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!
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing on much other than you can't have a field manual for everything which is where the commanders intent comes in. Yes, field manuals should align with the commanders intent just like standard procedures should align with a mission statement. But the commanders intent is there for the times when there isn't clear guidance. Same goes, IMO, with a mission statement to align the values of a company. When a decision maker comes across a situation not explicitly covered by a standard procedure/field manual, they need to ensure whatever decision they make aligns with the overall mission/commanders intent.
If the leader "has failed to sufficiently articulate his intentions" that means there is no well-understood commanders intent. The leader has failed to articulate the why behind the mission. The same is true (as previously stated) for poorly formed mission statements. They don't articulate the values of an organization in a meaningful way to guide decisions. If you are making the case that there should be clear tactical, detailed guidance provided on all scenarios, that is the opposite of decentralized command.
>Instead, those ethical decisions should include commanders’s intent.
This goes without saying. That is exactly why I said it provides the framework for decision making.
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."
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