V2MOM: A Great Way to Focus Your Team on What Matters

Early-stage CEOs need to be good at lots of things.   In our view, the most important is setting a vision for the company –- and then translating that vision into tangible objectives for the rest of the team.

For this to be done well, a CEO must be able to simplify all of this in a way that everyone in the company can understand and act on.  This is hard work.  As DaVinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

One tool that we’ve seen CEOs use to make it easier to communicate vision and objectives is Mark Benioff’s V2MOM.  In his book Behind the Cloud, Mark tells the story of how he’s used V2MOM since Salesforce.com’s inception to focus the company on what matters.  V2MOM requires a company to outline five things (and refresh them periodically as the business evolves):

• Vision – What you want to accomplish
• Values – What’s important about your vision
• Methods – What you need to do to deliver on the vision
• Obstacles – What might stand in the way
• Measurement – How you will know you’ve met your goals

Seems simple enough, right?  Well, it’s not always easy to get each of these things boiled down in a way that everyone can agree upon and process.  This is where the CEO’s talents come into play.

We’ve seen the V2MOM process work exceptionally well in several of our portfolio companies (both early and growth stage).  If you’d like to do a better job of getting your team aligned around your vision –- and equipping them to deliver on it — it’s definitely worth integrating V2MOM into your company.