More Than Just Words: The Power of a Purpose-Driven Mission
A mission statement is more than just words on a website or a blurb in an ad. It's the very core of your business. It's the thing that defines the very purpose of your business and builds the company culture. To put it plainly, it's the thing that keeps the business running. And while there may be some similarities between a mission, vision and value statement, they are actually different things and serve different purposes.
If you're wondering whether your business needs a mission statement, let me tell you a story...
Google's story starts out in 1995 on the campus of Stanford University, where two computer science grad students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked together to build a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the world wide web. True to form, the two young men named their search engine Backrub, which was later changed to Google.
Now you might be wondering where the name Google comes from...
Google is a misspelling of the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose the name to represent the immense amount of information their search engine would organize and make accessible. The "google" spelling was a typo by their friend and grad school classmate, Sean Anderson, who had originally suggested the name "googolplex", another word that describes an unimaginably large number. He was searching for domain names and accidentally typed "google.com", which happened to be available.
So what IS Google's mission statement?
Since its inception in those dorms at Stanford, Google's mission has been ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". And while the company itself has grown astronomically, the core mission has stayed the same. Google still creates products that help organize and spread information globally, from Gmail to cell phones and YouTube. In 30 years, Google has added such a wide range of products that the company is now a core part of the majority of the population's everyday lives.
THAT is the power of a purpose-driven mission statement.
Ready to build a business that lasts? Send us a message!
image by Valentina Conde
If you're wondering whether your business needs a mission statement, let me tell you a story...
The Story of Google's Mission Statement: A Case Study in Success
Google's story starts out in 1995 on the campus of Stanford University, where two computer science grad students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked together to build a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the world wide web. True to form, the two young men named their search engine Backrub, which was later changed to Google.
Now you might be wondering where the name Google comes from...
Google is a misspelling of the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose the name to represent the immense amount of information their search engine would organize and make accessible. The "google" spelling was a typo by their friend and grad school classmate, Sean Anderson, who had originally suggested the name "googolplex", another word that describes an unimaginably large number. He was searching for domain names and accidentally typed "google.com", which happened to be available.
So what IS Google's mission statement?
Since its inception in those dorms at Stanford, Google's mission has been ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". And while the company itself has grown astronomically, the core mission has stayed the same. Google still creates products that help organize and spread information globally, from Gmail to cell phones and YouTube. In 30 years, Google has added such a wide range of products that the company is now a core part of the majority of the population's everyday lives.
THAT is the power of a purpose-driven mission statement.
Ready to build a business that lasts? Send us a message!
image by Valentina Conde