Every company has key performance indicators that they track closely throughout the year, from revenue growth and customer satisfaction to employee engagement and retention.
But measuring a company’s mission and its effect on a team can be more challenging.
Research consultancy Contexis wanted to measure just that. Together with Cambridge University, Contexis developed an index to measure the sense of purpose employees feel in the workplace, with a focus on factors like clarity, autonomy, alignment and ownership.
“Where we see organizations with a clearly understood and authentic purpose, we see remarkable levels of clarity of strategy and objectives, remarkable velocity of decision making and exceptional adaptability,” wrote John Rosling, CEO of Contexis.
According to their research, when leaders are able to galvanize their teams behind a shared mission, employees feel an increased sense of purpose alongside a greater drive for accountability and achievement. By providing clarity around the larger organizational goals, the mission-driven focus offers a framework for decision-making and opportunities for employee empowerment and increased workplace satisfaction.
And the numbers don’t lie: When people feel connected to a clear purpose at work, they are also found to demonstrate a 30 percent increase in clarity and adaptability when compared with peers, according to the report.
Built In San Francisco sat down with leaders from Sprig, Miro and HoneyBook here in the Bay Area to learn more about what mission-driven work looks like in action, as well as the impacts they’ve seen for customers, how they built greater team connection and their ambitious paths ahead.
Miro’s collaborative whiteboard platform supports creative teams working together from anywhere in the world.
Briefly, what is Miro’s mission?
Our mission, simply put, is to empower teams to create the next big thing.
As the leading visual collaboration platform, Miro empowers remote, in-office and hybrid teams to communicate and collaborate across formats, tools, channels and time zones — without the constraints of physical location, meeting space and whiteboards.
Our mission, simply put, is to empower teams to create the next big thing.”
As a leader, how do you translate Miro’s mission into specific actions or goals for your team?
The people organization exists to bring Miro’s vision to life inside the company. We are co-creating one of the best hybrid companies in the world. This means cultivating our most important and expensive asset — our people.
From the beginning to the end of the employee lifecycle, we are charged with creating, curating and iterating an amazing experience. This results in enabling the world’s teams to create the next big thing and ultimately, make a positive change in the world, which is awe-inspiring.
Doing this effectively means designing from a user-centric mindset, constantly reprioritizing based on impact and removing friction from our daily work. Making work easier is part of our goal.
As a leader, I also lean into a learning mindset and stay rooted in curiosity, experimentation and iteration — and encourage everyone in my organization to do the same. These traits are core to my DNA and to Miro’s culture. I firmly believe that being transparent and sharing constructive feedback enables us to learn, deliver impact and achieve success as a team.
What aspect of Miro’s culture best reflects the company’s mission?
We start with interviewing and hiring. It’s easy to look for skills and competencies without paying attention to hiring for our values, but values are core to who we bring through our doors. Our values guide our mission every day, shape our culture and influence how we work together to create impact. We play as a team to win the world. We focus on impact and make it happen. We practice empathy to gain insight. And we learn, grow and drive change.
In order to learn, grow and drive change, we make a habit of looking backward so that we can iterate and improve going forward. Called a “retrospective,” these open and honest conversations allow us to reflect together on the success and failures of a given project, initiative or event.
A critical component of Miro’s ways of working, we believe an effective retro is one that comes from a place of empathy and respect, goes deep and finishes with specific action steps that our teams can take in order to drive positive change and achieve more in the next iteration. When we involve Mironeers in the co-creation of our products from ideation to design to pilot, we get outputs that resonate more profoundly across our organization.
Sprig offers an integrated research platform that allows teams to target users in real-time throughout their product journey.
Briefly, what is Sprig’s mission?
Sprig’s purpose is to make experiences that matter, and our mission is to be the leading research platform for digital products. Our customers love Sprig and give us a 66 percent product-market fit score, compared to an industry benchmark for startups of 40 percent. Sprig operates worldwide with international customers representing more than 96 countries spanning Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Our marquee customers include Dropbox, Square, OpenDoor, ClassPass, Adobe, Loom, Retool, Ironclad and others in categories like trading, crypto, streaming and learning platforms.
