[sushicalculus]

Those aspects are also too inward/selfish.

What About the company? Did you join for the mission, is the mission something you still support, is the mission something the leadership actually conveys or is it lip service, do you feel you’re in a position to be impactful for that mission.

Sometimes you might get a crappy job at a company with a cool mission (such as SpaceX) but it doesn’t mean you have to leave. Transfer internally!

[burntoutfire]

How many companies out there have a mission that one can give two shits about? They're making some commercial goods and/or providing services, they're not saving the world. The only place that comes to my mind which has a legit mission I could get behind is probably the government and its various agencies.

[leetrout]

I’ve yet to work somewhere that has instilled faith in their internal transfer process. It’s rife with subjective and/or closed door requirements and “deals” like your current manager having to agree to the transfer.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Be extremely, extremely, extremely careful for staying at any company for the "mission". The primary mission of any capitalist company is to make their biggest investors and founders a lot of money, and you shouldn't forget that.

While some exceptions do exist (I actually think your SpaceX example is a very good one - Musk has pointed out, rightfully IMO, that if he just wanted to get richer there are easier ways to do it), they are few and far between. VCs and investors largely depend on the "mission" myth solely as a motivational tool to get employees to work harder.

[bumby]

If mission is what is a primary driver, you don’t have to work for a for-profit company. There are many opportunities in government, NGOs, not-for-profits etc.

[dvtrn]

I think mission statements ought to go away entirely, anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/jobs/23mgmt.html

[bumby]

I would argue the examples in that article are poor mission statements. They are really just PR fluff.

A real mission statement is suppose to provide a lens through which tough decisions can be viewed, similar to the military idea of “commanders intent”. Vague, overly generalized mission statements like those in the article don’t really provide that sort of framework.

The most general I‘ve come across while still having some sort of decision meaning was “create more value than you capture”. So if you are proposing some rent-seeking idea, you should know it’s a bad idea.

[dvtrn]

A real mission statement is suppose to provide a lens through which tough decisions can be viewed, similar to the military idea of “commanders intent”.

I think a well written and deliberately structured playbook of org strategy (or departmental playbooks) is better than a mission statement for this.

Taking your military reference: these are akin to Field Manuals. Commander’s intent is meaningless unless there’s an established tradecraft behind it that governs how to execute on that intention in a way that brings alignment to behavior, initiative and decentralized execution of said intent.

Mission statements probably give you a “North Star”, but they don’t-on their own-necessarily help teams execute

[bumby]

I agree with your overall view, but I don't think the understanding of commanders intent is quite right. Field manuals are meant to give the tactical, detailed guidance. "Commanders intent" is specifically meant for times when there is no detailed guidance. It's meant to guide decisions when the situation is unique enough, or moving quickly enough, to require improvisation because there is no standard procedure or field manual to guide it. Instead of a strict procedure, it's meant to give a philosophical decision framework.

"Provide the most value to shareholders" and "Provide more value than you capture" are two high-level (granted, not the most specific) mission statements. But if you can imagine an ethically ambiguous decision point, you can see how each can lead into diverging choices. Whether mission statements truly guide decisions or are just lip-service is largely a leadership issue.

[dvtrn]

Maybe my view is merely more radical than tradition requires: if executors and operators of intention find themselves in an ethically ambiguous situation, crippled by analysis paralysis, the commander has failed to sufficiently articulate his intentions and directives and possibly even in the training of standards and requirements.

The entire purpose of commanders intent is to make the mission clearly known, and allow for decentralized decision making of the tactical day-to-day. It should never replace tradecraft, yet it also shouldn’t stand in the way of independent thinking either.

Instead, those ethical decisions should include commanders’s intent.

Gen. Bruce Clarke has a brilliant book on this, “About Face”-with many lessons on this echoed more recently by the likes of Gen. James Mattis (“Call-Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead”) and the popular Jocko Willink (“Leadership Strategies and Tactics-FM-02”). Therefore I say thusly: commander’s intent informs tradecraft, tradecraft is commander’s intent manifested.

Edit: I believe I got the Clarke book wrong, instead it appears to be a collection of his writings on leadership, he himself didn’t give it this name apparently.

[alecbz]

> Those aspects are also too inward/selfish. What About the company?

Wasn't that covered by: "Community: Am I excited and happy to go to work every morning and see my teammates. Do I believe in the mission, vision, and leadership of this team or company?"

> Sometimes you might get a crappy job at a company with a cool mission (such as SpaceX) but it doesn’t mean you have to leave. Transfer internally!

Yeah the author specifically mentions this: "Change doesn't always mean to quit."

[bumby]

Personally, I agree. I was just trying to put your comment/critique in the context of the article.

For me, connecting to an overall mission/purpose is more important and provides the discipline and motivation to continue when the job isn’t hitting on all the cylinders outlined in the article.

It all comes down to what you want to optimize for. The article seems to make a case to optimize for self actualization. Your comment about exiting before an IPO being a mistake seems to elude that one should optimize for maximum financial gain. Neither of those are my particular priority, but to each their own