A company’s mission should cause impact. Transforming core values into direct action is one of the key reasons many organizations begin in the first place: to alter a part of the world’s functionality and attract talent in order to make it a reality.
From company culture to products and employees, mission statements affect almost all aspects of a business. According to 2021 research from LSA Global, highly-aligned companies grow revenue 58 percent faster and are 72 percent more profitable – outperforming unaligned peers in employee engagement, retention, customer satisfaction and leadership.
However, keeping those foundational principles as a highly ranked priority requires more effort than posting an organization’s values on a poster in the break room. New hires should arrive hungry to make a difference in the lives of the customers they serve starting at orientation, and the overarching mission should be woven into team culture along with the work they accomplish every day.
At Afresh, a company building AI-powered solutions for fresh food retailers, CEO Matt Schwartz attributes his team’s success to their dedication to their broader mission of eliminating food waste and making fresh food accessible to the people they serve.
“In order to be successful, we need the hearts and minds of our team to be engaged with the mission every step of the way,” Schwartz said.
Built In San Francisco caught up with Schwartz and NEXT CEO Guy Goldstein to learn more about how to truly galvanize employees around company goals by translating individual actions into mission-driven outcomes.
Afresh is a system built for fresh inventory, forecasting, ordering, and grocery store operations to help eliminate food waste.
As a team leader, how do you translate Afresh’s mission into specific actions or goals for both the company and individual teams?
Our mission, which is to eliminate food waste and make fresh food accessible to everyone, is definitely ambitious because the problems we’re working to solve are enormous. So when we think about really galvanizing the mission across our team, we’re consistent about aligning overarching strategies with the tactical work people do every day.
Strategically, we make sure our products and how we go to market align completely with our mission. When we began planning and developing our initial product, we chose a store-level produce ordering solution because of its direct path to eliminating waste and reducing the cost of fresh food. As we expand, our employees’ work will always tie directly to our mission in this way.
We also prioritize transparency around company goals and illustrate how they drive the mission. Keeping our big objectives in sight, we lean into and contextualize examples of when execution and our mission meet. Those moments remind us of the importance of our everyday work, keep the conversation focused on the mission, and solidify their impact on our mission.
What aspect of your company culture or values most reflects Afresh’s mission?
For us, our culture and mission are almost one and the same. We are a team made up of people dedicated to the bigger picture. We’re driven most by our desire to eliminate food waste and make fresh food accessible to all.
Our company is growing quickly and I’ve been so inspired by the motivation new hires have around our mission. The motivations are so diverse. Some are drawn to the environmental impact of reducing food waste, others care deeply about social equity and getting healthy food to those who need it, and still others simply love to cook and eat food!
At our core, we are a mission-driven company that’s working to solve these problems every day. And, in order to be successful, we need the hearts and minds of our team to be engaged with the mission every step of the way. As we continue to expand our headcount, the number of individuals connected to that mission will grow materially, driving more and more people to engage with these topics.
Every decision our team members make is driven by one question: Does this help us meet our mission?”
What role do your team members play in building, strengthening or celebrating Afresh’s mission, and why?
At Afresh, every decision our team members make is driven by one question: Does this help us meet our mission? Without our people, we wouldn’t be making any progress toward those goals. That may seem simplistic, but at a foundational level we understand that the people who work at Afresh carry the torch of our mission.
We strengthen and celebrate why we do what we do by tying the empirical results we’ve achieved with our product to the overall mission of our company. This year, a few team members developed our Sustainability Index, which pairs our insight into retail-level waste with climate impact analyses from ReFed to see the impact our product has had on food waste and climate change. Our team built real models that show our mission in action, quantifying the huge impact our technology has beyond bottom-line profits for businesses.
As the company grows, we’ll continue to see the diverse ways our employees are motivated by the mission and the ways in which it drives creative problem-solving for our customers and the planet.
NEXT provides affordable and customizable policies to small business owners.
As a team leader, how do you translate NEXT’s mission into specific actions or goals for both the company and individual teams?
NEXT was founded on the mission to help entrepreneurs thrive. This core principle extends into each product, innovation and culture decision we make. By providing simpler, more affordable and customized insurance policies all under one roof, we aim to fulfill our goal to set businesses up for success. NEXT has four key company values that support and keep us connected to the core of our mission: deliver phenomenal service, play as a team, dare to simplify and be unstoppable. One way we translate our mission into specific action is by incorporating it into company goals and team level measurable KPIs.
Another way that we stay true to our mission is by employing small businesses when we can for our operational and business purposes. For example, we recently needed to do a photo shoot for our website. What better way to support our mission than by employing local small business owners? Additionally, during the height of the pandemic, we started a program called Built By Business, a brand initiative meant to help put small business owners back to work by hiring them to do what they do best – build, create and inspire.
Next's 4 Key Company Values to stay connected to the mission
- Deliver phenomenal service
- Play as a team
- Dare to simplify
- Be unstoppable
What aspect of your company culture or values most reflects NEXT’s mission?
When we started NEXT we wanted to build a company that helped small businesses be more successful by transforming an often cumbersome task into a simpler, painless experience. Yet to deliver on this, we also understood the importance of creating a cohesive workforce that is not only aligned and passionate about the mission, but that also values each other. The four key company values at NEXT are at the core of our culture.
These guiding principles represent how we want to serve our customers, work with our partners and interact with our colleagues every single day. All of these values play an important role in our culture and our mission to help small businesses thrive. We think about how to amaze our customers in every decision we make, and we put it ahead of everything.
In early 2018, we realized that a business partner of ours was charging our customers a fee for cancelling service, so instead of passing the fee on to our customers, we were absorbing the cost. Doing so was costing us thousands of dollars a year, but we made a very conscious decision to keep refunding our customers and continue putting customer needs ahead of profit.
We translate our mission into specific action is by incorporating it into company goals and team level measurable KPIs.”
What role do your team members play in building, strengthening or celebrating NEXT’s mission, and why?
We want to ensure that every employee plays a part in building, strengthening and celebrating our company mission. We recognize innovation wins, share customer stories and publicly acknowledge our peers during weekly company brunches.
Although four core values have been guiding us since we started NEXT, we began developing Next’s culture guide in 2020 to better articulate what they mean in practice. Many people participated in the guide’s development, including the executive team, new team members and long-standing employees who have been with us since the early days. We conducted interviews and had small breakout groups to learn about what they think is important. We encouraged them to share their thoughts about why they selected certain behaviors and principles over others.
We live out the values we have identified every day in our interactions with each other and our customers. We hold each other accountable, encourage feedback and celebrate our wins. And when something doesn’t go as planned, we use that as a learning opportunity.
