Michael Hayman - Mission: How the Best in Business Break Through

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First published 2015

Copyright Michael Hayman and Nick Giles, 2015

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-97079-9

Michael Hayman and Nick Giles are the co-founders of Seven Hills, the highly acclaimed campaigns firm. The business was founded to generate momentum for Britains fast-growing companies and most exciting entrepreneurs. The firm was named the Best Corporate Consultancy in the world by the Holmes Report and is also a Santander Breakthrough 50 winner.

Michael is a co-founder of StartUp Britain, the national initiative for early-stage enterprise launched by the Prime Minister. He is Chairman of Entrepreneurs at the private bank Coutts and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. He was awarded an MBE for services to enterprise promotion in 2014.

Nick works closely with high growth firms in the UK, US and Asia. He is an ambassador for the Hong Kong governments venture programme. He is also an advisory board member of Tech London Advocates and is an advisor to the global youth movement One Young World.

Michael and Nick were listed in GQ magazines inaugural 100 most connected men.

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Technology is fundamentally changing the way people live, work and travel, and a new generation of innovative companies has emerged in recent years. In Mission, Michael Hayman and Nick Giles pinpoint the importance of social purpose to the entrepreneurs and businesses who are transforming societies around the world. It is mission that makes successful businesses stand out, and this book shows how companies are able to define, build and communicate their purpose in order to prosper

Joe Gebbia, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Airbnb

Mission shows how purpose has become essential to todays business leaders. Capitalism can best flourish if based on new, ethical and socially motivated foundations and this book shows why purpose-driven businesses are winning out, and acting as a force for good in society

John Mackey, founder, Whole Foods

Mission makes a compelling case for purpose as the defining ingredient of todays most successful businesses that are able to move from ideation to global scale. In the battle for talent, it is a central commercial purpose that sorts the great from the good. Any business that wants to stand out in todays crowded market needs to ask themselves what they are really trying to achieve and why their company matters. This book shows you how mission is a critical tool for leaders serious about scaling their business into a global player

Sherry Coutu, Non-executive Director, London Stock Exchange

The grasp of the reality that every business should be a force for good in offering solutions to societys challenges is a fault line between our current different generations. This book will help its readers see with clarity what the future of successful business already looks like.

This book clearly sets out why those businesses built on profits and social purpose will win as they attract engaged customers, employees and investors, and are born from twenty-first century, values-led, entrepreneurs

Paul Lindley, founder, Ellas Kitchen

It is obvious to me that we need to support those who are going to create wealth for our nation and to do this we need to encourage new entrepreneurs and deliver the conditions in which, young people especially, can attain the skills, education and experiences that will stand them in good stead should they choose to become enterprising and entrepreneurial. Quite apart from the basics and supporting start-up companies, we need to really get behind those companies that show real promise and begin to grow fast. A concentration of effort in support of these companies, and especially the people who are behind them, is the best way that we can create the big global companies that are needed to create the wealth that the UK needs to be prosperous. In Mission, Michael Hayman and Nick Giles show very clearly why standout companies are increasingly defined by purpose and the ambition to effect positive change.

It is very clear to me that a new generation of young companies is emerging that, with the correct conditions created in this country by everyone standing up to support them in their entrepreneurial endeavours, are going to be the job creators and wealth creators this country needs. This book is an apt appreciation of the business culture that is developing and has developed in the UK over recent years, one in which I have seen its authors play an important role in cultivating

HRH The Duke of York, KG

In todays business world, mission matters.

It gives you the purpose to succeed in our unstable, fast-changing and challenging environment. A changing world where it has been said that two thirds of the companies that will make up the S&P 500 stock market index in a decades time have yet to be created.

Consider the words of Winston Churchill, Britains wartime leader. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind, he said in 1943. Over seven decades on, that prophecy is being fulfilled in a commercial sense, because todays business world has become a battleground: for attention, preference and ideas. A battle for the mind in which companies must seek purpose as well as profit.

In this attention economy, breaking through is everything: the ability to connect with the consumer, the employee and the shareholder.

Central to mission is the rise of a new commercial currency: belief. It is a bond of trust with the consumer and marketplace that transcends the cynicism that so many have towards brand messages and advertising.

At its most potent, a driving mission defines and differentiates you. It brings to life an activist mentality and it marks out the most exciting and successful businesses of today. And with it comes the promise of a rare business gift momentum. This is the force to build businesses, to move markets, to mobilize and motivate. To drive progress. Make no mistake, it is business leaders with a mission and a big idea who can really change the world. Take Airbnb, the rental marketplace changing how we think about our homes; Uber, transforming transportation; and Google, finding new ways to understand the world.