Bond, James Bond

Mission:

An important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes.

or

A strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling.

In building a successful business, one’s success is a byproduct of one's ability to articulate and then execute a mission, where the mission is an assignment carried out for a specific purpose or it is a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling, or in a best-case scenario, it is both. When one is not guided by a sharply defined mission, progress flounders because either the purpose is not strong enough to influence one's drive consistently, or because the lack of mission articulation makes it difficult to know for certain the stage of the mission, or even if it has been completed.

Here is why building a 007-style, mission-driven business, matters.

Defined Intention Creates Value – Why is your business in existence? The mission statement announces the intentions of your business. That intention then influences your customers, culture, and staff, and how they each uniquely participate in that mission. For example, the customers, culture, and staff of Dunkin Donuts are different from the customers, culture, and staff of Starbucks. The two businesses also have distinctly different mission statements. The customer experience at Dunkin Donuts is different from that of Starbucks. That experience is a byproduct of the missions defined by these companies. The defined intention narrows the customer base making it easier for the customers to choose their preferred coffee shop based on the kind of customer (their unique likes and dislikes) each coffee shop is seeking. Some coffee drinkers want soft music, global coffee selections, baristas, and community tables, while others want food and coffee fast. By distinguishing their intent through the mission statement, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts do not compete, but rather each serves a defined segment of coffee drinkers. Articulated intent (mission) eliminates competition.

An Articulated Mission Makes Decisions Simple – A clearly defined mission influences the entire value proposition of a business as discussed in the earlier section. It likewise affects you, as the owner of the business, in determining how and what decisions are made and what opportunities to lean into, and which ones to disregard. A business owner who has not yet defined their mission will find it difficult to know an opportunity when one is presented, thus they are more likely to chase or abstain from them all. Articulating the aim, the ambition or the calling of a business gives clarity and structure to every decision made in the business or for it.

Mission Impossible – What would James Bond DO, what would he even BE without a mission? Whether your mission is to?help British agent 272 escape from East Berlin, safeguarding his crossing into West Berlin by eliminating a top KGB assassin codenamed "Trigger" who has been dispatched to kill 272, like one of Bond’s missions, or it is simply a mission to organize, create, and schedule social media posts for the month, productivity improves momentously when one becomes mission-driven. This entails more than just a mission statement for the business. It necessitates building each day, each task, each problem, and each opportunity into a mission. Like every great book, a great mission has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Where one begins each day as a mission, then progress becomes inevitable. As James Bond often quips, “I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done.” Only those on a mission know when it and if it has been completed.