The Power of Mission Alignment: How it impacts companies and software engineers

I have had the great honor of working for four pre-Series B startups over the last five years (including my own). During this time, I was fortunate to befriend many talented individuals. Some joined what would later become unicorn startups. Through my experiences I observed one consistent pattern. Mission alignment was always the deciding factor in a startup’s success or failure. Let’s find out why.

Defining Mission Alignment

Mission Alignment occurs when each employee’s values, goals, and actions align with the company’s overarching mission, vision, and objectives. The result is an organization that cohesively works towards the same goals. Simple enough!

It’s common in young companies for the mission and vision to be loosely defined and always changing. This is normal. However, a company will never succeed without eventually finding its way. Let’s discuss what happens when it doesn’t.

Consequences of Misalignment

In the absence of mission alignment, the entire company system falters. This is true for companies of every size. However, smaller companies are especially vulnerable. Startups are nothing without their dreams. At this stage, total alignment among founding and early members is crucial. Most startups fail because of internal issues, not external ones. There are many problems to solve, but do you have the right people to do it?

Let’s explore some key elements of every company and how lack of alignment affects each.

1. Communication — Is the first thing that breaks down if no one is on the same page about what must be done and why. Meetings run on with no clear direction or outcomes. Commands will start to appear seemingly randomly and without logical reason. Communicating across multiple missions results in a conflict of interest within the company.
2. Resources — The company has several significant projects running parallel in different directions. It’s unclear how these relate to a single mission or vision. Talent will be spread thin. Because there is no global direction, teams will likely design processes in favor of their local needs, not global ones. Organizations will feel like they’re always behind some imaginary target.
3. Productivity — The result of the first two points is a significant drop in productivity. The most common symptom is that everyone feels like they’re working at their limit. Yet, not much seems to get done. It’s a war of attrition, which the employees will always lose. Over time, as employees burn out, their productivity will drop to near zero.
4. Trust — Employees will start losing confidence in leadership. As a result, disillusionment and nihilism begin to set in big time. While a larger company might be able to recover from this state, a startup is essentially knocked out. The loss of trust cascades through the ranks. Middle managers and leads defend projects out of professionalism. Lower-level employees will likely start lumping their managers into the “bag of problems.” This is only sometimes true; the manager might agree with them but cannot say it.
5. Culture — The consequence of all these compounding failures is a loss of culture. Culture is the energy that binds a company’s people together. It includes rituals, processes, environment, and more. Like trust, culture takes time and effort to build and protect. Losing it is irrecoverable for an early-stage startup.
6. Money — By now, the company will be bleeding cash at an unsustainable rate. There will be more issues than are fixable. Leadership will start picking problem children to eliminate. Unfortunately, the problem is rarely solved in this way. Alignment and culture are primarily set by a company’s leadership. Don’t drink the kool-aid of “flat hierarchies” or “bottom-up leadership.” The force that drives everything within a company is the CEO/Founders. Power may dilute across other entities over time; however, that is a can of worms we won’t touch today.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times — Bruce Lee

Note: There is a significant difference between how startups and enterprises operate. At large enterprises like Microsoft, Meta, and Google, you will see many “side missions” being explored in parallel. However, these side missions always ultimately relate to the parent company’s core mission. Ultimately, all companies are battling a combination of these elements in varying degrees.

Takeaways For Software Engineers

Understanding how mission alignment affects companies can help you make better personal and professional decisions. This is an important skill for all engineers to have.

1. When job searching, seek to understand how mission-aligned the company is. Vet the leadership and employees you speak to. Ask them about culture, communication, and workflows, etc. Get a feel for the overall sentiment, excitement, and belief in the mission.
2. Use the company’s mission to drive decisions at work. If there is debate around a feature or time allocation towards a project, back up your proposal with data related to the company’s mission. How often you receive approval might surprise you.
3. Know when your company is losing alignment and speak up. It’s not always possible to change the outcome, depending on your position. Usually though, speaking up about your concerns and proposing a solution is beneficial. In a startup, most people are willing to hear concerns, especially valid ones. Remember to be nice about it! If you’re unclear whether issues are due to misalignment or ordinary proceedings, discuss it with your peers and mentors.
4. Know when to call it quits. Don’t wait too long to move on from a bad environment. If the ship is clearly sinking, and you’ve fallen into the trap of nihilism and disillusionment, it might be time to move on. Having grit at a startup and sticking it out through tough times has merit. However, knowing when to cut your losses is equally important. Save yourself from mental health issues. Take your talents to greener pastures. I’ve been advised, “It’s the same everywhere; don’t go hoping for too much,” but I don’t buy that. Some companies are better than others. Be optimistic.

I didn’t know any of this early in my career. It took several failures over several years to develop an understanding of how alignment underpins everything we do. I also saw it play out in many different ways. Understanding the power of mission alignment can help us engineers lead our teams to better outcomes. We all play a tiny part in the bigger story!

If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend and consider subscribing if you haven’t already. Also, if you have feedback about how I can improve the content, please comment or find me on LinkedIn!

Thanks for reading,
Jason Wang