Who are we and what do we do? That is the essence of your mission.

Again I will quote my favourite company;

“Google’s Mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

What a great mission statement. It says exactly what they do in plain English in a very clear and concise way. No mention of search engines or Gmail. It seems so clear and simple; however, I suspect drafting this statement took considerable time and effort with input from stakeholders throughout the company.

I have gone through the mission drafting process a couple of times.  If you are going to have a mission statement it is important that everyone buys in, had input into drafting the statement and lives the mission on a daily basis.

How do you go about drafting a mission?

Here is one way to go about drafting a mission and I am sure there are many others but at least this should help spark the synapses. The process will likely take 3 or more sessions and need to be re-written many times.

Here is a methodology I have used to facilitate the mission process:

Step 1. List all the MUST have nouns for your company; innovative, leader, …
Step 2. Finalize and short list the nouns, this may take some time.
Step 3. Use verbs to glue the nouns together and then sprinkle some adjectives to describe the nouns
Step 4. Define and refine. Repeat as necessary.

That’s it.

Here is Google’s Mission by nouns and verbs;

Nouns – Worlds, Information, Universally, Useful
Verbs – Organize, Make, Accessible

 TheCodeFactory Mission:

“TheCodeFactory fosters the development of business ideas from concept to execution by providing a collaborative environment for entrepreneurs and innovators to access services, share business experiences and connect. Entrepreneurs are also supported through fiscal and policy advocacy.”

Ian Graham

Filed under: Camp Culture, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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