When we bought the company in 1998 it had the same three basic revenue streams we have today:

1. Shipable items:  Books, DVDs, Pin #s, etc.
2. Contract work:  Professional Development dates, be it one day, long-term or video
3. Registration events:  Workshops, Institutes, Summits

Obviously the company looks drastically different from what it did fifteen years ago, but maybe the single greatest change we implemented was our Mission Statement.  When we started we didn’t have a viable mission statement, vision statement, set of core values, common goals, guiding principles or focused strategies for the company.  It wasn’t until 2004 that we actually figured out who we really were, wanted to be, and were able to articulate and embed throughout the entire company.

A vision statement to me is ‘why’ we do what we do.  A mission statement is ‘how’ we do it.  And the resources we create and produce are ‘what’ we do.  I will write about the Vision next week, but today is all about the ‘How’.

To advance the work of our authors.

That is it. That is our mission statement.  I know your first thought was probably.  “Wow, that took you 6 years to figure out.  Phew…slow on the uptake there Jeff.”  And you maybe right, but this Mission Statement is a bit deeper than at first blush.  Let me dissect this simple statement.

To Advance:  We create and use whatever ‘means’ possible to get the Intellectual Property (IP) of our authors into the hands of those educators who are looking for solutions to a particular problem or need.

the Work:  Our job is to get the work, the resources, into the hands of those educators.  This is not about making rock stars, though that has been an unintended consequence for many of the authors, but our focus is on their ‘work’.

of Our Authors:  We do not promote the work of an author we do not publish.  If we publish an author’s work, we do not promote the work he/she has produced earlier with another publisher. We do not hire consultants whom we have not been the publisher of their work.  We do not contract presenter at our events unless they are our author, or that they are an Associate of our Author who will be representing our author’s work.

We are loyal and committed to our authors.  We take great pride in the experts we have published and are quick to sing their praises, but again, it is not about them it is about their work.  And we give their work our undivided attention.

As my good friend Bill Ferriter, author of some outstanding books through Solution Tree and a GREAT Blog, Tempered Radical, summarized to me after a dinner in Australia where we were discussing Solution Tree, blogs, tech tools, and raising kids,

“So your primary goal is to identify people whose ideas hold the potential to improve schools on behalf of kids, so ‘advancing their work’ means ‘improving schools by giving a platform to the ideas that matter the most’. Not advancing ideas that you hope are going to make you some cash.” 

BINGO!  I hope someday that I can write half as well as he does.  Cash is good, in fact I plan to write about Cash Flow in a couple of weeks in a ‘Quotes Blog’, but it is not about cash.  It really isn’t.  Sure I want to live a nice life and provide for my family, and I want to offer a good secure job and fair salary to all the people at Solution Tree, but it can never be about profits, it has to be about people.  The people are educators, authors, staff, etc.  If you focus on the profits you will lose the people, if you focus on the people the profits will follow.  I’ll blog more about that someday soon.

To advance the work of our authors.  That is ‘how’ we do what we do.