Five-Step Process for Defining and Deploying Your Mission in a Distributed Workplace
Article 6 of 10
Take your time here. This deserves your very best effort.
Step 1 — Write Your Mission Statement
Worst step ever, right? Don’t worry, we’re about to walk through it together. Step 1 is hard. It’s the most intellectually challenging step. It requires creativity, empathy, and thoughtfulness. The key to writing your mission statement is creating the right mental model, the right success boundaries. Whether you choose to tackle this alone, with the executive team, or a broader committee the mental model is the same.
Your mission is your identity.
This is who you are. Your mission gives your company an identity to the world, but more importantly, it gives your company an identity to your employees. Written properly, it is an identity your employees adopt as their own. An identity they gladly accept and own. An identity they are proud of and want to talk about at family dinners and on social media. That’s why it can’t be a business goal. Approach the challenge of writing your mission with the correct end in mind. Ask the question “Does this mission offer my employees an identity they will embrace and strive to become?” If it does not, it will fail to produce the effect Horowitz claims is possible (see article 5).
Your mission should focus on human impact.
Humans care about humans. Above all else, they want to be valued, admired, cared for, and loved by other human beings. You can take advantage of that innate need (and give them what they desperately want) by providing a mission directly connected to a positive human impact. A mission statement proclaiming the desire to reduce the number of car accidents is noble, but less effective than a mission striving to make the road safer for the kid in the passenger seat. Less effective still than a mission statement that is built around a belief about your fellow humans. “We believe the road should be safe for children.” You are looking for a purpose for people to rally behind and own. You want them to create an identity around it. “I am a person who believes reducing preventable deaths is important. People like me do ____.” Now we’re on our way to a culture that motivates employees and produces the desired behavior in our team.
There is always a human connection somewhere, but if it’s too much of a stretch don’t force it. If you can’t connect to it directly, write a mission that will lead to an easy follow-on with a human connection. Stripe is a perfect example. Stripe’s mission is “to increase the GDP of the internet.” If you listen to the Stripe founders talk about that mission, it is always in the context of helping humans improve their station in life. The human connection is absent in their mission statement, but extremely strong in the narrative explanation of the mission statement. Listen to the founders. When they talk about their mission they talk about their beliefs about humans. Which leads us to . . .
Embrace the “Why?”
Ideally, your mission statement directly addresses the “Why?” As Simon Sinek says “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” The “Why?” speaks to your core beliefs. It gives your employees something larger than themselves or the day-to-day grind to derive motivation from. Apple’s mission is a little wordy, but nails the “Why?”
Apple’s corporate mission is “to bring the best personal computing products and support to students, educators, designers, scientists, engineers, businesspersons and consumers in over 140 countries around the world.”
The “Why?” should give a sense of meaning and purpose to every single person at your company. The lead developer and the tier 1 support agent. The enterprise sales executive and the intern. If they aren’t excited to tell friends about it during a meal out, you haven’t found it.
Make it pass the LinkedIn test.
We have talked about creating a mission statement that gives employees a sense of purpose, a connection to something larger than themselves. Make the world a better place in some way. It all sounds very noble and selfless. Remember though, the purpose of the statement itself is to motivate employees. In order to maximize the effect, you need to include some consideration of what’s in it for them.
Your mission statement should be something that fits nicely on your employees' LinkedIn profiles and is easy for them to talk about in an interview. It should demonstrate a tangible connection to work that is both worthy and challenging. Your mission should communicate to the world that your employees do work that matters. It matters so much they spend every day engaged in complex problem-solving as a part of an extremely talented team.
Step 2 — Talk about it. A lot.
It’s not enough to have the CEO announce the mission and have a bunch of pretty posters printed up and hung around the office. The CEO should do that, but it doesn’t matter how great the CEO’s speech is or how pretty the posters are. Your mission will fall flat if it is not reinforced constantly.
Your mission should be included in every talk from leadership, referenced in every company update and progress report. It should be the framework for creating company and departmental goals. It should be included in manager goals and one on one coaching. You cannot talk about the mission too much.
It will feel like overkill, but your employees will appreciate the consistent and persistent message. The predictability will help them feel safe. The focus will help them internalize it. If you are not getting flamed for being a cult, you are not talking about your mission enough.
Step 3 — Manufacture moments that demonstrate the mission.
You need proof that your mission is more than just words. Don’t just wait and hope proof presents itself. Go out and create the proof. Create moments that allow you to tangibly prove your mission. Maybe you need to host a hackathon every quarter. It might be an off-site gathering with customers. It may be a service project. It may be very publicly celebrating an employee’s individual accomplishment that helped move you closer to fulfilling the mission. Connect the “things we do” to the “mission we are on.”
If you are in a startup or new to leadership, be smart and find a way to create this moment early on. Publicize it. Make it fun. Get feedback and then make it better the next time.
Step 4 — Rinse and repeat again and again and again.
You are never done with your mission. Once ingrained, a good mission becomes your guiding light. It helps employees decide what to prioritize. It helps you select appropriate goals. Once announced, you have to fully commit to your mission. You never stop talking about it. You never stop creating moments to prove it. It’s fine that employees have heard the same thing 1,000 times. You can certainly be creative and keep it fresh but do not depart from the mission.
Step 5 — Become your mission.
The last step isn’t really a step, because it will happen naturally as a result of the first four steps. All of this constant reinforcement of a specific way of thinking will encourage the behavior you want in your employees. Help them be courageous and continue to push towards a better version of themselves. Over time these behaviors will become habits. We are made up of our habits. A successful mission always results in some version of “People like us do things like this.”
Congratulations! You now have a mission. There is nothing more important in creating a healthy growth culture in a distributed workforce than a great mission. With your mission now installed, we can start talking about connectedness.
