Mission Statement

I find myself conflicted over a mission statement for my company. It's something that needs to express mountains of meaning in molehills of space, which makes it deeply difficult! It bears asking a simple question: What do I want from my company, fundamentally? I think I want:

  • To make people's lives easier
  • To design solutions for people who may not otherwise get access to this kind of technology
  • To create opportunities where few or none existed before
  • To innovate and create novel solutions to unique problems in ways that really help people.

Now how do I boil that down into a snappy mission statement? I've had a few thoughts, firstly:

Our mission is to build software solutions for the communities that need them.

Which is short and sweet, but I feel lacks impact and doesn't fully convey what I want here. Yes, I want to build solutions for people who need them but I also have a deep drive to design and create new things! I don't want to just build the same WordPress site that millions of others have made on their own, I want to innovate! I want to build something unique and exciting, something that perhaps I'm the only person who will build it. Maybe our mission statement is

To innovate and design modern solutions to the problems the communities of today face.

This still, to me, lacks pizazz. But it's at least on the right track. I really enjoy the Sitecrafting mission statement, "To craft digital experiences that inspire, empower and delight." That's just fantastic! It tells you what they do and why they do it in unique, memorable language. I want my mission statement to convey my ideals like that. What do I do, why do I do it, and why is that exciting?

To design innovative solutions that ignite creativity and build community.

I think we're on the right track here. This feels less technical, more like I wrote it for people to hear it. I'm not sure it's quite there yet. It still doesn't necessarily feel like it just hits that spot where you feel the impact of what I've written. We try again!

To innovate and create exciting solutions that ignite creativity and empower communities.

I really like that word "empower" in the Sitecrafting one. That, I think, is what I want to be doing. I don't just want to build software for the sake of software, I want to create things that people can use. I want to have an impact in making lives easier or setting alight a communities drive towards their goals. I think we're close here.

To create impactful solutions that ignite creativity and empower communities.

Now that... that's not bad. Let's put it through some feedback testing... and the feedback is in: It's Generic! Not totally inaccurate, so we'll make it a little more specific to us and what we do. Right now I want to help people in my local community and I plan to design software. So perhaps:

To create impactful digital solutions that ignite creativity and empower our community.

I'm having a fun little vision of those words at the top of the about page with a constant scroll of different modifying words between "our" and "community" we'll empower our theatre community, our Tacoma community, our student community, our Olympia community. It'll be great. I think that's the one, for now. I'm sure it will evolve and change over time but for right now our mission is

To create impactful digital solutions that ignite creativity and empower our community.

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