As the leader of the digital product design team in BestSecret’s e-commerce department, I know how important it is for our team to have a clear strategy in place. Just like any business, our team needs a plan to achieve our goals and objectives within the context of the larger organization. Businesses and design teams need strategies (Porter, 1996) as they provide a roadmap for achieving their goals and ensure that everyone is working towards a common objective. Having a strategy helps to align resources, prioritize actions and make informed decisions to reach desired outcomes.

One tool that has proven particularly helpful for us is the Strategy House model. The Strategy House is a visual representation of a company’s or team’s strategy, with the mission as the roof, the pillars as the most important topics, and the values as the foundation (StratNavApp, n.d.). In a series of articles, we will explore the different parts of the Strategy House model in more detail and share the process our team went through to develop our mission, vision, topics, objectives, values, and design principles.

The Strategy House

The Strategy House model is composed of three parts: the mission, the pillars, and the values. The mission is the roof of the Strategy House and represents the overall purpose of the team. The pillars are the most important topics (or themes) that the team needs to focus on to achieve its mission. The values are the foundation of the Strategy House and represent the principles that guide the team’s actions. We found that visualizing our strategy in this way made it easy for the whole team to understand and buy into our plan.

The beautiful Strategy House template we prepared in PowerPoint.

The focus of this first article in the series is how our team developed its mission. A team mission is a statement that describes the overall purpose and goals of the team. It should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. According to John C. Maxwell, “[a] mission statement is a clear, concise, and compelling sentence or paragraph that states the purpose of your team or organization. It should be a statement of why you exist and what you stand for” (Maxwell*, 2011). We found that having a clear mission helped us stay focused and aligned on our goals.

Differences between Mission and Vision

Before we started our mission development process, however, we wanted to make sure we understood the difference between a team mission and a team vision. A team mission is a statement that describes the overall purpose and goals of the team, while a team vision is a statement that describes the team’s aspirations for the future. We found it helpful to think of our mission as what we are doing now to achieve our goals, and of our vision as what we want to achieve in the future. Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander explain that “[a] vision is a picture of the future that creates passion and energy, while a mission is a statement of purpose that guides decision-making” (Zander & Zander*, 2000). In later articles in this series, we will also share our process for developing a vision for our team.

Differences between mission, vision, strategy, and goals. Taken from Nielsen Norman Group (2015).

Stories of Value

To develop the mission, the first exercise we did as a team was brainstorming “stories of value.” We were heavily inspired by an article by Nielsen Norman Group, which describes a story of value as “a clear yet concise narrative that describes specific incidents when the team felt its value was realized” (Nielsen Norman Group, 2015). By sharing our stories of value, we were able to identify the specific actions and outcomes that have contributed to our team’s success. Relatedly, Eric Ries states that in the context of product or service development, “[v]alue stories are a way to capture the most important aspects of a product or service in a way that is easy to understand and communicate” (Ries*, 2011). This is very fitting since, after all, a digital design team can be seen to provide an invaluable service to the rest of the organization.

Two examples for stories of value we brainstormed.

Distilling Actors, Actions, and Outcomes

From the stories of value we brainstormed, we then extracted actors, actions, and outcomes (Nielsen Norman Group, 2015). Actors are the people or groups we supported, actions are the actions we took to provide that support, and outcomes are the changes and results that happened because of our actions. By identifying actors, actions, and outcomes, we were able to develop a clear understanding of the value our team provides in different contexts. Fittingly, we applied a well-known concept from interaction design to our design team itself since “actors, actions, and outcomes are [also] the building blocks of any interaction design project” (Moggridge*, 2007).

The same two stories of value from above, this time with actors coded in italics, actions in bold, and outcomes in italics+bold.

Excerpt from the overall list of identified actors, actions, and outcomes.

Compiling the Mission Statement

Finally, based on the identified actors, actions, and outcomes, we compiled our overall mission statement. First, everyone in the team wrote a statement on their own (constraint: max. 2 sentences, as crisp as possible). We then nominated a “compiler” whose job it was to take the best parts from all individual statements and compile it into one. After some more rounds of asynchronous discussions and adjustments, we were done. The outcome is a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand statement that describes our team’s overall purpose and goals and the value we provide.

The final mission statement, compiled from the stories of value and identified actors, actions, and outcomes.

In conclusion, developing a team mission was an important step in creating a successful team strategy for us. By following the steps outlined in this article, we were able to develop a clear and concise mission statement that describes our overall purpose and goals. We found that having a clear mission helped us stay focused and aligned on our goals and also helped in communicating them to others.

Stay tuned for our next articles in this series, where we will share our process for developing design principles and a vision for our team, among other things.