Every once in awhile we get confused, or we forget something. Believe it or not, this can even happen in your start up, especially when what you do continually evolves. And succinctly describing what your company does gets harder when you serve both “users” (those people who use your product, but don’t pay for it) and “customers” (those people who buy your product, and might use it a lot, a little, or to just provide more benefits to users). No wonder every once in awhile team members in your company get a little flustered when it comes to describing in simple terms what your company does.
Such was the case for us at Remind not too long ago. You see we have more than 30 million monthly active users — teachers, students, parents, and administrators — who converse and share content with each other over our communication platform. We also have more than 1,000 distinct school and district customers who have purchased our Remind School Plan so that they might bring important benefits to their schools or districts like being able to reach everyone with important safety-first oversight and controls around the communication taking place throughout their community.
So it’s not too surprising that as we’ve scaled our company to these dimensions across users and customers — while simultaneously evolving the different departments that work to build and take our product to market — we can be susceptible to a bit of what I’d call “message entropy”. What exactly happens when your company contracts a case of message entropy, especially a case that becomes evident through a sudden flash fire of some inspired, healthy, perhaps a little animated, and hopefully crucial conversation about how everyone should be describing in unison what your company does?
Well, first off be glad that your team members are taking the initiative to engage in this dialogue with one another. Better to have a little disconnect and friction, then a company that’s not inspired to engage in this way. Keep in mind your company is constantly evolving and this should always be a recurring discussion topic across your entire team. That said, here are three specific messages we shared across our company to reconnect as a team when we recently experienced a case of message entropy.
Revisit your vision, mission, and values
“First, we have created a strong foundation in our vision, mission and values that serve as the starting point for how we describe Remind. I wrote a post earlier this year that helps delineate how I parse the distinct purpose of a company’s vision, mission and values. For all of us, the high level “what” Remind does is captured in our Mission: Remind is building a communication platform that helps teachers, students, parents, and administrators work together. Now, as with everything we do at Remind, we can discuss whether this accurately captures what we do or whether we need to update it. I happen to like the simplicity and broad scope that this mission statement provides as a starting point for every conversation I have with people about what Remind does every day.”
Be flexible to customize your description per your audience
“Second, even with the foundation of our VMV, we will find ourselves in conversations with specific audiences where we will need to tailor how we describe Remind. What we might say to a district CTO will be perhaps different from how we describe what we do to a district CAO (Chief Academic Officer). While our descriptions might not be dramatically different, we might emphasize different elements of Remind for these two individuals. Likewise, how we describe Remind to a potential investor will be a little different than how we might describe what we do to a potential partner who we’d like to encourage to integrate within Remind. As long as we use our VMV as the core starting point and do our best to capture within our broader messaging framework the evolving ways we might describe Remind to different audiences (or “personas”) we will be doing the best we can to describe what Remind does at any given time.”
Focus on the work your team has created and made available
“Finally, we clearly live in a world of information overload —like everyone, I struggle with this reality every day. Yet I believe that Remind continues to work hard at creating the important information for all of us to do our best work. Oftentimes we may feel the information we need isn’t available when oftentimes it’s just a click or search query away. This is why it’s important to find, read, and internalize the important information we all collaborate to create for each other — whether that be a board presentation, a product roadmap, a collection of sales training materials, or our vision, mission, values; as well as the special ways we might augment our description of Remind for varied audiences. So before we question what does Remind do, take a moment to revisit our VMV statements, our broader brand messaging framework, and tap a colleague on the shoulder to bounce off them the way you’re planning to explain what Remind does to a person you’re about to meet.”
Originally published on Medium on December 23, 2018. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.