5 Ways to Answer the One Question Most Important To Your Company
Most businesses are places where employees report to work. They clock in, complete tasks, and escape at the end of the day.
No one wants to work at those places.
Your company isn’t like that. It’s a destination where exceptional people are eager to put their talents to use. Your employees, investors, and managers are excited every day. The company’s purpose is clear, and its conviction is strong.
It’s not magic: you’ve answered your company’s “why” question:
Why do you do what you do?
If you know the answer to the founding question of your company — why do you do what you do? — and if the answer excites you every time you think of it, there’s no limit to the people or resources you can enroll in achieving it. Every company has a different answer. If you don’t have one yet, consider these five ways in which your company’s mission might transcend your shareholders and your balance sheet and impact the world around you.
- Industry insight. Your company exists because you see a way to improve how things are currently done. Maybe a negative experience with the status quo left you convinced that there had to be a better way, and you set out to make it happen. Maybe you’ve envisioned a way to make a certain sales process more customer-centric. Whatever the improvement, your company is an electric jolt to your industry.
- Because it’s time. The inspiration to change the industry may have long been there, but it’s only possible to achieve now. The game-changing factor is generally the advancement of technology, which is the lone market variable that evolves as inexorably as time itself does. Even the most hidebound industries will eventually whip to the winds of technology, and companies like yours are the agents of change.
- Meeting an unseen demand. Your company gives people something that they didn’t know they needed until they saw what you have to offer. Maybe you foresee a trend that the market hasn’t adequately addressed yet, but that your customers instantly recognize when you present it. Maybe you free up their bandwidth by changing the way they see a normal business process. You’ve made life easier for your customers, who after using your product, can’t imagine going back to how they used to do it.
- Because you’re the best at it. Simply put, your company is the best in your field. You are in business because of the client testimonials telling you — at every trade show, on every sales call — how superior your product or service is to what else is out there. This is also an important “why answer” to recognize in individual departments within the company. Do you have a marketing department that generates more leads than their counterparts in any comparable company? Do you have a content team that is twice as creative as the closest competitor? Search for ways in which you’re best-in-class and see if you can scale it up to the whole organization.
- You’re vital. Driven people are motivated by the knowledge that the service they provide is essential to the operations of other companies. The calling that your employees answer is that them being great at their jobs makes other great things possible. The feedback you get from companies that rely on your product in their basic business functions is the most sincere form of validation you can imagine. You’re proud to be a platform for your clients to do what they do best. You enable other businesses to answer their own “why” questions.
Yes, your company wants to make money, like every other business in the world. You have to, in fact; it’s how the lights stay on. But that’s not why you get out of bed in the morning, and it’s definitely not enough to attract talented people — the kind that make companies great — into your office. No, your company exists for a reason, and nothing gets you more excited than sharing it and making the world take notice.
