Are you a mission-driven business?
I posed this question to my community last week, because I have felt a shift in my own business starting to surface. I can feel this tension inside me wanting - needing - to ensure that the work I’m doing is creating a bigger impact in the world.
Since I started my business, I have long wanted to ensure that the work I do is about more than making money. I care deeply about women's issues, access to resources, and more importantly, for their voices to be heard. I strongly believe that entrepreneurship affords women that path, and yet, access to effective training, capital and funding, and good mentors continues to be a deterrent, especially in the developing world.
As I’ve been digging into what I’m trying to create, I’ve found there are different types of business. Some businesses are purely focused on making a profit. Others are focused on making a profit while also ensuring that everything they do makes an impact on their local - or global - community. Still others are committed to creating real social and environmental change on a grand scale. In reading about companies that fall into each sector, it's awe-inspiring the impact they are making.
After some thought, it’s clear to me that I fall into the “mission-driven” bucket. I lived in Egypt from 1990-1994 during some of the most formative years of my life and then studied abroad at the American University in Cairo the fall of 1999. I speak Arabic and majored in Political Science with an emphasis on Middle Eastern politics. These experiences, along with the bulk of 2017 in Ethiopia, really instilled in me a deep desire to help women grow, be seen and heard, and to develop their own sense of agency and autonomy.
This empowerment is critical to our overall impact, socially and economically. In fact, the data is incredibly clear. “Women make up one-half of the world's population but only contribute to 37 percent of the global GDP. An economy cannot operate at its full potential if half of its population cannot fully contribute to it. (World Bank)” Improving gender equality, access to resources, and the ability to contribute their time, energy, and talents positively impacts GDP, results in higher employment levels, and increases productivity.
All the details of how and what this will ultimately look like are slowly emerging, but as I put the pieces together, I can consistently use women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship, particularly in the developing world, as a filter for my decision making, resource usage, and other expenditures. It shapes organizations I support, collaborate with, and promote. That lens is a powerful and exciting tool, and in some ways makes decision-making clearer.
So, what is a mission-driven business?
Mission-driven businesses, their founders, leaders, and employees are:
Borderline obsessed with solving a problem that impacts others
Committed to a mission that truly drives their business - including strategic decision-making, hiring, investments...
Typically making investments using their business - time, talent, and money - to directly impact the community while simultaneously addressing a shared challenge
Committed for the long-haul. They are not outright married to a particular service/product but rather to addressing the problem and tend to be willing to adapt as the landscape of their problem changes
I think Bill Damon, the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence and author of Path to Purpose sums mission-driven businesses up well in his definition of purpose. Mission-driven businesses have “a long-term, forward-looking intention to accomplish aims that are both meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.”
As you reflect on your own business, and what drives you, your decision-making, and resource allocation, here are few questions to consider:
Why does your business exist?
What compels you to take action each and every day, even when it’s hard?
What problem(s) does your business solve?
Does your business make the world a better place? For whom? How?
You may find, after answering these questions, that your business doesn’t have some epic mission, and that’s okay. This is rooted in something personal, and that may not apply to you. Keep serving your audience and doing good in your corner of the world.
Perhaps though, after digging in, you found you’re deeply compelled to make a dent in a big problem in your community or the world. If that’s you, I invite you to think about how you can bring pieces of this into your daily decision-making. Use it as your filter. Evaluate where you’re spending your time, energy, and talent now and see if a simple shift would make a difference. Find people who share your vision or want to be a part of what you’re doing. Build a strategy and execution plan that will bring it to life.
If you’re uncertain how to do this or really need some strategic direction, I’d love to chat. Helping you build and grow a mission-driven business is my jam.
