Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website

CHAPTER FOUR

TELLING THE STORY TO YOUR TEAM

If you've spent enough time conceiving, writing, and revising your story and telling it to investors, you're ready to move on to the next phase: telling it to your team. What is the goal you and your team are moving toward (your mission)? What will the world look like once you've achieved that goal (your vision)? What are you willing to do—and what are you not willing to do—to realize that vision (your values)? Most startup CEOs will have answers to those questions before Day 1. Like every other part of the startup story, your answers will only improve as you learn more about your customers and your marketplace, and respond accordingly.

DEFINING YOUR MISSION, VISION, AND VALUES

As a startup CEO, you'll never stop adjusting your goals and behaviors to market realities. At a certain stage, you should have a clear idea of who your customers are and how your company serves them. In fact, it should be clear enough to state in a handful of short sentences. As David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad wrote in the Harvard Business Review article “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?,” most executives can't do this. “It's a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can't, neither can anyone else.” Hopefully, this statement doesn't apply to the senior people at your company, but what if it does? And if it's not applicable to senior people, could it be ...