Surprised by Purpose
In early 2021, the team at Red Squirrel went through a process* that defined our company vision. We defined our purpose, our core values, and eventually, our first mission, a.k.a. our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. I’ll briefly share the output of this process for the curious, but I’m primarily writing this post to share some surprising events I’ve noticed in the months since then. Feel free to skip down past the next few sections unless you’re interested in what we came up with.
Our Purpose
Red Squirrel exists to unleash latent human potential.
Our Values
Trust: Each of us can be trusted to do our best work without having to be micromanaged.
Empathy: We seek to understand the perspectives of our co-workers and clients.
Flexibility: Each of us should be able to fit our work into our unique living situation, with the understanding that we have weekly billable targets.
Vulnerability: We celebrate courageous curiosity and seek to engender more of it by consistently responding with non-judgmental support when we ask each other for help.
Whole Self: Bringing only a narrow slice of ourselves to work means that we have to spend energy covering the rest of ourselves from our co-workers and clients. We strive to create a space where people feel increasingly safe to show up completely.
Journey: We support and encourage every squirrel on their journey toward what’s next for them. Living our Purpose means that we will often be a stepping stone for people as they unleash their own potential.
Our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal
By 2025, Red Squirrel will work exclusively on projects or with clients that unleash latent human potential.
What happened next
Once our BHAG was set, it activated me. It was on my mind, and therefore, constantly on on the tip of my tongue. Still, I felt some tension and anxiety talking about our purpose in the context of business development. Thankfully, having established a team of 15 squirrels and defining our BHAG with them gave me the fortitude to lean into it. I started talking about why we exist more than how we work or what we are capable of.
A surprising pattern has emerged. What I thought would be a narrowing of possibilities has opened doors to more opportunities.
For instance, I was speaking with an executive at a financial firm that we recently consulted at. I felt the familiar tension about talking about our BHAG in this context. Through that conversation, it was clear to both of us that to achieve Red Squirrel’s goal, we would not be able to re-engage with them in the future. It was a strange feeling, basically the opposite of “business development”. And then he surprised me. He offered to introduce me to the CEO of one of the top social impact investment firms in the US, the sort of firm that invests in precisely the sort of clients we want to work with.
Another example is more recent. Just last week I was discussing a possible partnership with an executive at a venture studio. He mentioned he needed help delivering a project to rewrite a consumer app that optimizes beverage pickup experiences. Instead of telling him that I wasn’t interested, I told him the story of our purpose and our BHAG. He listened patiently, and eventually interjected,
“So, you’re saying you’re not interested?”
“I actually am interested in the project, but we are maxed out, and if I’m going to grow our company any bigger, it has to be for a purpose-aligned project.”
“Cool, then I think you should talk to some other folks we’re talking to. They need an app developed to support folks who are experiencing trauma from sexual exploitation.”
These are just two of many examples of how narrowing our focus on our purpose has actually broadened our opportunities. Perhaps this phenomenon is common sense to smarter and/or more experienced folks, but it has been an incredibly rewarding surprise for me!
*Our company vision process was facilitated by The Canoe Project. 🛶 🙌
If you’d like to subscribe to my Software Therapy newsletter, sign up here.