The Amp It Up Fieldbook

3Make Your Organization Mission Driven

A compelling sense of mission can give organizations motivation and elevate their performance. Simply put, a mission establishes what a company is trying to accomplish. In mission-driven organizations, management effectively communicates why companies exist and why they matter. It's surprising how many companies struggle to identify this. This is more difficult than it might seem, but companies that adopt a mission-driven mindset have a competitive advantage.

Now that you've done some initial thinking, you can put your mission to the test. Great missions have three characteristics:

1. Big, but not impossible
2. Clear
3. Not about money

Work through the following activities to identify, hone, and establish a mission that can drive your organization.

DRAFT YOUR MISSION

Think about what your organization does on a strategic level. What is its purpose? Why does it exist?

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is your role in accomplishing that mission?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consider each of these attributes to strengthen the mission you created in the previous activity. We'll examine them one by one in the following sections.

BIG, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE

Some missions are too big to be meaningful, while others are too small to make an impact. Consider Snowflake's current mission:

To mobilize the world's data by building the world's greatest data and applications platform, not just of the cloud era, but in the history of computing.

Let's break this down to see why it works.