Are there any startups or more established companies here that successfully went through this process?
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?
Whose life gets better when a mission statement is published? What user is crying in the dark for want of your vision?
That said, it's not something I'd spend 3 weeks on, or something I'd pay $500,000 for a team of consultants to come in and assist with! It's - IMO - an exercise of a few hours of focused thinking and writing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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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...
We then revisited the "mission statement" stuff in our very next post:
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-episode...
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.