Team Mission, Long-term Vision, and Strategy

Team mission vs. team vision

In most tech companies, it is the EMs' responsibility to set up the team's roadmap, execution, and delivery plan. The manager should clearly articulate the team's mission, vision, and long-term strategy. Usually, the interviewer is not actually evaluating the mission/vision statement and strategy itself. Instead, they are looking at your understanding of the team’s mission. They are also interested in understanding your role in defining the team's strategy.

It is essential to write a mission and vision statement for your team, practice articulating the team's 12–18 months strategy and be ready for a discussion around it.

Note: The mission statement highlights the purpose of the team and its overall goals. For example, the mission of a Core Datastore team can state, "To provide reliable, scalable, and secure data storage and access solutions for all services in the company, enabling service owners to access and analyze data effectively to drive business growth and success."

On the other hand, the team vision outlines the steps that must be followed to achieve the team mission.

What is the mission statement for your team?

The mission statement focuses on why a team exists. A good practice is not to recall the team’s mission for the first time during the interview and think and rehearse it beforehand so you can articulate it effectively.

Here are some examples of a team’s mission statements. Note that these are just a highlight of the team's purpose and not a complete list of the team’s responsibilities.

• The Core Datastores team is here to provide easy-to-use services for reliable and scalable data access and storage.

• The Logs team provides an efficient mechanism of logs storage and fast retrieval.