Missioneurs.com

We’ve all heard this Churchill quote: “Make no small plans.”  Problem is it wasn’t Churchill’s quote and something incredibly important is left out of the recitation.  The real quote is attributed to Daniel Burnham(an architect): “make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

The world likes big ideas.  But something is missing from the common definition of a big idea, something essential.  The stirring of the blood.  That is the difference between a big idea and a mission.

I think that is why we are all here, attracted to missioneurship.  It’s not enough for us to find a business model that works or a niche that hasn’t been filled.  It’s not enough to have a big plan or a big idea.  We want more.  We want to affect people on a cellular level.  We want to ignite movements.   We can make a sale matter.  We can help people feel something transcendent about themselves through our business.  Missioneurship is how we define this ability.

This is also where missioneurship’s big advantage lies.  We can differentiate through 1) great business models and 2) total commitment to something bigger than ourselves, our companies, and our employees.  We can differentiate through our mission.  We can differentiate by stirring the blood of those we come in contact with.

Fundraisers are taught that their cause needs an “emotional hook” to attract donors. Fundraisers know that big donations can only be won if the cause is intensely personal for the donor and if the gift means something profound.

The best salespeople know this too. They talk about things like agreement, buy-in, self interest, fulfillment, and connection.

Lady Gaga understands this concept. I love this Lady Gaga quote: “I want to be a part of culture.  When I say I’m an artist of liberation, that’s where the work is.  It’s in culture.  It’s in society.  It’s with the people.  I don’t care about what people think of me, I care what they think of themselves.  When they come to my shows, my fans aren’t sitting there going, “Oh my god, I love Gaga.”  They are going “I feel so cool right now, that I’m here.”"

She wants to make people feel beyond good about themselves.  She’s out there to make them feel something profound about themselves.  I think that makes a huge difference in the way the world reacts to her.  

So how much more powerful could our companies be if our organizations were committed, entirely, to giving customers meaning?  What if our companies were oriented around the customer and what they were being made to feel by interacting with our company?

Zappos does not sell shoes, it sells a great customer experience.  I can get the same shoes cheaper elsewhere, like Kohls.  They make me feel good about spending my money with them.  

Kiva sells the hopes and dreams of micro-entrepreneurs.  This isn’t a “product” I had ever thought of purchasing before they packaged it.  They connect me to these third-world business people the same way Sally Struthers used to with Ethiopian children every weekend morning.  They wrap an emotion and a rationale around the product.  This tactic is so effective that many folks use it for evil.  Good though, ultimately, has more power.

So here’s the good news.  It is easy, at this point, to differentiate through mission.  Once there are more missioneurs, it may get harder.    At this moment, however, fearless committed leaders are hard to come by.  It takes fearless committed leaders to lead a movement.  Add to that a rational imperative to give people what they want and you have something impossible to stop.  Don’t ignore that last bit.  Your execution in giving people what they want should be just as passionate and thoughtful as your mission. 

Make your idea huge.  Go beyond what you’re selling.  Go beyond the problem you’re solving.  How is your product or service making people feel?  What are you making them feel about themselves?  How is your mission making them feel?  How are you changing the people you come in contact with?  Stir their blood!

Anthony Pisapia is a missioneur at the intersection of for-profit and nonprofit. To read more posts like this one visit www.anthonypisapia.com.

I’m writing from Warsaw, Poland just one hour before leading a “masterclass” on missioneurship at the European Creative Cities Conference.

I’m surrounded by young social entrepreneurs from places like Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, Thailand and, yes, the good old United States — although I’m one of only two Americans here.

The social entrepreneurs here get missioneurship, they really do. It’s intuitive to them to put mission at the center of their universe and to treat entrepreneurship as a means to that end. They get the importance of driving revenue from their core services, even though they don’t know how to do it. They understand that by building mission enterprises, they can revolutionize their communities, even when governments and established institutions aren’t willing to help (or actively oppose them).

What don’t they understand? Above all, me! Sometimes they ask me to repeat myself because they can’t understand my English or I talk too fast. I adjusted my presentation slides to make up for this, with lots of text slides so that they can follow along when they have trouble understanding me.

Here are the complete slides from the presentation I’m about to give. I was asked to address the challenge of balancing mission, entrepreneurship and community. I answer that you shouldn’t balance these at all, and I pivot from this topic to a discussion of how to build community and how profit can be used to set social enterprises free.

I have a not-so-secret mission that someone from this conference will go back to their country and create a missioneurs chapter. If that might be you, email me at my first name at blakejennelle.com. You’ll make my day!

Updated 3/25: New videos of the conference released

For me, the best part of the conference was meeting so many remarkable missioneurs from all over the world. Seeing them on video is nothing like spending three days with them. Nevertheless, these videos should give you a sense for how these incredible people talk and think. I also make a few appearances.

When we nicknamed the Mission Mob a “happy hour with damn good intentions,” we were right about at least one thing: it felt damn good to be there!

Somewhere between 100 and 150 missioneurs filled Ladder 15 in downtown Philadelphia to share their missions and network across lines rarely crossed. It was amazing to watch all these groups mixing and mingling like they had been doing it for years — including startups, non-profits, universities, representatives of city and state government, and members of the tech and creative communities.

Enjoy these pictures and videos from the event, whether you’re reliving the night or wishing you hadn’t missed it. We’ll have another Mission Mob event before too long.

To get emailed with the next event, be sure to join our Google Group.

Unofficial tour of the event

Live keynotes from the Mission Mob team

Have memories you’d like to share? By all means leave a comment below!