Secret To Success In 8 Words
Many years ago, I came across a Harvard Business Review from October 2010 that provided a summary of a PopTech Conference talk by Kevin Starr, CEO of Mulago Foundation, where Kevin shared his secret sauce for how they select companies to invest in at Mulago a Foundation, which invests in socially-minded companies working to provide lasting change that can scale. I have used this process for many of my projects. Over the years, I have shared it with many friends and colleagues. I am summarizing things here to make it easier to share the information.
Success Secret
Their secret is the mission statement. Kevin believes most mission statements are long and full of jargon. These wordie statements are ignored and forgotten. At Mulago, they require the mission statement to be only eight words in a specific format. This approach makes the mission statement memorable, easy to implement, and ensures success. It provides a key tool to "measure the right thing" and "measure it well."
Format
VERB TARGET OUTCOME
Example: Save Endangered Species From Extinction
How To Use
The 8-word mission statement is helpful outside of creating a mission statement for an organization. I have used it to generate tag lines for projects, websites, and individual teams. To make things easier for you to implement, in the reference links below is a link to action verbs to help you find the correct verb for your mission statement.
Why 8 words?
Brevity forces clarity. A mission statement you cannot say in one breath is a mission statement you do not yet fully understand. The 8-word constraint is not arbitrary; it is a test. If you cannot reduce what you are trying to do to 8 words or fewer, the goal is probably still fuzzy.
The framework:
A good mission statement answers three questions simultaneously: who you serve, what you do for them, and why it matters. Eight words is enough space to do all three if you choose them carefully.
Some examples of what this looks like in practice:
For a data project: "Make health data readable for community decision makers." For a career goal: "Help organizations make faster decisions with cleaner data." For a personal goal: "Build one useful data tool every three months."
Notice that none of these mentions tools, platforms, or methods. The mission is the outcome, not the process.
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Reference Links
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