Founder & Team Engagement
What matters to a mission-driven investor is how founders and their teams are aligned with the corporate mission, often summarized in a bold marketing statement. This corporate mission can only be a strong business compass if aligned with the team's personal values and declined through an appropriate management style and empowering decision-making processes.
What do founders and teams
love and are good at?
What is your “corporate ikigai”?
#1 Mission embodiment
To build trust with your ecosystem, the corporate mission statement needs to be perfectly clear, well communicated and embodied by the founders and the teams. Otherwise, strategy becomes hard to manage.
If the founders and the team are not aligned with the mission statement, its goals, objectives, skills and tools, the company increases its management and execution risks.
The backbone of alignment within a team is to share a kind of “corporate ikigai“.
Key questions you should ask yourself
– Do founders align their personal values with those of their company?
– To what extent is the corporate purpose aligned with the founders’ mission* (what the world needs), their business* (how they make money ?), their passion* (what they love) and vocation* (what they are good at)? (*Ikigai Methodology)
– Do founders share the same vision and goals of the corporate mission?
– How are founders (and teams) perceived by their ecosystem?
– How is the company assessing employees’ alignment with the corporate mission?
#2 Aligned decision-making
The mission statement should not just be a nice quote at the entrance of your office, it should be part of your daily decision-making.
Decision-making is key in the performance, then each company should find its “mission-driven” processes, based on clear indicators, to avoid execution misalignment.
Key questions you should ask yourself
– Does the company define and share “mission-driven” performance indicators (Key Alignment Indicators) with its teams?
– To what extent do executive bodies make their decisions transparent and consistent with the corporate mission?
– How are decision-making processes defined, assessed and amended over time?
– Which non-financial indicators are taken into account in the performance based bonuses and / or in the variable salaries share calculation?
#3 Empowerment through a mission-led management style
“Being aligned” is not a top-down statement, it is a dynamic process involving the whole company, and particularly employees who need to be able to express their talents, be involved in the company’s sustainable and mission-driven journey.
Talents competition is already here. To retain your own talents, you have to empower them through your purpose. The management style and practices need also to be aligned with the company’s mission and guarantee the team’s well-being in the long term.
Empowerment is a continuum from teams to customers: a company is much more impactful if its growth relies on products or services that embed empowerment in their conception.
Key questions you should ask yourself
– How does the company engage and empower its teams?
– How are successes/failures handled inside the company?
– Which HR and management tools and methodology are used to activate the team’s ownership and wellbeing (e.g. eNPS, turnover, well-being indicators)?
– What kind of feedback loop is put in place to foster everyone’s self improvement?
– What level of information transparency and clarity is shared between the stakeholders, the management and the teams?
– How trust and self esteem values are at the heart of the HR policy?
– Beyond teams : do the company’s services/products empower its customers and providers?
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