Steve Bilt is CEO of Smile Brands, a company with 5,000 employees that provides business support services to more than 425 dental offices. Smile Brands has been on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list three times, and Steve is one of the top CEOs on Glassdoor. Anyone can come up with a mission statement or a company purpose that sounds good. But it can’t be something that just lives on a wall or in the company handbook. It has to be something that is infused into every aspect of the business.
Steve believes a mission statement needs to be something short and catchy that people can remember. It needs to be something you can check in on to see how well the company is living up to it. It has to be something that is living and breathing inside your company.
Steve uses the Smile Brands mission, Smiles for Everyone, in every meeting and in every interaction to show people what it actually looks like to live out the mission.
Steve says…
“As soon as you start to lengthen it or create more explanation for it, you’re making it harder to use, and you’re telling people what the standard of success is. The point of our mission statement is that only you can say what makes you smile. I can’t put criteria around it to say, well, as long as my lighting is good enough or my shirt is the right color, you’re going to be happy with this interview. I can’t put the standards on it. Only you can judge that. I kept it very short so it was highly subjective and each person would evaluate it qualitatively.”
Steve uses the Smile Brands mission, Smiles for Everyone, in every meeting and in every interaction to show people what it actually looks like to live out the mission.
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Over the last 15 years, I’ve had the privilege of speaking and working with some of the world’s top leaders. Here are 15 of the best leadership lessons that I learned from the CEOs of organizations like Netflix, Honeywell, Volvo, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and others. I hope they inspire you and give you things you can try in your work and life. Get the PDF here.
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