When momentum drops, decision-making stalls, and teams start suggesting or working on their own side projects, it might be a sign they have lost sight of the North Star mission. Here we dive into the tell-tale signs that a team is misaligned and look at how to get everyone’s focus back on track, and then scale in the right direction.
As founders, the mission is often so clear in our minds, with a deep-seated passion burning bright behind it. This makes it frustrating and often downright bewildering when someone in your team comes to you with a strategy or plan that’s completely at odds with it.
Your inner voice is screaming, “How on earth did you get to that conclusion?!”
Sound familiar?
It’s easy to start ruing the day we recruited them, or questioning their commitment, but in all probability, it’s because no one was that clear on why they were doing the task in the first place (as hard as that may be to admit).
And that’s going to be holding back your growth.
In the pursuit of rapid growth and startup agility, it’s easy for a North Star mission to fade or to have never been clearly articulated in the first place. The challenge is that once a team gets past a certain size (around 8-10 people), the lack of a North Star can really start hampering performance. Then, as the team grows, issues can rear up again, particularly around 25 people and 100 people. So, if this is starting to feel familiar, perhaps it’s time for a bit of a reorientation.
For the TL:DR, here’s what we’ll be covering:
- What’s so important about the North Star mission?
- A refresh of the North Star philosophy
- How to spot when your North Star is fading for your team
- Keep your North Star shining bright by communicating the hell out of it
- Keep pointing to your North Star, even on the cloudiest of nights
- How bright is your startup’s North Star?
What’s so important about the North Star mission?
The North Star Framework and North Star Metric both derive from product management, but their potential extends far beyond that. Get them right and they will provide focus to everyone who buys into your business, ultimately benefiting you as the founder. For example,
- For customers, the clarity that your North Star brings is evident in branding, communications, and product decisions, delivering a laser-focused proposition.
- At a team level, the North Star Mission is like your cultural glue, providing everyone with clarity of direction. In turn, this fuels a sense of belonging, employee engagement, greater resilience, and increased productivity.
- The clarity of a well-articulated North Star mission can even attract more “patient” capital from aligned investors, more motivated by achieving your vision than pushing for short-term goals
Need a refresh on the North Star philosophy?
The North Star mission
This is the ultimate guiding light for your startup – it’s why we’re in business, providing the long-term goal and direction for the business, and used well provides unwavering clarity for strategic decisions.
An oldie, but a goodie – Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why,” remains one of the best reads to help evaluate and craft a compelling North Star Mission that is simultaneously ambitious yet realistic; emotionally charged yet unambiguous.
The North Star Metric translates our mission into something measurable, allowing us to track progress and keep everyone laser-focused on what’s important.
As a rower, it makes me think of “Will it make the boat go faster” by Ben Hunt-Davis & Harriet Beveridge about the Olympic 2000 rowing team, where any training choice, decision, or behaviour that didn’t make the boat go faster was simply dropped.
This relentless focus on what drives success is the perfect parallel for the North Star Metric. Any decision or behaviour must pass through the lens of “Will it drive our NSM?” If it doesn’t, it’s a distraction.
One of the best NSMs I’ve seen is from one of our FounderFamily, Terry Canning, co-founder of Cattleeye. The North Star Metric that is used to unite their team strategically and operationally every day is “Number of paying cows”. It simultaneously reflects their mission to provide the next generation of livestock monitoring solutions that improve the lives of farmers and their livestock, whilst staying true to what will drive their scaling journey.
How to spot when your North Star is fading for your team
I hear from founders at all stages who are grappling with their North Star mission. Some aren’t clear in their own mind, others are clear but haven’t committed it to paper, and some have started embedding it in their business, but still feel it’s lacking. It’s mentioned regularly in FounderCircles because it’s hard to do, often getting lost in the pace of a startup. And in the busyness of getting things done, it’s not always clear if our team is on the same page.
So what are some of the tell-tale signs?
- Are creative ideas or solutions being suggested that don’t address the customer problem you set out to solve?
