"If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which way you go."
- Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland
 
"Those people that find higher purpose to business than earning money are the ones making all the damn money." - Greg Glassman, Founder and CEO of CrossFit

I used to ask new hires if their prior company had a mission.  They almost all said yes.  When I asked, "Was it relevant in day-to-day life at the company?"  They would say no.  It was usually on a poster somewhere and too long, not memorable. Research backs the widespread lack of relevant, authentic company missions.  For example, a quantitative study by Christopher Bart points out, “The overall conclusion is that, in any sample of mission statements, the vast majority are not worth the paper they are written on and should not be taken with any degree of seriousness.”  

Mission statements were not part of MBA dogma when I was an student in the 90s.  Instead, Wharton taught about the overarching purpose of creating shareholder value.  We debated the perils of straying from the primacy of wealth-creation.  I was left wondering why the legendary Dilbert Mission Statement Generator (sadly no longer online) didn’t just repeatedly spit out the one-size-fits-all mission, “Make Money.” 

However, I've found purpose to be one of my absolute favorites in the leadership toolkit. Used wisely, it creates shareholder value and provides some benefit to society. 

You might think of mission as the ball.  Share price or market share or another more traditional method of 

Steve Jobs touched so many aspects of my life. I wanted to write about one sliver of his legacy that directly impacted M5’s business phone system business, and illuminated our vision.

Ever notice that while mobile phones are now smart, office phones are still dumb?

Wikipedia claims “Smart phones” have been around since 1922. Nonetheless, I credit Jobs. iPhone was a natural extension of his original vision – from everyone having a computer to everyone having a computer everywhere, all the time. That’s the first thing missing from office phones – they are stuck on desks. People move around. The office is the worst place to work. Nothing that doesn’t move with people can extend their intelligence.

“Customers want holes, not drills”. Whurley reminded me of this old business saw while presenting to a group of Alan Patricof’s CEOs last summer.  He provided a great first-person example of an iPhone app for kids that his chaotic moon studio recently built called “The Quiet Game”.  Based on the insight that parents often hand kids their iPhones to keep them quiet, “The Quiet Game” uses the microphone to dock points for noise while playing.  Problem solved.  A hit.

A Peeve:  I might burn my local Lowe’s down to the ground.  Three months of not knowing when my new washer and dryer would show; calling, calling, transferring in loops, cajoling clerks to punch my name into the computer.   Finally, one day a couple of weeks ago, a truck pulls up in front of the house, then refuses to deliver, and finally just leaves these enormous boxes on the sidewalk.  Bad service ruins my day!  But it reminded me of what I’m trying NOT to do at work.

Over the last twenty years, business operations have become more dispersed. Most mid-size businesses have deployed some kind of “front-office” software to help coordinate. This is certainly better than the old manila client records that can’t be shared, let alone easily managed.

Anyone that has deployed one of these systems, whether it is ACT, Salesforce.com, Siebel, or a “home-grown” CRM is familiar with their greatest weakness. The systems are passive. If staff doesn't enter notes, the system is useless. Sales teams scramble at the end of the month to enter client records so their managers can update forecasts. And that’s if you have excellent adoption.

Telecom analysts have been in my face recently with an old challenge: “you can’t be a great service provider AND a great software company.”This Telecom industry belief will go the way of “Cigarette Smoking is Good for You .”

One of the reasons that the hosted IP phone system industry has not grown faster is that most players copy the old Telco mult-tier paradigm.One company builds the application, another delivers it, yet another resells it. Much gets lost in the translation, and it was all about the dial tone, not helping the customer get real impact from the applications.

But voice today is really a software application, and an important one.Every major software force – Microsoft, Google, Oracle, even the open source community – are in with both feet.A software business model will win.And the right model is Software-as-a-Service, or Cloud Computing. Some obvious benefits are clear – more sophisticated applications at lower cost, less time to get up and running, and scaling flexibility that matches a company’s growth.  Let’s face it, the main reason companies owned their own PBX’s was because there was no other option.