Are You On A Mission?

People often ask me what it means when I say that Ibotta is a mission-driven company.  What is our mission and where did it come from? How do we bring it to life in everyday work settings?  Practically speaking, how does our mission shape decisions that the company makes?   When I founded Ibotta as a first-time entrepreneur, these questions were not at the forefront of my mind because I didn’t appreciate their significance.  Over the past 8 years, I have come to realize why it’s so important to have a clear mission and to refer to it regularly. 

 What Mission Means (and why it’s not the same as values)

When most entrepreneurs start out, they are understandably concerned with putting together investor materials and raising money.  Prospective investors or donors, many of whom have never run organizations themselves, almost never ask what the mission is. As a result, many entrepreneurs don’t reflect much on this question until they find themselves operating a growing organization and facing difficult decisions about what to prioritize.  In the first few years of any venture, leaders are laser-focused on creating a working version of the product or service and proving that consumers or businesses will pay for it. Facing the crushing pressure to achieve these milestones, many view discussions of mission as a touchy-feely waste of time.  

A new organization often begins by defining its values.  Values are a set of guiding principles that describe how employees will treat each other and what general behaviors are to be celebrated and rewarded.  Employees find it reassuring to know that even though their company may grow rapidly, its values will remain intact. In the case of Ibotta, when we had about 20 employees, we held an all-hands meeting to brainstorm what we believed to be the company’s core values.  In codifying these, we decided to make them easy to remember by having them spell out the word “IBOTTA.” Thus, we settled on six values: Integrity, Boldness, Outhustle, Teamwork, Transparency, and A Good Idea Can Come From Anywhere.  Over time, we defined these values more precisely, ultimately producing a Culture Deck that articulates what each value means and how we live each of these values day to day.   We use our Culture Deck to determine fit with prospective employees, support coaching by our managers, and promote our employment brand in a principled way, without trying to be all things to all people. 

But values are not the same thing as mission.  If values refer to the way things will be done, mission refers to what larger objective the organization is collectively working toward achieving.  Every organization has a central, overarching purpose that transcends what it is focused on achieving in any given quarter.   Mission is closely related to the question why. When formulating a mission, a good starting point is to pose these “why” questions:

• Why will the world be a better place because of our work?
• Why do we come to work every day to solve this particular set of problems and challenges?
• Why do we feel our work has meaning or broader moral relevance?   

 The best missions describe something meaningful and inspiring that everyone can strive to achieve without being so broad and generic as to encompass literally everything.  After all, having the mission statement “Making the world a better place” isn’t going to provide much guidance or differentiation from other organizations.

 Communicating The Mission (or how Walter Robb put me on the hot seat)

 One of the most daunting aspects of setting any organization’s mission is articulating it clearly and succinctly.  Because a mission that can’t be instantly recalled by every single employee might as well not exist.    

 I learned this lesson in a particularly memorable way.  About two years ago, as part of Ibotta’s Executive Speaker Series, we invited in Walter Robb, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market.  Walter is admired across the industry for being highly principled in his leadership of Whole Foods and focused on the importance of culture in any organization.  Instead of giving a traditional speech, Walter decided to interview me in front of the whole company. He asked our employees to raise their hands and tell him what Ibotta’s mission was.  The first person responded that our mission was to become a single starting point for all mobile shopping. The second to respond said our mission was to provide cash back rewards through a widely used mobile app.  A twinkle in his eye, Walter asked a third person and then a fourth. All of them responded with something different. He then turned to me and said “Sounds like you’ve got some work to do, Mr. CEO. No one here knows what the mission is.”  It stung, but Walter was right. A mission that people didn’t have at the tip of their fingertips was no mission at all. 

 We resolved to start over.  We replaced our old mission, which had been a convoluted 25-word sentence, with a simple, four-word mission that has remained in place ever since:  Make Every Purchase Rewarding

This Mission was user-centric and service-oriented.  It was both generic enough to allow us to grow beyond simply delivering rewards via our own mobile app but specific enough to relate directly to our day to day efforts, differentiating us from say, Mercedes Benz or the Denver Broncos.  But most of all, it could be easily internalized by our employees. For the next two months, I mentioned our new mission at every standup and every townhall. I related our strategy back to the mission. I explained our ongoing initiatives by reference to the mission.  I asked the audience to tell me what our mission was, and they responded in unison “Make Every Purchase Rewarding.”  We were on to something.

But we didn’t stop there.  We gave everyone T-shirts with the mission printed on it.  We painted the mission on the wall in our lunchroom area, right over the booths where people like to work and collaborate.  We put it in the stairwell between floors and in our foyer, where it greets every new visitor. And we added it to our sales decks, investor presentations, and websites.  If you work at Ibotta today, you can recite our mission.   

 Why Mission Matters (and why you can’t live without a good one)

The most surprising thing I’ve learned about missions is how much they contribute to better business results.  A mission is an invaluable tool for resolving competing requests for scarce resources.  Every organization has two critical but scarce commodities – time and money. The difference between failure and success lies in making smarter decisions about how to allocate these scarce resources in a world of competing priorities.  By prioritizing investments that help the organization double down on achieving its mission, it becomes easier to maintain focus and avoid distractions. At Ibotta, a good example pertains to the concept of personal analytics. While it has been a tantalizing prospect to provide our Savers with various forms of insights and analytics that would help them understand their shopping patterns better, that is not our mission.  Instead, guided by our mission, we have stayed focused on providing consumers with cash back rewards on every purchase, online and offline.

A mission is also extremely helpful in generating alignment across larger organizations.  Deciding what initiatives to prioritize is only the beginning. You then have to communicate that decision to hundreds of employees, along with a simple rationale for why these were prioritized.  Pointing to the mission is a simple but effective way to explain these decisions, while rallying the company around the need to execute at a high level in order to advance the mission.

 Finally, a mission can be your best friend when it comes to having hard conversations with employees who are no longer a good fit for the organization.  By asking whether an employee is acting as a good steward of the mission, it depersonalizes things and keeps the focus on what you owe to those your organization is designed to serve.

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A mission should be defined early in an organization’s lifespan, and it should be constantly revisited and revised over time.  The most effective missions are succinct, inspiring, and not too generic and all-encompassing. By frequently referring to your mission in group settings, letting it guide decisions about what to prioritize, and pointing to it as the rationale for your actions, you can become a more effective leader.  The larger your organization, the more powerful you will find this mission-driven approach.