“It is awfully important to know what is, and what is not, your business.” —Gertrude Stein

One of the most important guiding principles in building a cohesive corporate plan is to align every member of the team behind the company’s vision and mission, and give everyone the tools to tell the story.

The exercise of building a vision and mission statement is not a waste of time, but can be done in a way that wastes time. It needs to be a lively, energetic, and fun process that’s well managed and respects people’s time.

Everyone should watch Guy Kawasaki’s excellent instructions how on how to build a “Mantra.”

Watch the “Golden Circle” TED talk by Simon Sinek — isn’t the center the vision of the company? I think so. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. People buy from you because they believe what you believe. Mr Sinek says we have to communicate from the inside out.

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Here’s a worksheet I’ve developed that guides discussions.

What is a vision statement?

• Defines high level goals, and answers the question “Why are you here?”
• States what you envision for your business, and shows you where you want to go

What is a mission statement?

• The concise statement of the business strategy from a customer’s perspective
• States the present, leading to the future (vision) and answers: “What do we do?” “How do we do it” and, “For whom do we do it?”
• The mission statement may change, but it should always tie back to the ’s vision

Where do people “find” a company’s vision and mission?

They’re typically on the “About” page, if at all. Not every makes them easily apparent. A vision/mission is not a tagline. It’s also unlikely to appear word-for-word on the Home page. It should provide a prism through which view the strategy for your business and make decisions for our roadmap. It should advise you what to do as well as NOT do!

Example vision and mission statements

Apple Vision: “Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.”

Apple Mission: “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.”

Facebook Vision: To make the world more open and connected.

How do you know if you’ve got it right?

The vision is:

• Aligned with your inner instincts and beliefs in what you are trying to achieve
• Easy for employees and partners to understand and rally around — unambiguous
• Goes beyond the immediate future — think 5–10 years!
• Fundamentally inspiring, memorable and hopeful, but nonetheless realistic

The mission is:

• Clear enough to help direct daily strategic and tactical decisions
• Shows who your stakeholders are, our responsibility towards those stakeholders, and the business you’re in

The public statement making it understandable to everyone

When someone asks “What does your company do?” the answer should be understandable, with more detail providing more clarity. Be able to answer:

• What do we do?
• How do we do it?
• Who do we do it for?

Guess the company — can you tell who these companies are? (Answers at the end)

Company A

• Vision — To become the worldwide leader in retailing
• Mission — To help people save money so they can live better

Company B

• Vision — To design and create in this decade the new global network, processes, and service platforms that maximize automation allowing for a reallocation of human resources to more complex and productive work
• Mission — To exploit technical innovations for the benefit of ??? and its customers by implementing next-generation technologies and network advancements in ???’s services and operations

Company C

• Vision — Advance technology that touches peoples lives
• Mission — To enable people and businesses to communicate with each other

Company D

• Vision — To allow people to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them
• Mission — ? mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Answers

A – Walmart

B – AT&T

C – Verizon

D – Facebook

A Kickass Personal Mantra

I have been involved in many startups. The same problems come up time and again. But it seems that teams often just want to go out and learn lessons the hard way, just because they believe that’s the only way to learn.

Here are a couple of recent postmortems that are worth reading, with a summary of key learnings. As I find more, I’m going to add them…

Flud — social newsreader (just for the record, what a depressing name! Flud sounds like Dud. But that’s apparently not why they failed. Or so they say. However, the name does offer opportunities for cheap cracks in headlines… Flud’s a Dud comes to mind. But I digress.)

Here’s what the co-founder Bobby Ghoshal says he learned in this Techcrunch article:

• Don’t chase the press; let them come to you.
  In Flud’s case, press caused numbers of users that Ghoshal the product wasn’t ready for.My take: this is true for a consumer product that needs huge numbers; less true for a B2B product which may look for smaller, higher quality numbers. A better way to grow numbers in a less spiky manner — word of mouth.The important thing to remember here is timing: do not, under any circumstances, start seeking press approval until you are ready to take it. PR is not for the faint-hearted. It can go spectacularly wrong.  Timing is everything.
• Don’t worry about competitors if you truly believe your vision is superior, stay calm.
  Ghosal warns that competitors get inside your head and freak you out.My take: but don’t let that allow you not to look and learn; figure out what you can learn from competitors and then add your own spin. Take their best ideas, and leapfrog them.
• Test, test, and test again.My take: what can I say? I can’t count the number of times I ask “what’s the test plan here, guys?” and I’m met with the answer “the programmer has tested it.”

  Don’t forget this: programmer/developers/engineers should never, ever be on the front lines to test their own code. They are the worst people do be asked to do that. Don’t miss the step of quality testing! Bugs stick to me like burs on a dog. Probably because I do things that the engineers never think of.

• Stress test. Load test.My take: again, never miss this step. A stress/load test is a special form of testing, so get an expert. If you don’t know how to do it, find someone who does and get them to help — even if it’s an afternoon’s chalk talk. You’ll regret it if you don’t.
• Know your customers and what they want.My take: but careful not to let your customers design your product. Guy Kawasaki wisely advised me once, years and years ago, “if you let customers design your product, we’d never have got Macintosh from DOS.” I know you’ll probably not old enough to remember what that means, but it’s true.

  Your customers can guide you, inspire you, help your vision … but you need to know where you’re going next. Your customers tell you your next two or three features; they aren’t there to give you even your 6-month vision, let alone your 1-year or 2-year vision.

• Growth or engagement? Growth wins.My take: this is true; you need to to focus on bringing in the users.

  However, if every user visits once and never comes back, that’s a lousy user. Your product has to be basically useful and sticky, and has to have hooks of some sort that encourage users to come back again.