Sorry, but you are your job. So, does the work you do even matter?
Article 5 of 10
To give your distributed workforce a purpose you have to understand mission.
The culture you want starts with defining your mission correctly. It is critical to communicate your mission to employees in a way that gives them purpose. Don’t take it from me though. Listen to Ben Horowitz on the subject:
“Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.”
Easy to say, hard to do. Let’s begin by agreeing with Ben: you need a mission, but not just any mission. You need a mission that motivates your employees. I want to walk you through an effective framework to define your company’s mission and ingrain it into the fabric of your culture. Mission is so important, I am going to spend two articles on it.
We often have a wrong view of our relationship with our work.
It’s not the outcome that makes the work matter. It’s not our circumstances that determine how we feel. In her research and writing on the subject Winifred Gallagher summarizes by saying:
“Who you are, what you think, what you feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.” (from Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work)
I can’t stress how important this is. Said another way; you are what you do. You are your job.
It is our job as leaders to give our employees a mission worthy of their focus. Why? Because humans are wired to do work that matters! If we fail to give our team a mission worth following and subsequently work that is solidly attached to that mission their attention and focus will be elsewhere.
Before we dive into “how-to” define your mission, I want to share some common mistakes that trip companies up right out of the gate.
Your mission is YOUR mission. It belongs to you and your employees.
Your prospects and clients will see and hear about your mission, but they are not your target audience. Companies that write their mission for their clients will struggle to create real purpose for their employees. It’s great for clients to hear about your mission. You should absolutely wear it on your sleeve and talk about it often, but it needs to speak directly to your employees, not your prospects and clients.
Your mission is a sentence, not an essay.
A mission is made up of words. Words intended to communicate purpose and identity. It’s hard to choose the right words. It’s easy to use too many words. Companies often make the well-intended mistake of forming a “mission” committee and soliciting a bunch of ideas, which inevitably produces a bunch of really good thoughts and ideas. In an effort to include all or most of them, they end up with a mission overflowing with beautiful words. All these beautiful words look nice on the website but mean nothing to employees. Don’t do that. Fight for the most simple and direct mission statement possible.
So where does one even start? How do we even begin to think about creating a perfect mission statement? We need to get our minds right and come at it with the right perspective.
This is where Simon Sinek comes in. Take 15 minutes and listen to his Ted Talk below. It will get you thinking in the right direction. You’ll see several of his ideas running through the process we’ll walk through in the next article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-fdJzvpX60
In order for your employees to connect to your mission and derive purpose from it, it needs to answer the “Why?” This can be done directly or indirectly, but it needs to be obvious and concrete.
