Mission

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Vision and mission sometimes get combined; some people split them. If you split them, let the vision be the long-term, big-picture direction, and let the mission be a closer-term, more specific, inspiring statement of intent: when you deliver this leadership, you will have this impact. Honestly, some of the biggest, most successful companies merge the two and talk about them different ways, and it doesn’t really matter. I’d almost replace both with the word purpose: what are you trying to do?

A student asked me to distinguish vision from mission and admitted they feel like they go hand in hand. And they can. One student, Giovanni, had built a website targeting misinformation in head and neck surgery, and his vision was behavioral change: if people can go to the website and get credible information, in the future they’ll value references and not just trust any source. That vision is actually just as good as a mission. Victor gave another example: he wrote one word, “guidance.” I asked, guidance for what purpose? He’s building a data-driven nutritional recommendation app, and his vision is for the global population to use it to prevent a lot of disease. Within thirty seconds he’d gone from nothing to a great vision and mission: he’s going to change people’s health by giving better recommendations for supplements. That’s what we can do if we just tease it out of each other. You’re sitting next to each other; you can ask each other these questions after the workshop. Feel empowered, go challenge each other.

It doesn’t matter much whether you call it vision or mission, but the mission is a way of getting the vision into a more defined form, saying what you want to achieve with it. Google’s vision (to organize the world’s information) turns into the mission of making all the world’s information universally accessible and useful. It’s so inspiring you can relate to it in many ways, and it becomes a touchstone for everyday decisions.

Let me give you a mission example and a framework. How many of you eat Sweetgreen? I eat too much of it. What’s interesting is their mission has nothing to do with why I go there. I don’t go because they’re “building healthier communities by connecting people to real food”; I couldn’t care less about that. I go because I think it’s healthy food. Sometimes these grand ideas are almost unrelated to why customers actually show up. But I liked several things when you break it down: they have core values that guide actions and aim to empower not just customers but their team and partners; great visions and missions empower the entire stakeholder group. They build a transparent supply network, so you can see where the food comes from. They cook from scratch, so they hold themselves accountable. And they’re building a community.

From that, here are four M’s I recommend for a mission. First, is it memorable? If nobody can remember your vision and mission, you’ve failed right there; nobody will repeat it the next day, let alone five or ten years out. Second, manageable: what will make it achievable for you to reach the world? Maybe you have to build a community, or create a basis for broad reach. Third, measurable, which is trickier: how do you measure health? You might need to pick a vertical or a particular problem to improve and figure out how to measure it. Fourth, motivational: is it so compelling that you attract customers and stakeholders (team, funding, partners, communities) to get behind you?

Then a quiz: how do you rate Sweetgreen’s mission? Memorable? One student captured what she thought it was: “reimagine fast food for a new era,” which is great, because we associate fast food with junk food and Sweetgreen is healthy food. But almost nobody remembered their actual stated mission (“building healthy communities”): one in sixty people. It doesn’t matter what it is; if it isn’t memorable, it won’t work. Simpler is generally better. Manageable? A student said it’s realistic because we’ve entered an era where lots of people want to be healthy. Measurable? Reshma said it felt too dreamy, “let’s change the world,” so how would you measure it? Fair. Google seemed equally bold (“make all the world’s information accessible”) but is eminently measurable: every query, who did it, where from, how they used it; they have the best measurement systems on the planet. Motivational? That’s a personal judgment, but you do want somebody going, “I care about health enough that I want to go work on this.”

Don’t worry too much about getting it perfect, and don’t worry about the distinction between vision and mission. Just make sure these things are achieved and that you feel you’re going to have an impact. And come up with one memorable word. My favorite from the room was “obsessed.” As Ndonga explained, it’s such a triggering word; in any context, “obsessed” evokes a strong feeling. If I told my wife “I’m obsessed with you,” no matter where you use that word, it lands. That’s memorable; I’ll never forget this class. Another student, Vivian, first offered “data” and immediately recognized it wasn’t memorable, until she said what she does: use data to help neuroscientists understand the brain better. Now that’s memorable.

A couple more. Twitter, when they started, didn’t have a vision or mission at all. It came out of a failed podcasting company called Odeo; the founders realized they needed to simplify everything, and simplified messaging down to a level that turned out to be really useful. They’ve since evolved to “give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Imagine if they’d started with that; we might all have understood what Twitter was for. So it isn’t critical to have a mission statement up front (they succeeded without one), but as it becomes clear, it’s a lot easier for people to grasp whether to engage. And Airbnb: you don’t need a vision or mission to see what’s great about it, not least that it’s inexpensive. But what they realized is that it’s not just about expense; they want to give people better travel experiences, and their whole vision and mission emerged and evolved to that.

So we don’t have to be laser-focused on vision-versus-mission wording; focus mostly on the impact you want to have. What impact do you want? To change the world’s health, to reduce misinformation, to give people with impairments better accessibility (that has real impact). However you bring it out, the four M’s still apply: memorable enough that nobody walks in the next day asking “what do we do again?”, manageable so it’s achievable, measurable, and motivational so people are compelled to get involved, which makes hiring, attracting funding, and attracting customers and partners far easier.