The single most important thing in getting your team to do their best work is to create a strong rallying cry. Your rallying cry is a combination of 3 things — an imagination of what the future looks like (vision), what your company will do to impact that future (mission), and how your company operates working toward it (values).
My first job after college was joining Facebook…back when Facebook was only open to college students. I forgoed higher paying jobs because I believed wholeheartedly in Facebook’s mission at the time of “making the world more open and connected”. I vividly recall how core that was to my motivation to perform — everything from my day to day job to how I talked to my friends outside of Facebook was a picture of loyalty and fervent work toward that mission. I stayed at Facebook for 9 years as a result. As I branched out of Facebook and built teams of my own, I always wanted to replicate that feeling of ownership. It became quickly evident to me that in building a strong cohesive team, there is nothing more powerful than a north star – a strong vision, mission and set of values.
As a founder, you aren’t building a company of 1. When you hire people, they will need to be inspired — compensation and perks are not enough. It’s also not enough to just have a great product, you need to know why you are building it, what problem in the world you want to solve, and why anyone should care. As you craft your vision, mission, and values, if you’ve done them right, they shouldn’t change throughout the lifetime of your company. Get this right day 1 and you will have solved many future performance and retention issues. Here is how I’ve developed vision/mission/values…
Vision
> What is this
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- Your vision should articulate the mark your company leaves on the world and how you imagine the future.
> Questions to ask yourself
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- What do you imagine when you think about your work 10 years from now?
- How does this change the world?
- What big problem have you solved / what have you changed?
> End result
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- Your vision should be inspirational, memorable, and short
Mission
> What is this
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- Focus on what you want the company to accomplish today. It’s typically a lofty goal to unite the company
> Questions to ask yourself
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- What do we do best?
- Who do we help?
- How are we uniquely positioned to help them?
> End result
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- Describes the core of your business and the impact it has in the best case scenario
Values
> What is this
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- How you / your company operates and interacts.
> Questions to ask yourself
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- What are the attributes that I care most about?
- How do I want this company to be known in the world?
- How should I operate in order to get there?
> End result
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- Articulates “how” you want to operate, and describe what you believe makes a company successful.
Without any one of these, you aren’t able to create a strong rallying cry. If you have a vision but no mission, it becomes too lofty and unclear what your role is. If you have a mission but no values, then how your team operates will be inconsistent, ineffective, and inefficient. Create your epic rallying cry to supercharge your startup’s cohesion!
Check out f7’s vision, mission, values:
♠ Vision : The future of innovation is accelerated by creating an equal starting line for bold entrepreneurs to build the next world changing companies.
♣ Mission : Help amazing early stage entrepreneurs focus on their super powers and maximize the impact on humanity
♥ Values : Operate with Integrity, Work hard and Smart, Produce Excellence, Generate Trust