellness of your community, and your mission can be to provide the best custom plan of care for patients. As you see, the mission is a critical piece of accomplishing the overall vision.
Consider these seven steps when developing the company vision statement for your physical therapy practice.
1. Have Clear Goals
The goals present in your physical therapy vision statement should be actionable. It may be admirable to have lofty ideals, but having measurable goals that you can reach through your physical therapy practice is critical.
So, skip the “we will be the best” and instead aim for something like ‘we will help patients recover quickly,” which can be measured and is entirely possible in physical therapy practice.
2. Establish Values
Values are present in every company culture, whether expressed or not. The challenge in creating a company vision is not only highlighting those values, but also living them. You can always communicate them with a single word, but we find that specificity or a qualified description after the one word is more helpful in defining values.
It’s essential to uncover what values the practice shares across all departments to help establish your physical therapy vision statement. This can be achieved by speaking with staff and getting their opinions to the question, “What does this company mean to you?”
3. Stick With What You Know
It may seem obvious, but your vision statement should be related to your service. What constitutes values for a physical therapy practice vision statement does not necessarily translate to other industries and services. On that note, a vision statement that is too broad becomes interchangeable with any business and less meaningful.
Your clinic’s vision should emphasize how your practice works to meet those values. These should be actionable ideas that connect your services to the outcomes you and your staff wish to deliver, as they relate to what you do.
4. Keep it Simple
The more complex a physical therapy vision statement is, the more likely it could be subject to challenges in actually accomplishing it.
The vision should be something that can be seen and acted upon by every level of the practice, no matter the role or task. It takes everyone to succeed, so work from the “ideal” mindset, but keep it simple and achievable.
5. Reduce Ambiguity
Are your values understandable or relatable to outside parties? Your vision may guide decisions based on values, but, since they also play an important role outside of the workplace, they must make sense to your audience.
The vision will steer public opinion and may be judged by the physicians, patients, and partners you’re seeking to serve. The internal language of a physical therapy practice vision statement might be clear to employees, but how does it read to the public?
6. Think Ahead
Will your company vision statement still apply in a year, or even ten years? Is it subject to change based on the economy or industry standards? Can you adapt the statement as goals are met or the industry changes?
Create a physical therapy vision statement that can be built upon if necessary.
7. Create a Timeframe
Goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) not ambiguous.
Set yourself up for success. Establish a vision statement that includes a timeframe for actionable progress and include specific metrics that are outlined within this timeline. It’s not just about the destination, but also the journey where your practice will see the most growth.
Ready to Establish a Physical Therapy Clinic Vision?
One of the best ways to establish your company vision is to learn from a Mastermind group of like-minded leaders and physical therapy owners who have been where you are.
Discover MEG Academy’s management and certification programs that are built to help any physical therapy startup or expanding practice improve. Plus, your access to MEG Academy includes the additional resources, one-on-one coaching and mastermind groups to help define your physical therapy vision statement and set you on the path to achieving it.
