

Ask HN: Have you defined your vision and mission? - Roedou

My company is currently talking internally about defining our 'mission' and 'vision'.<p>Are there any startups or more established companies here that successfully went through this process?<p>Some specific questions: How did you get there? (Was the mission/vision pretty easy to define, or did it take time to 'discover' it?) What did you learn from the experience? Did you publish your mission publicly once done?
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patio11
Having a mission/vision is wonderful, but I think defining a mission is likely
wasted effort. It feels like make-work to me, like writing formal business
plans.

Whose life gets better when a mission statement is published? What user is
crying in the dark for want of your vision?

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harryh
An excellent mission statement can definitely help with recruiting. A lot of
people have read "Organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful." and thought "Ya, I'd like to help with that."

A well crafted mission statement can also be a tremendous help internally in
terms of getting everyone on the same page. "What are we all doing here?" is
an important question to answer once you have more than a few people working
together.

~~~
rmc
_A lot of people have read "Organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful." and thought "Ya, I'd like to help with
that."_

You're talking about Google. I'd presume things like good salary, geek-y
friendly workplace, 20% project etc. helped much more with hiring than their
motto. If Google didn't have a motto like that, but had all the other perks I
mentioned, I think they would still be able to attract employees.

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mindcrime
Yes, after reading _Good to Great_ by Jim Collins (because it was recommended
by another author I respect, which was, IIRC, Steve Blank), I decided to sit
down and formalize some stuff about the vision / mission / values for Fogbeam
Labs. The first draft that we came up with looks something like this (not to
suggest that this couldn't use some more work,mind you)

\-------

Our mission...

Build software and provide services that enable organizations to display
greater “organizational intelligence;” sense, respond and react to their
environment in a more agile manner, and support more adaptive and effective
organizational structures.

Democratize access to advanced information processing software by
participating in the development of F/OSS software which can be used freely by
organizations of any size or nature.

Give back to the world by participating as an ethical member of the world-side
free-software / open-source software community.

Create an organization where people dedicated to the advancement of technology
will _want_ to work, will be rewarded for doing well, and will receive
nurturance, guidance, and encouragement.

Promote entrepreneurship as the best tool available for raising the standards
of living for people worldwide, by sponsoring educational initiatives and
supporting charitable organizations which promote: STEM ( “Science /
Technology / Engineering / Math”) education and education on Economics,
Business, and Entrepreneurship.

Core Values

We favor...

Transparency and openness... over secrecy and information hiding … in our
relationships with each other, our partners, the F/OSS community, and our
local communities.

Critical thinking, logic and reason … over … superstition, blind adherence to
dogma, and groupthink.

Respect for the individual and their freedom of choice … over … herd
mentality, conformance for the sake of conformance, and fear of what we
consider different.

Courage and the willingness to commit to our principles … over … knee-jerk
reactions, conformance to peer pressure, and compromise of our fundamental
values.

The long view and building for the future, while not sacrificing the present …
over … short-sighted compromise of our vision and values in order to achieve a
tactical objective today.

Being Good … over … Being Evil.

###

As far as how long it took... when I sat down and started thinking about my
values (which, because I was a solo founder at the time, meant they _were_ the
default company values) and the kind of company I am trying to build, it
didn't take long to get the basics in place.

Did we publish it publicly? Yes, as part of a post to the company blog:

[http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-
custome...](http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-customer-
development.html)

We then revisited the "mission statement" stuff in our very next post:

[http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-
episode...](http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-
episode-2-journey-of.html)

Honestly, I think this stuff matters. I can't prove it scientifically (and
supposedly neither can Jim Collins, since some of his research has
subsequently been "debunked") but I believe it very strongly.

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eduardordm
You should define it every year. (specially if you working in tech). Best if
before or after large projects.

You could define two visions, one for your company itself and one for whom
your company is working for.

V1: "Make our company more desirable, fun and a nice place to be""

V2: "Make facebook a friendly place for children"

Missions have a tendency to be useless and cheesy. Try to keep it close to
your reality. Example: "Deploy a basecamp killer"

Be careful not to sprinkle your vision/mission with strategy or values.

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trienthusiast
I think defining vision/mission it's very important if you do it seriously, as
in seriously start thinking about what your company is, what it stands for,
what it wants to achieve and how it wants to get there.

The value is not _strictly_ in the statement themselves, but in the process
that came to define them and in how you implement the "how to get there".

I would reccomend everybody to read HBRs 10 Must Read on Business Strategy
(<http://amzn.to/wuvIoW>), a small book that seriously makes you think why
some companies fail and some make it.

There's a full chapter on mission/vision and I think it's your best answer on
how to approach the whole process.

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cdvonstinkpot
I spent a little time on it, and am not really happy with how it turned out. I
wait for one day when I'll be inspired by something and can revise it into
something better, but it never happens.

In my case, I read some business plan books and paraphrased examples of other
companies' statements. Again, I'm not happy with my first drafts, but don't
feel it's important enough to spend real time on, so it waits to be improved.

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pecciv
Mission of the Mission Statement: Two words

