Your mission, should you choose to accept it... Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
No matter what stage of business you're in - it's time to define your WHY. As in, WHY do you exist? Why do you do what you do? What kind of impact do you want to have?
The foundation of your WHY stems from your core values as a business. Your values should lay the flagstones for any business and any industry you are a part of. These are your compass and guiding light that allows you to attract the right team, speak to your ideal clients, and make the best decisions for you and your business.
Do you have these values written down? Are they written on a dozen pieces of scrap paper strung across your office? Or are they floating around in your head? Does your team know what they are? Are their values aligned? What about your mission statement? Vision Statement?
My guess is you shook your head "no" on at least one of those items. Maybe you even asked yourself, "What's the difference?"
Don't worry friends - I've got you.
The REASON your company exists
- Definition: A mission statement defines the purpose and primary objectives related to your customer needs. It speaks to your company's business, its objectives, and its approach to reach those objectives. In other words, HOW you will get to where you want to be and WHY are you in existence.
- Famous Example: Coca-Cola - "To refresh the world... To inspire moments of optimism and happiness... To create value and make a difference."
A source of inspiration and motivation
- Definition: A vision statement clarifies your ideal future state for your business. It communicates your purpose and core values. In other words, WHERE do you want to be? An inspirational vision statement will put a smile on your face as you read it. The audacity of it will motivate you; the clarity will inspire you. And the relevance will drive you to act.
- Famous Example: Alzheimer's Association - "A world without Alzheimer's disease."
- Definition: "A blend of the values, beliefs, taboos, symbols, rituals, and myths all companies develop over time. Whether written as a mission statement, spoken or merely understood, corporate culture describes and governs the ways a company's owners and employees think, feel, and act." ~ Entrepreneur.com
- Famous Example: Netflix -
"Like all great companies, we strive to hire the best and we value integrity, excellence, respect, and collaboration. What is special about Netflix, though, is how much we:
Encourage independent decision-making by employees
Share information openly, broadly, and deliberately
Are extraordinarily candid with each other
Keep only our highly effective people
Avoid rules
Our core philosophy is people over process. More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. With this approach, we are a more flexible, fun, stimulating, creative, and successful organization..."
There's much more to Netflix's Culture Statement, that can be found here because honestly it's long and I didn't feel like typing all of it.
Your company's compass
- Definition: The guiding tenets of a company, supporting the vision and identity of the company. They are timeless, enduring, and intrinsically important.
- Famous Example: Facebook -
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they're more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: 'Move fast and break things.' The idea is that if you never break anything, you're probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks. We have another saying: 'The riskiest thing is to take no risks.' We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
Not sure where to start on these? One of the most overlooked aspects of a business is its core values. They're hard to define and even harder to communicate organization-wide, but the most successful companies are the ones who hire both on skill and overall fit for their organizations.
I know I know, the idea of actually putting a pen to paper and writing down your mission statement, vision statement, culture statement, and core values seems like a frivolous activity. But write them down, share them with your team, and watch your business thrive.
