Amp It Up

3Make Your Organization Mission Driven

What Does It Mean to Be Mission Driven?

The term that best describes the management mindset of all three companies I've led (Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake) is mission driven. A clear and compelling sense of mission has been one of the essential keys to our consistent success and growth. Time after time, our focused missions helped us relentlessly pursue each company's promise and potential. Being mission driven helped our people become motivated, focused, impatient, and passionate—maybe even a bit zealous.

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.

Conversely, you're not on a mission if you feel like you spend most of your days checking off trivial to‐do items, passing the buck to other people, reading and forwarding email, and covering your ass so you won't get in any trouble. Showing up every day at a “good enough is good enough” company is the opposite of fun and energizing. Just trying to get through each day is a depressing way to spend a career. ...