Your Everyday Mission Statement in 3 Pieces

A common and frequent discussion that comes up when talking about resumes is the use of a personal mission statement as an introduction to you.  Take for example:

"My mission is to unilaterally leverage best-in-class tactics to synergistically deliver continuous value to delight the customer, and investors through leadership, innovation, and partnership."

While its fun to play mad libs with buzzwords, at the end of the day no one cares what you say your mission, people will infer your mission.  Take the analogy of writing an essay; if your mission statement is your conclusion, then your resume is a list of supporting arguments that can be structured to support your conclusion and a neat and tidy way.

1) A mission statement is a virtue and not a task.

Superman is a pretty famous guy (you may know him).  His is one of the most famous mantras of them all: "Truth, justice, and the American way".  Though if you're familiar with Superman you'll notice that he actually spends most of his time beating in baddies.  That being said, its highly doubtful that anyone would say "Superman's mission is to kick ass".

In his TED talk Simon Sinek phrases this phenomenon as the golden circle; a hierarchy of sorts that basically goes as follows:

Why -> How -> What

People don't buy what you do, but why you do it.  Mission statements are the exact same.

2) Establish how to execute your mission.

How does Superman defend "Truth, justice and the American way"?  He has a pretty straight forward sequence that he follows:

Beat down baddies -> Help good people -> Beat down more baddies

This is the 'How' you do something.  Quant people like algorithms based in science, while marketers like strategies based in psychology, but the common string here is that everyone understands you need a plan or set of tasks.  Typically the 'how' can be broken down into a Maslow type hierarchy of needs, where an objective is broken in to a pyramid of smaller objectives.

3) Prove your resolve by executing.

Superman doesn't go home at the end of the day after kicking ass and then call it a career.  He goes through his sequence without fail because of his strong resolve to the cause, and the realization of how important each task is to the mission.

Finally we get to the "What" - actions that you take. Randy Pausch refers to this in his "Last Lecture" as walls.  Walls aren't there to keep you out, they're there to keep the other people out.  They're there to let you prove how badly you want something.  This is where the work ethic comes into play: early mornings, and late nights.

What can the internet do for me? (and by 'me' I mean 'us')

Hi Internet!

This is Matt, huge fan of your work; long time reader, first time caller.  And there's a really good reason for that, but just hold that thought a second.

Lately I've noticed that there is huge push for the whole 'Social Media' craze as the latest and greatest in marketing.  As someone relatively new to marketing, I find this phenomenon a bit confusing.  Reason why social media has found success is because it took power away from large corporations, and placed it in the hands of the enthusiast.

According to Seth Godin, social media allows us to live in a world where its stopped being good enough to make average products for average people, because companies no longer had the ability to push market and customers now had the power of aggregators or online reviews.  Almost like an electronic renaissance the customer could track down new and unbiased purchasing advice, suddenly overnight marketing goes from a model of:

Promotion/Placement > Product

To:

Product > Promotion/Placement

Problem is, the internet is a bit too smart to let this happen because shenanigans can still help you to top of a google search (even if you are average and average).  The general populous won't care, or be passionate, but they'll see your crappy website at the top of their search.

Getting back tot he original point; I've avoid blogging because I've always seen blogs as glorified spam.  But as a creative marketer, engineer and hacker, I more than anyone see that if the internet can be broken with tactical spamming, then in theory with the right tactics spammers too can be out witted quality content.

I'm here on a mission.
I'm here to have a discussion.
I'm here to seek transparency.
I'm here to learn tech-marketing.
I'm here to teach tech-marketing.
I'm here to join all of the quality bloggers out there to drown out the garbage on the internet.