Blake Jennelle has blog

This is the fourth post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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Entrepreneurs become unstoppable when they see the world through both eyes. That is, when they become more than a startup entrepreneur and more than a social entrepreneur.

This is the premise of missioneurship.

Earlier in this series, we talked about the social entrepreneur’s obsession with mission at the expense of execution. We also talked about the startup entrepreneur’s obsession with execution at the expense of mission.

The results are often fatal. We lose startups and social causes that don’t have to die.

That is, unless we do something about it.

Unleashing a generation of missioneurs

By bringing together startup and social entrepreneurs, we can create a new generation of changemakers who are masters of their mission and its execution.

A missioneur is a new kind of entrepreneur, born when startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs come together.

Missioneurs run their companies like causes and their causes like companies.

They are practical in the way they build their cause, whether that cause is a business, non-profit, movement or community.

They are radically impractical in their commitment to their cause above all else.

They are zealots, fanatics, eccentrics and prophets when it comes to what they believe in. Yet they are neurotics when it comes to bringing those beliefs to life.

They know in their bones that something critical is missing in the world and that it’s their mission to create it.

They know that great intentions are essential but not enough.

They answer only to their mission. Their only constituency is the people their mission calls on them serve.

They know that if they beg for money, whether from donors or investors, their mission is no longer the only mission.

They make decisions that are unpopular and inconvenient when their mission demands it.

They are willing to fail if it means that their mission is more likely to succeed.

They know that dramatic change depends on dramatic innovation, especially with limited resources.

They are remarkable almost by definition, because their mission is remarkable. But they know that remarkable stories don’t spread on their own. Even the best stories need a hard push.

They inspire and empower others, growing their initiatives into movements much larger than themselves.

They inspire and empower each other, growing their movements side-by-side, as peers supporting each other in a community.

They are the next generation of startup and social entrepreneurs, and we need them — desperately.

Examples of missioneurship in business and beyond

The term missioneur is new but the approach isn’t.

Many of the world’s most remarkable (and successful) companies and causes are run by missioneurs. They are maniacal about their mission and single-minded about its execution.

Of course, missioneur thinking isn’t credited with these successes. At least not yet. So let’s take a quick look at how missioneurship fits into some well-known success stories.

Every example here is a household name. After all, it’s easier to discuss examples we all know. Some of these will surprise you. Others won’t at all. A few may even make you uncomfortable.

That’s okay. I chose them precisely because I thought they might be provocative.

We don’t have to agree with other people’s missions. What’s important is that we believe that on the whole, more mission-centric thinking is good for all of us.

I’ve kept these examples brief because my goal here is simply to introduce them. We’ll talk more about these examples in future posts.

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Apple (business) – Steve Jobs sees technology as art for the masses. Apple is his vehicle for creating that art. In the last decade, Apple has been nearly flawless in executing on its mission. Like artists, they are uncompromising in their design standards. They expect artistic innovation from every key player in the organization. Everything Apple does is remarkable, love it or hate it. It’s no wonder that when Apple takes a breath, the world leans in to listen.

Wikipedia (social) – Jimmy Wales and the Wikipedia team believe that information deserves to be free. So they created a free encyclopedia written entirely by a global community of volunteers that anyone can join. It’s supported through donations but could easily draw its revenue directly from its service if the Wikipedia Foundation chose to run it that way. The foundation remains lean and entrepreneurial to this day, with a team of just a handful of people (or tens of thousands, depending on whether you choose to count all of the volunteer writers and editors).

National Rifle Association (NRA) (politics) – Love it or hate it, the NRA is one of the most effective and innovative political lobbies in the U.S. It’s a membership organization with the mission of promoting and protecting gun ownership. It’s financially supported by the people it serves – its members and the people who believe in its cause. It remains scrappy and entrepreneurial even as it has grown in size and dominance.

Craigslist (business) – To its founder, Craig Newmark, Craigslist’s mission has always been to act a community service — as a way to strengthen communities and neighborhoods. The company has foregone hundreds of millions in revenue (if not more) in advertising and paid classifieds in order to keep the site centered around its community service mission. Craig has also kept his staff to a few dozen people so that it still feels like a community organization, much to the chagrin of those who see him leaving enormous profits on the table.

The Salvation Army (religion / social) – The Salvation Army has missionary roots in the most literal sense, devoted to spreading a Christian message and helping the poor. It’s the second largest charity in the US with approximately $2 billion in private donations. It’s been a major innovator in both charity financing and creative ways of monetizing its members and the people it serves.

Zappos (business) – Zappos’s CEO Tony Hsieh doesn’t sell shoes, at least that’s not how he sees it. He is in the happiness business, and selling shoes is a means to that end. Everything about Zappos’s marketing and culture speaks to that message, and they have been one of the most copied leaders in social media and customer service marketing.

Scientology (religion) – It seems like half of Hollywood has been involved in the Scientology movement, which has a strong mission for sure – even if its members are the only ones who understand it. Scrappy and entrepreneurial, the leaders of Scientology understand marketing and how to build a trend. The movement is financed by a creative hybrid of donations, books, merchandise and spiritual services and instruction. Less than 60 years old, the church generates an estimated $500 million in annual revenue and boasts of at least tens of thousands of devotees (the church claims millions of members, which is disputed).

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (politics) – The ACLU is one of the most active and effective civil liberties advocates in the world. It champions causes that are radically unpopular when its civil liberties mission calls for it. For example, it defended the free speech rights of Neo-Nazis who were demonstrating in heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois, and it argued that some materials portraying juveniles in sexual roles should not be banned as child pornography and are constitutionally protected. Although the ACLU gets 87% of its financing through donations, many of those donations come from people it serves — from donors who feel that when the ACLU takes on someone else’s case, their constitutional rights are also being defended.

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Again, some of these examples are intended to be provocative. They raise all sorts of questions about what missioneurship is and isn’t, what kinds of missions are worth pursuing and so on. That’s the point.

We’re not going to answer those questions now. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever come up with one clear answer. After all, this is a community. And in any healthy community, not everyone’s going to agree.

If we come up with a bunch of competing answers, we’ll know we’re doing something right.

A call to action

My hope for missioneurship is that it too becomes a movement – at least if the world truly needs it, as I think it does.

The first step in building this movement is to come together as a community, startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs, each of us looking to help each other become missioneurs.

We’ve been struggling long enough on our own. Let’s do something about it.

Tomorrow, in the final post in this series, I’ll announce the first community event for missioneurs, right here in Philadelphia. I hope you’ll take part in this event and spread the word to the startup and social entrepreneurs in your network. The post announcing this event will be called, “Building the missioneurs community, together.”

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More articles in The Missioneur Series:

• Part #1: Our startups and non-profits don’t have to die
• Part #2: The one-eyed startup entrepreneur
• Part #3: The one-eyed social entrepreneur
• Part #4 (you are here): Missioneurs are entrepreneurs with both eyes open
• Part #5: Building the missioneurs community, together

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