Book review: MISSION
How the Best in Business Break Through
Genres:
- Leadership
- Business
Review posted on:
29.06.2016
The number of pages:
260 pages
Book rating:
2.5/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2015
Who should read this book:
- All Entrepreneurs by heart, Managers, people in leadership roles.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
I found Mission How the Best in Business Break Through on a shelf in a library when searching for books about leadership. I decided to pick it up after taking a look at the covers and table of contents, sadly there were almost no reviews about the book online. Entrepreneurship is not easy and many people have a great idea, product, or service but they lack the courage to pursue entrepreneurship as there are many pitfalls, not just opportunities. So books like Mission by Michael Hayman and Nick Giles are great tools to help motivate people to take their shot at entrepreneurship. I hope that Mission is not just a motivational book about entrepreneurship and leadership and that the authors provide a clear template or at least steps of the basics of how successful businesses operate and how can small businesses implement that in their daily processes.
My thoughts about the book:
In Mission, the authors show how successful businesses should be able to define their core objective in a sentence, believe in it, and communicate it to others in order to win in an intensely competitive business environment. In the book Michael Hayman and Nick Giles share many high-profile examples like Ella’s Kitchen, Uber, and Airbnb – and explain why business cannot just be about the pursuit of profit any longer. Sadly the book does not provide a full template of what an entrepreneur should be aware of when building up a business, instead, it focuses more on the motivational and leadership side of growing your business. As a motivational book, it’s a great read, but not so much if you are looking to find the ins and outs of building a business.
If you picked up this book please let me know what you think about it in the comment section.
My notes from the book:
- Through mission, ideas are translated into a practical purpose that drives a company forward. It lends clarity and directness to the everyday directions of a business.
- Great companies must inspire confidence but there is an equal need to evoke strong feelings. The feeling is an asset that is easily dismissed by the cynical. Yet it is the key to belief and it is belief that leads to action.
- Every good business story begins with a mission. It is something that demands regular and consistent attention: a code of belief and values to be maintained, developed, and shared.
- A business will all too often flounder without a central mission to galvanize its people and give them a common purpose. Be sure everyone knows what your founding mission is and how that purpose has evolved over time.
- A business will all too often flounder without a central mission to galvanize its people and give them a common purpose. Be sure everyone knows what your founding mission is and how that purpose has evolved over time.
- The battleground in business has moved from what you do to what people say, think, and feel about you. This is the battle of reputation, a battle for the mind.
- Many entrepreneurs could be characterized as pathological optimists: people agitated by the status quo, restless for change, and haunted by the idea of missed opportunities. That is necessary because so often the first incarnation of a new idea with potential will be ruthlessly shot down by everyone except its creator.
- People may listen to what you want to tell them. But chances are they will only really believe it when they hear someone else saying the same thing. That is the power of preference.
- Create benefits for customers in order to earn their lifetime loyalty. You can do that by understanding people’s lives better than anybody else and responding with innovative new products and services that make their lives a little bit easier.
- When talking to your team/employees about the values of your company ask them two things: What do you think we stand for, and what do you think we should stand for?
- The culture and values of the business act as your anchor and reference point, focusing minds on the essential mission and purpose.
- Culture matters because in the life of a business there quickly comes a point where the founding team can no longer see or influence all, or indeed most, of what goes on in the business.
- The culture and values of the business act as your anchor and reference point, focusing minds on the essential mission and purpose.
- Hire young. Take bright young people who are naturally collaborative they break all the rules and they build something better, stronger, and newer because they don’t know anything else.
- The front line of an organization, public or private, always knows what’s wrong. They might not know how to solve it, but they will always tell you the problems if you are brave enough to hear them.
- In business, the tribal instinct is vital because it is based on bonds of trust, forged in the heart of challenging circumstances, long hours, and victory against the odds. What may start as a group of individuals can become a team where people instinctively trust in their abilities to deliver and support one another.
- Binding people to a cause that they can believe in is the most powerful way of both attracting and retaining the talent you as a company need to grow.
- Your business story affects the entire company and is central to how you deliver, sell, and grow as a business. It is the manifestation and articulation of the purpose that binds employees and customers alike to a successful brand.
- Good work does not speak for itself – it requires a storyteller who can bring it to life for audiences who might otherwise never know it existed, or why they need to be a part of it.
- Failure, however great or small, is an inevitable part of building something, it is a learning experience that helps you to craft your mission.
- Failure must not be an end but a means to learning the lessons and obtaining the insights to get it right the next time. The experience of failure can be bitter but the ultimate outcome need not be.