As a leader, how do you translate Sprig’s mission into specific actions or goals for your team?
The customer success (CS) team is focused on adoption, social proof, and sentiment, as well as revenue. Keeping these goals at the center of everything we do allows CS to focus on value and use of the product while making sure customers are satisfied and growing. When a customer decides to invest in user insights and research, we are there to help guide them on their journey.
As a leader, I ask my team to lean into the customer insights and embrace both the positive and negative sentiments that a customer shares with us. In focusing on the adoption of Sprig, we make sure that our customer is clear on how to get started to drive near-term value while also setting up the longer-term relationship. When we help customers think about their overall research program, we set the stage for Sprig as a trusted advisor and open the door to renewing and growing a commercial relationship.
My proudest moments at Sprig are when customers tell us that they love the product and their Sprig customer success manager or engineer.”
What aspect of Sprig’s culture or values best reflects the company mission?
At Sprig, our team connects with hundreds of brands that change the way people live, work and play. Our team helps product teams derive insight from users, which can inform and improve the way their clients feel about their smiles, study for a test, become an expert, watch a show, share a file or check their bank accounts. Specifically, our team helps user researchers, designers, product managers and engineers transform their squads and scrums to include research and insights throughout the product development lifecycle.
My proudest moments at Sprig are when customers tell us that they love the product and their Sprig customer success manager or engineer. Our customers’ relationship with us and their relationship with their own customers — these are the experiences that matter. We’re thrilled to be part of their extended team.
HoneyBook offers software and productivity solutions to support independent small businesses with client management, proposals, contracts, payments and more.
Briefly, what is HoneyBook’s mission?
HoneyBook supports independent service-based businesses with the tools they need to be successful in doing what they love.
HoneyBook is here for the self-starters. The independents. Those who’ve claimed freedom over their career, finances, and future. Those paid for a profession that’s also their passion.
We’re on a mission to empower this economy of independents to rise, building fulfilling and sustainable livelihoods by doing what they love. We champion technology as our ally in supporting our members in this pursuit.
We’re on a mission to empower this economy of independents to rise, building fulfilling and sustainable livelihoods by doing what they love.”
As a leader, how do you translate HoneyBook’s mission into specific actions or goals for your team?
At HoneyBook, we believe we must put our customers, who we call members, first to achieve our mission. Our goal is always to embody our members’ spirit and passion, creating an inspiring and engaging culture.
To do this, our people team has the opportunity to creatively bring our teams together with our members to learn from them. In the past, we have had our members co-work alongside our team in our San Francisco office. This allowed our team to create authentic relationships with the people we serve each and every day.
As we look to the future for HoneyBook, we are intentionally creating opportunities to not only bring our teams together in person but to give them special moments of deep connection with our members. In an upcoming week of gathering the team, we are creating workshops for all teams to meet with real HoneyBook members and independent business owners. This will be a time to not only pick their brains on how we can best serve them but to really integrate their way of life into how we work. We know our members are a brilliant and spirited group of folks, so we aim to continue to infuse that zeal into our day to day.
What aspect of HoneyBook’s culture best reflects the company’s mission?
One of our core values, “We Go The Extra Mile,” directly reflects our mission. Our members continuously go above and beyond to provide excellent service to their clients and build one of the strongest communities of independents. We strive to do the same for our members and teams.
One way this value plays out in our culture is through our tradition of HoneyAppreciations. Every six months, we provide an opportunity for every member of our team to send notes of appreciation to one another. Our team takes time out of their busy schedules to send tons of appreciation to one another — last time, our team sent over 1,000 appreciations! To continue setting the bar for going the extra mile, our CEO, Oz Alon, reads each and every one of these.
This tradition is a delightful way to celebrate everyone’s accomplishments and get a snapshot of all of the ways our team goes above and beyond for each other.
