Are we successful yet?
Every business has a purpose, and this purpose drives everything: recruitment, project delivery, customer interaction, team communication, and more. It’s the heart and soul of the business.
If a company’s purpose is to build a quick cash cow and fill the owners’ pockets, it will prioritize quick wins over long term investments. Likewise, if an entrepreneur’s end goal is to sell their company for a profit or flex their power as “the boss,” it will be obvious in how they run the business and treat team members.
Building a healthy company culture, empowering your team, and driving sustained success all starts with a thoughtful business purpose. But what, exactly, does it mean to have success?
Wrong metrics for success
When my business partner and I started Blink22, a software development company, one of our most pressing questions was: “when will we be successful?” It’s a common question for young businesses, and a hard one to answer. We began examining more established software development companies. “When we get to be as big/profitable as that company,” we would say, “then we’ll be successful.” Our metric was external. We gauged our own success by comparing our company to others. And that was a mistake!
Four years in, we took a long, honest look at Blink22 and analyzed our growth. We’d scaled the size of our team, taken on larger projects, and improved companies finances significantly. Still, we didn’t feel fulfilled. Neither company size, projects size, profits was makes us feel really fulfilled. It was stressful for us because, even though we were growing and becoming more profitable, we were missing a sense of accomplishment.
Then after long discussions between both of us about what is going wrong here, we realized that Our metric for success was all wrong.
Getting back to our purpose
We turned our attention back at what drove us to start our business in the first place, our original purpose. It’s a purpose we have since used in every job interview we conduct, making sure that our team has a singular vision, a purpose we’re proud of.
Our purpose is to create a welcoming, team-oriented environment that’s both enjoyable and sustainable, one where we are constantly improving our technical skills while bringing in a stable profit, and doing so without bureaucratic and frustrating HR rules or office politics, distractions that hinder so many other companies. We strive to cultivate an environment that gives us the freedom of freelancers and the professionalism of a company — the best of both worlds — while adding value and catalyzing positive change in our community.
Now you may be thinking: “that’s it? Don’t you want to be the BIGGEST software development company in the world, bringing in billions every year???”
Yes and no.
Of course we’d love to be a big, thriving company with tons of profit, but that’s not our core purpose. Rather, those are nice-to-have goals. They’d be great to achieve, but it’s not what we’re focused on day in and day out. Here’s why: do you know what happens when you pursue ONLY huge profits and growth? You run your team into the ground and make life miserable for everyone, all in the name of reaching an arbitrary numbers that another ambitious young company like you may surpass in a few years anyway. You’ll be forever unsatisfied and end up burning out.
So, our goal isn’t to have 1,000 people in the company, it’s not to sell the company, it’s not to be billionaires (although it’d be nice :) ), and it’s certainly not to be “the boss.” Our purpose is simply to create a vibrant, sustainable team environment that leads to financial health.
So, when we examined our business from a new perspective, we realized that we’d already begun fostering this kind of work environment and even achieved some of the nice-to-have goals, and it was a big turning point. This new mindset made us grew less stressed and more focused on helping our company thrive rather than obsessing over someone else’s direction and growth.
The myth of a “successful company”
There’s more than one definition of “success.” It can mean different things to different people, and that’s okay. Don’t compare your company to someone else’s. Their success is separate from your success, so don’t try to imitate them. Though you should exchange ideas with them that help both of you improving.
The idea is that you should define your own metrics for success, ones that are customized for you as an individual or a company, not someone else’s.
What’s Next?
Having reassessed our goals and vision, we’re much happier. Blessed with our amazing team who share the same vision and have the motivation to achieve the same goals, we have big plans to take our company to the next level with confidence that we can do so with a clear understanding of our purpose, the methods to achieve it, and an amazing team who love to work together!
