Being Mission-Driven

Being Mission-Driven

In Amp It Up, I talk about the need for being mission-driven.?

Amp It Up Excerpt: I didn’t invent the term mission driven, of course. In my naivete, I used to think that the importance of having a mission was self-evident. Of course every company should know exactly why it exists and what it’s trying to accomplish, and of course it should communicate that purpose clearly to everyone. Who would even think to argue the opposite? Perhaps a clear purpose was common a few decades ago, but these days I see more and more companies that are fuzzy, if not hopelessly confused, about why they exist. The mission clarity that used to be the norm has now become more of an exception—which gives leaders who get it right a competitive advantage.?

Having a clear, compelling and credible mission helps organizations focus, energize and mobilize themselves. Vagueness will frustrate a mission. We get ‘mission creep’ when we are not locked on, and start to dribble around it. As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. ‘Mission fog’ will also make you prone to distraction which dilutes focus and fritters away resources.

Clear, Compelling and Credible

Some missions are extremely clear, like the special forces raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Other military campaigns have incredible scale, like the Normandy invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944, but still a clear and compelling mission: to establish a beachhead from which to launch the liberation of Europe. They both worked exceedingly well because the mission was crisp, and compelling. When the mission is to eradicate something like world hunger, the lack of credibility will make that mission ineffective. We can chip away at it, but fully conquering it is another matter. It becomes more of a lofty vision than a well-defined mission.

Lack of clarity impedes a mission. It dilutes focus and resources. The organization may develop ‘shiny object syndrome’, chasing fads, latest and greatest. Everybody has an opinion. There is a vacuum that the mission was intending, but failed, to fill.? It is an order of business to develop and maintain an effective mission posture.?

Amp It Up Excerpt: ‘Being on a mission is a visceral experience, not merely an intellectual one. When your organization has a well-defined purpose, you feel it down to your bones. You feel energized when you start the workday, and you feel good about whatever progress you’ve made toward the mission when you shut down for the night. Being on a mission unlocks the X factor: an intangible that can drastically elevate performance as people set out to achieve greatness—together. It makes your working life not just more productive but also more fun’

A mission is not just a NorthStar we occasionally reference to make sure we’re tracking to our destination. It’s more like an always-on magnet that aligns focus, resources, bandwidth and energy. Every message, every meeting, every encounter, every waking moment. Mission awareness starts to permeate everything. We become acutely aware of the gap that exists between where we are and where the mission wants to take us.

A compelling mission inspires the ranks. If it’s not big, bold and beautiful, it will fail to do its magic. People don’t join a company any more for a job and a paycheck. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves, a cause, something that takes your breath away.?

An artfully crafted mission will be a formidable recruiting aid as well. With the talent battle never more intense than it is now, an inspired mission will often make a difference. Everybody can offer much the same things in terms of compensation, benefits and so on, but the journey itself is another matter.?

It should not be easy. A lay-up doesn’t inspire. It has to be challenging, difficult, even hazardous and far from a done deal. Like the enduring ‘Mission Impossible’ movies. In many ways, think of the mission as the work equivalent of an adventure.

Mission Matters

At Data Domain in 2003, our mission was to put the entire tape automation industry out of its misery with a disk and network backup and recovery platform. We had bumper stickers that said ‘Tape Sucks, Move On’. We were better known for our war cry ‘Tape Sucks’ than our company name. Equally inspired zealots would stick them on tape library machines at storage trade shows. Data Domain ended up an outlier to its peer group, and created an entire industry that ushered in the end of tape automation.

At ServiceNow in 2011, we started out as a replacement for legacy helpdesk management tools by the likes of BMC, HP and CA, what they then called ’ticketing systems’. We re-fashioned our platform to be the ‘ERP for IT’. It would aspire to become the system of record and engagement for everybody in IT. We were long on mission in those early days, and short of product, but customers over time realized that ServiceNow had, indeed, become exactly that, the ‘ERP for IT’. And it didn’t stay there, the mission expanded to a global business services workflow that could serve any service domain, from IT to HR and any other functional domain in the enterprise.

At Snowflake in 2019, the company had made its way in the world as ‘the data warehouse built for the cloud’. It was crisp and clear, and it had served the company well out of the gate, but it also lacked inspiration. Data warehousing was not exactly something that would take your breath away. We refashioned and reoriented ourselves as the ‘Data Cloud’.?

There had never been a data cloud in the history of computing. Worse, data was hopelessly siloed and bunkered in a gazillion places. The world needed a data cloud if it ever was going to deliver on the promise of data science. The mission was also firmly rooted in our foundation as a data sharing platform which made it authentic and credible at the same time.?

All our companies pursued their missions with focus, conviction and a pinch of zeal. Mission matters. Mission had plenty to do with our companies achieving and delivering on their respective missions.