true north

Oct 6

One of the first things I do when I start coaching CEOs is assess whether their business has a clear and compelling true north. This is different from your vision and mission and the more businesses grow, the harder it is to define a compelling true north and align your workforce around it.

What do I mean by true north?

Before we dig into what a true north is, let’s talk a bit about vision and mission because they all tie together.

A vision is what you will have accomplished when all is said and done. It’s the “what” of your business and intended to be very aspirational. For example, Nike’s vision is to bring inspiration to every athlete in the world. A mission statement is the “how” you will accomplish your vision. Nike’s mission statement is to do everything possible to expand human potential.

Your vision and mission statements are static – they rarely change unless your business fundamentally changes. But your organization’s true north is different – I define it as the overall objective you want to achieve in a period of time. This usually changes every year, but in some cases, you may need to set it for longer.

Your true north ties what you are doing in the short-term to your vision and mission. It helps your team and workforce understand how you are advancing your vision. Let’s be real – so many employees join companies because they are motivated by the vision and mission. The best way to engage employees on the work they are doing is to connect it to the vision and mission in a tangible way

So, each year, it’s so important to set a clear and compelling true north because it aligns your workforce around what they need to do – yet, many leaders and companies struggle with this and try to throw too many goals out there which leads to confusion and often people working at cross purposes.

How do you make a compelling true north?

I encourage clients to not just focus on the what and how, but also the why? Many of my clients will come up with an initial true north of “grow 10%”. Now while that’s a nice goal to have, it’s not very compelling. It’s just a number. There is no context, no reason why the company needs to grow 10%. A few clients will push back and say that growth means opportunities for employees and financial rewards. Okay maybe, but if I am a middle manager or if I am sitting out on the front lines doing my work, how does 10% growth translate to me? How does it impact what I do on a day-to-basis?

A compelling true north succinctly describes what the organization wants to accomplish, how you are going to accomplish it, and why you need to do it. There is a connection to your vision and mission and you as the CEO or leader, has a great story to tell that draws people in and aligns them to tathe ngible thing your company wants to accomplish. It’s easy to measure progress against.

It equips your workforce to make the right decisions about their day-to-day work. In other words, it helps them realize what they need to do to advance the organization’s goals.

Now I don’t know whether Nike uses this concept or not, but if they did, it could be something like “enable pickleball athletes court performance by introducing three new shoe lines in the United States to grow revenue 10% in 2023.” This ties to their vision and mission and Pickleball is a popular sport which is growing fast, in the US anyway. I have no idea whether there are specialized shoes or not but maybe there’s a great opportunity there.

A true north like this can tell a story about why this is important. You can connect it to your vision and mission. You know what, why, and how you are growing your revenue in 2023. It’s easy to measure.

How can I find my true north?

I use a few exercises to help my clients get started on a true north:

How would you describe how you’ve realized your vision over the past three years? What would your employees say? What would your customers say?
At the end of this year, what does your company look like? What’s different from today? What’s the same?
It’s the end of the year and we’ve nailed all of our goals – revenue exceeded goals, our customer satisfaction is 100%, our workforce engagement scores are the highest they’ve ever been and our Glassdoor rating has a 100% CEO approval rating. What did we do throughout the year to get here?
At a customer conference, you overhear a group of employees enthusiastically promoting what it’s like to work at your company to a customer who in return shares how satisfied she is working with you. Describe the conversation from both sides. What’s being said? What’s not said? How is this different from where you are today?

As you can see, this is an exercise that takes a bit of time and as you develop the true north, it’s not something you can do in a vacuum. You will need to test what you come up with on your leadership team and even with a handful of workers to make sure that what you have built is compelling.

You can learn more about these and other key concepts of modern leadership by joining my loglab Facebook community where I do a livestream on Mondays at 10am Pacific.