Missions, Not Margins, Inspire Us

Posted on December 12, 2010 by schoeben

Last year, I helped my wife found a startup.  We incorporated, bought office supplies, set up shop in the dining room, fought for new business, and even fought with each other now and then.  In short, we did whatever it took to get our fledgling operation off the ground and make it a success.  In contrast to most Silicon Valley startups that are haunted by a lack of profitability, ours would be “not profitable by design.”  Our agency, CASSY (Counseling and Support Services for Youth) would be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Most startup ventures fantasize about someday becoming cash flow positive on their way to making a profit.  The push for them is to generate more and more revenue, keep costs down and grow profit.  Business 101.  Not with us.  Although we need to be fiscally responsible in order to survive, we’re technically not allowed to make a profit.  Sure, we need to generate revenue to cover costs.  We can even bring in more money than we spend in a given year.  However, we cannot grow equity since there’s no such thing as equity in our world.  Instead, we must pour everything we make back into the organization to achieve our mission.

As a nonprofit, we are all about “mission.”  Turns out this is an incredibly good thing. Instead of pursuing profit growth (insert pig and truffle analogy here), CASSY exists for no other reason than to pursue its mission – to de-stigmatize mental health services and make supporting students’ social and emotional well-being the norm in our local schools.  We dream of a world where all kids get the social and emotional support they need to be successful in school and in life.

What’s powerful are not the specifics of our particular mission, it’s that we have one and that everyone involved is committed to do their part to help achieve it.  Executive Director.  Staff.  Board of Directors.  Community Supporters.  They are all individuals who believe in and are truly committed to pursuing this shared mission.  Together they have a purpose, a reason for being.

In today’s world where people are more engaged with their social network than they are with their workplace, it’s quite possible that commercial organizations could learn something here.  Although companies are still getting lots of our hours, most of them are not getting much of our passion.  Successful organizations create a culture around a mission worth pursuing.  Microsoft in the early days.  Apple today.  Tesla.  Facebook.  The Body Shop.  Not only do they have a clear mission and culture, but they enlist  others who are enthusiastic about contributing to the mission, folks ready to raise their cups with both hands and chug the corporate KoolAid with reckless abandon.  Why do they drink?  Because they love how it tastes.

To engage us, organizations need to inspire us.  After all, helping a corporate entity make their quarterly number just isn’t that exciting.

Give us a cause, a crusade.  Something to “Like”…

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  • Madeleine Butler

    How much of that passion is inspired by the energy and vision of a strong leader? And what is the scale of the organizations that are able to move to that kind of pulse?

    The companies you mention are for the most part young, or, in the case of Apple, an outlier culture — I really don’t know how Steve manages to keep the startup vibe going in a mature company, but that was certainly part of the energy I felt there. Is The Body Shop really that much fun to work at now that it’s part of l’Oreal? I understand the marketing spin, but I’m curious about the culture.

    Bureaucracies are inefficient and soul-killing, no matter how good the mission is. I think part of what creates the suffocation is the hierarchical weight that forces people to have to spend most of their time in meetings and most of their effort clamoring (or spinning) for attention — or for survival. Perception is often rewarded abundantly while actual productivity suffers.

    Is it even possible for a large company to operate in an innovative and joyful way? This is an old debate, and II’m not sure I’ve seen any real solution to the scale problem.

  • kirkpaulsen

    Rob, you’re as articulate and insightful as ever. Spot on!

  • Jim Thrall

    In contrast to mission, I find that vision in both an organization and its principal leadership defines what the world can be through the work of the organization. Mission describes the goals of the present and speaks somewhat to the “how” of the organization’s current efforts. Vision speaks to the future and outlines where the organization wants to be.

    The values, foundation, purpose, and meaning are derived through the vision of the organization and leader. The mission will describe what the organization is committed to doing so well that following its charge leads to the realization or approach of the vision.

    In short, mission is to management as vision is to leadership. I feel that this applies to both for-profit as well as non-profit enterprises. Making a product, providing a service for fee, or bringing about a social change all rely on clear vision to drive the organization and an incongruent mission will fail to guide the stakeholders. Sometimes the vision is simply piles of money – in and of itself, this seems to be a terrible vision that will provide a dubious guidepath to the most mission-oriented constituent.

    Thanks for the stimulating article, Rob. I subscribe to your organization’s vision. Let’s Go!

  • Keith

    The issue of Mission and Vision is one that is typically debated by those who either have the intellect and critical faculties to consider the purpose of their lives, or the time and money to be concerned with it. In the real world, where people need to make a living if they are going to afford a roof, food, and transport, none of these things matter in a conscious way. All that matters is a sense of well being. It has been diced and spliced a thousand ways, but it comes down to a few easy to articulate concepts for ‘the workers’ who do the business of a business. They want to be respected for their effort, by their boss. And they want that respect to translate into a form of honor. They dont really care about “the company” unless it means their job has become ‘unstable’. They want to feel like they are part of something bigger, a group, a clique, a team, a partnership. They can get it from gossiping, or bad mouthing the jerk upper management guys, or they can get it by drinking on Friday nights. But they want to feel a part of something bigger. And lastly, they want ‘money’ off the table. They want to make enough money that they can cover their bills, and put some away, and have a little fun, and maybe take a vacation once a year. But they don’t need to get rich. So to summarize: They want to feel like they are in High School again. Where things arent so heavy, the bills are paid, they are having fun, and they have work to do that is important but not a lifes purpose. I realize this is somewhat off topic, but it is germane. Well maybe not. I ran a sales team in Los Angeles. Our goal was to make a sales number. And that team would have walked into Hell for me. I practiced all of the above styles and methods that were taught to me in management classes, but more like Michael Jordan would learn a new technique, than like a freshly minted MBA would a business theorem. Want to know something funny? That very core group, that very same team of sales and support professionals, loved that experience so much, they have ‘regrouped’ for a new guy, in the same field. Finding ways to rehire each of themselves into the new organization, in what I tend to think, is an expression of trying to ‘recapture’ a 3 year ride that everyone loved, from Monday at 8:30 am until Friday at 5:00. And what I think is still curious is that I would go to management meetings, and we would spend endless hours working on a Vision for the Company, and Mission for our people. And all the while, I kept up the ‘love’ that the team needed, regardless of whatever Mission or Vision we were working on in the management meetings. Its the love. Thats what makes organizations roll.