- Are team members seemingly stuck in decision-making paralysis, and unable to prioritise
- Are you seeing teams incredibly busy, but not delivering the things that actually matter?
- Are you chatting to team members who can’t confidently articulate the rationale behind their recommendations, or are reluctant to make recommendations?
- And sometimes, we might just sense a lack of fire in everyone’s bellies for the work they’re doing.
So how do we avoid these scenarios, or get back on track if we can already see the signs….?
Keep your North Star shining bright by communicating the hell out of it
What makes one star brighter than another? Among other things, it’s down to the amount of energy it emits – the hotter it is, the brighter it is.
Think about your communication effort as the energy coming from your North Star. Is your communication on fire or shivering in the depths of a PowerPoint deck?
How regularly and consistently are you communicating your North Star Mission and North Star Metric (NSM) within your team?
Think of all the ways you currently communicate across the business and ask yourself if your North Star is living and breathing in all of them? For example…
- Your office space – is the North Star visible to everyone, and is there a clear way of tracking the progress of the NSM?
- Your recruitment – are you attracting the right candidates by making your North Star mission clear and ensuring they’re aligned with your cause?
- Business updates for your team – do your all-hands and meetings start with the mission and NSM?
Terry from CattleEye purposefully keeps both their North Star mission and their metrics front of mind for everyone involved in the running of the business.
“Walk into our office and you can see what we’re working towards – it’s literally on the walls. The North Star Metric then forms the backbone of every all-hands meeting, and as a leadership team, we are not afraid to challenge each other (using the NSM) to make decisions most aligned to our mission. “ Terry Canning, cofounder of CattleEye
When we met with Ed Staite a few months ago for our FounderFuel Show, he gave us a myriad of pro-tips for communicating effectively, one that is particularly relevant with the North Star is “Repeat a consistent message and never assuming the message has landed”. It’s easy for us to think everyone is clear, but in most cases it isn’t as clear and concrete as it is in our minds.
Keep pointing to your North Star, even on the cloudiest of nights
When the shit hits the fan – which it inevitably will in founderhood – it can be the equivalent of a thick cloud obscuring your view of the North Star when we most need its guidance.
In pursuit of short-term solutions, we might find ourselves chasing revenue at any cost to extend runway or innovating for a lucrative whale account that doesn’t fit our customer profile or principles
It’s a tough job, but as leaders, we need to hold course and empower those around us to do the same. This means drawing on our own resilience with tried and tested techniques, while exuding an unwavering belief in the purpose of our business.
A powerful way to keep your North Star Visible at a time of crisis is to lean into “Mission Moments” – rituals that consistently remind everyone of why you are in business.
Exactly what you do will depend on what’s authentic for you as a team and as a leader, but ideas from our other founders are:
- Start every meeting (no matter how urgent the outcome) with a 30-second reminder of why you’re in business, either using emotive “mission” language or quantifiable “metric” language e.g. “we’re here to help freelancers get paid faster, so when you’re debugging this payment issue today, you’re directly helping someone put food on the table.”
- In crisis meetings, empower someone to speak on behalf of the North Star – their job is to challenge any proposal if it doesn’t meet the company’s mission. This allows a good balance of short-term and purpose-driven focus.
How bright is your startup’s North Star?
As founders, irrespective of our leadership identity (founder, MD or CEO), it is our role to clarify, communicate, and ruthlessly protect that North Star mission. So, if you can see signs that your North Star is fading, what are you going to check first?
- How powerful is your North Star Mission and Metric?
- Are you communicating with sufficient energy?
- Have you been holding the course during times of crisis?
Need help finding & communicating your North Star?
If clarity of mission continues to be a sticking point for you and your team, then come and speak to other founders about it and see how they approach it. Join one of our peer-to-peer coaching groups – FounderCircles® to benefit from others’ experiences and hear how they approach similar challenges.
Other FounderFuel articles on a similar theme
Focus on what matters with Big Rocks
The simple questions that can set you free as a startup leader
The art of bringing people with you – communication frameworks that could make or break your startup
