All successful companies have a mission. Some of them you know because they’re very open and vocal about them, but some you don’t.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”
- Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices”
- Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
Sometimes decisions are not simple – a point best highlighted by Gair Maxwell’s quote:
“Leaders make difficult decisions with incomplete information”
Gair Maxwell
Companies have these so that decisions that need to be made are easier to make – if a decision helps the company achieve their mission then it’s easy to make that decision and move the whole company forwards.
They also describe what success looks like so the company knows when they are achieving success. They are aspirational statements that seek to guide a company to the top of their field.