Guy Kawasaki: Don’t Write a Mission Statement, Write a Mantra
This article is posted under Business.
A friend of mine told me today that he wants to start his own business soon.
My immediate reply was… “Then get ready to lose your weekends.”
While I’d like to talk more about the rest of that conversation, I decided that it might be better to just leave it at that.
And instead, share with you a video by Guy Kawasaki from his talk at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program in Stanford University.
I know it’s the weekend (it’s actually Sunday now as I’m writing this), and many of us would usually go online at this time more to be entertained than to read or watch anything serious.
But take this post as your very own way of “losing your weekend” because when you become an entrepreneur, you do sometimes lose track of the days – specially when you’re working on a business that you love.
In any case, if you’ve been a long reader of this blog, or you’ve managed to scour through my archives, then you might have already watched the first part of this video where Guy Kawasaki advices us to Make Meaning In Your Company.
If not, then I highly suggest that you read that post and watch that short video first – so you’ll learn who Guy Kawasaki is and what this ex-Apple employee does today.
Still reading? So I guess you already watched that first video. 
So for this second video from the same talk, Guy Kawasaki challenges the norm of writing mission statements for companies. In this interesting (and even funny) video, he advises that one should write mantras instead.
If you want to watch the full video of this talk, you can go to the Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner website.
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Hi, my name is Fitz and this is my blog.
The entrepreneurs of the world deserve a huge high five. Starting a business takes a lot of time, dedication, and focus. But as they say “you get what you put in”, so I am sure the hard work will pay off
Good stuff. But I think mission statements are different from mantras. You don’t need to memorize your mission statement. Just make sure you have one that is simple enough to understand. Mantras, for being short, is not clear enough.
Mantras are short and concise compared to mission statements. And employees tend to forget mission statements after some time. Unlike mantras, it can be the core of the company