AWS Services Partner Playbook: Setting Your Mission, Vision, and Tenets for Success

Defining a mission, vision, and tenets isn't just corporate jargon—it's the compass that directs every strategic decision for AWS Services Partners or those seeking to build a business on AWS. My experience leading Stelligent and later as an AWS executive has shown me that when core principles are actionable, they foster alignment and high-velocity decision-making. These values come to life in the "Learn" phase of the AWS Partner Flywheel Growth Accelerator, focused on defining your superpower and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and growth.

At Stelligent, our mission, vision, and tenets focused on empowering customers with automation, agility, and speed in the cloud. With AWS Techpreneur, I’m building on those foundations to help AWS Services Partners scale strategically, reduce friction, and stay adaptable in a rapidly changing landscape.

My insights on AWS Techpreneur draw from founding and leading Stelligent—which we sold to a global IT consultancy in 2018—three years as a tech executive at AWS, and now building a business that helps AWS Services Partners scale effectively.

1. Start with Your Mission—What’s the Core Purpose?

A mission is a practical north star. It guides decisions, team alignment, and how you respond to customer needs. At Stelligent, our mission was clear: to help our customers confidently deliver software on AWS so that they could accelerate useful feedback from their customers. We focused on cutting down lead times, simplifying workflows, and automating every possible step to make software delivery faster and more reliable.

Example Missions:

• Stelligent: Enable customers to confidently deploy software to production to accelerate useful feedback from their customers. Our slogan for this was "Production-Ready Software Delivered Every Day."
• AWS Techpreneur: Help AWS Services Partners achieve rapid, sustainable growth with clear insights and practical tools.

A well-crafted mission statement should clearly convey how your organization directly benefits the customer, using language that resonates with them. By adopting a customer-centric approach, you shift the focus from what your company does to how it makes a difference in your customers' success.

Tip: Avoid corporate jargon in your mission statement. Use plain language from the customer's perspective to convey clear value.

2. Define Your Vision—Where Are You Headed?

A vision isn’t just a slogan; it’s a practical destination you’re aiming for. At Stelligent, our vision was simple: a world where any authorized team member could deploy an idea in a day. This goal pushed us to help customers build tools and processes that delivered real autonomy and speed.

Example Visions:

• Stelligent: Any authorized team member within our customers’ organizations can have an idea in the morning and confidently deploy it to production by the afternoon of the same day.
• AWS Techpreneur: To be the leading global platform that enables AWS Services Partners to innovate and grow, reshaping the future of cloud services through shared knowledge and actionable insights.

Tip: When crafting your vision, keep the language straightforward but don't hesitate to think big and bold. Your vision should paint a compelling picture of the future—a future that not only guides your organization but also inspires and motivates your team and customers to strive toward ambitious goals.

3. Set Your Tenets—Guiding Principles in Action

Tenets make values actionable. They guide everyday decisions, create consistency, and give clarity around what matters most. At Stelligent, we ordered our tenets (what we called "values" at the time) to ensure priorities were clear, not just in what we valued but in how we made decisions quickly and effectively.

Examples of Tenets (unless you know better ones, UYKBO):

Stelligent

1/ Speed of Delivery - We prioritize reducing lead and cycle times to enable our customers to deliver high-quality systems faster.

2/ Sharing - We believe in transparency, designing systems and processes that work independently of any single individual.

3/ Continuous Improvement - Driven by curiosity, we continually refine our processes, systems, and software for ongoing improvement.

4/ Self-Service - We design self-service systems for our team and customers, enhancing user experience and integrating foolproof, poka-yoke principles.

AWS Techpreneur

1/ Share Knowledge, Build Communities - We foster an AWS Services Partner community that shares insights to accelerate collective growth.

2/ Design for Scale - We create scalable, repeatable systems that support thousands of businesses, enabling efficient, sustainable growth.

3/ Outcome Focused - We deliver data-driven insights to guide AWS Partners in making informed decisions that drive measurable results.

4/ Continuous Improvement - We embrace constant refinement, using feedback and trends to deliver the most effective, up-to-date solutions.

These tenets shape both businesses’ decisions, providing a clear structure for customer-focused and sustainable growth.

Tip: After drafting tenets, I typically walk through decision-making scenarios to ensure they enable clear, actionable choices. Tenets should evolve based on real-world feedback, scaling decision-making across the company beyond just the founder’s perspective.

"Unless You Know Better Ones" (UYKBO) is an acronym commonly included in the tenets across Amazon businesses. It embodies the company's culture of continuous improvement, emphasizing that there's always room for enhancement. This phrase aligns with the "Are Right, A Lot" Leadership Principle, which encourages employees to seek diverse perspectives and actively challenge their own beliefs to make informed decisions.

Final Thoughts

Defining your mission, vision, and tenets is more than a strategic exercise—it's the cornerstone of your organization's journey through each phase of growth. These core principles serve as practical tools that guide you through every step of the Flywheel mechanism: Learn, Do, Measure, Share, Validate, Sell, Iterate, Operate.

As you reflect on your business, consider how these foundational elements align with and propel you through each phase:

• Learn: Your mission drives you to understand your customers deeply, setting the stage for meaningful learning and discovery.
• Do: Your vision provides a clear destination, motivating action and aligning your team's efforts toward common goals.
• Measure: Your tenets offer criteria for evaluating progress, ensuring that you measure what truly matters.
• Share: By sharing your mission, vision, and tenets, you build trust and foster community both within your organization and with your customers.
• Validate: These principles help you validate your strategies and approaches, ensuring they resonate with your core purpose and customer needs.
• Sell: A clear mission and vision enhance your superpower, making it easier to communicate and sell your offerings.
• Iterate: Your tenets encourage continuous improvement, guiding you to refine and adapt based on feedback and changing circumstances.
• Operate: Together, these principles establish a strong operational foundation, promoting consistency, efficiency, and resilience.

By thoughtfully defining and integrating your mission, vision, and tenets into each part of the Flywheel, you create a cohesive strategy that accelerates growth and fosters sustainable success within the AWS ecosystem.

Now is the time to engage your team in this reflective process:

• Does your mission inspire learning and customer-centric innovation?
• Does your vision drive decisive action and alignment across all business functions?
• Do your tenets provide actionable guidance that supports measurement, validation, and iterative improvement?

Embrace these principles not just as statements on a page but as dynamic tools that actively shape your organization's journey. By aligning them with the Flywheel mechanism, you ensure that every step you take is purposeful and directed toward your ultimate goals.

In doing so, you'll build a resilient, adaptable business that's primed for rapid growth and lasting impact within the AWS ecosystem.