Revisiting Compass Statement Definitions
Hello and welcome to this single session for Revisiting Compass Statement Definitions. Specifically, the goal of this session is to look at company value statements, objectives, mission statements, and the vision statement to ensure I’m not missing anything when it comes to project objectives.
Let’s start by placing all the current statements in one spot:
Vision Statement
To responsibly unlock and inspire creators of any and every identity.
Mission Statement
To CREATE immersive MEDIA with inclusive fiction;
To SHARE content creation TOOLS with the world; and,
To MODEL corporate humanistic POLICIES for the industry.
Cryptiquest Values
- A. MEDIA
- Inclusive: Content must strive for representation while avoiding tokenism, stereotyping, and cultural appropriation.
- Original: Content must be unique and consistent to the world it creates.
- Quality: Content must be entertaining, professional, and understandable.
- B. TOOLS
- Obtainable: Tools must be freely available for any would-be creators.
- Refinable: Tools must be open to refinement based on feedback from users in order to increase tool effectiveness.
- Useful: Tools must be engineered for ease of use by the novice creator.
- C. POLICIES
- Diverse-Seeking: Business must seek diversity in talent and in partnerships.
- Human-centric: Business must treat people as people first (regardless of relation to the business).
- Respectable: Business must serve as an industry role model regarding culture, conduct, and professionalism.
Cryptiquest Objectives
PROCESSES
We believe that even if a creator is possessed with inspiration, talent, and vision they can still be thwarted by the creative process itself. That’s why we offer our in-house project management guides free to creators around the world. We take the creative process seriously, and that’s why the following objectives are designed to ensure our own projects follow best practices.
- 🔓 {1} Objective 1.A Our projects follow our project management standards.
- 🔒 {2} Objective 1.B Our products use our crafting tools (as they are available).
- 🔒 {3} Objective 1.C Our products follow draft and version protocols.
- 🔒 {4} Objective 1.D Our products follow branding and legal guidelines.
TOOLS
The explicit actions in our vision are to unlock and inspire creators. In addition to the project management guides, we create a suite of crafting tools and a game engine to test creations made by those tools. These tools offer instructive and engaging ways to generate story elements for whatever narrative-based creation creators are working on. These next objectives have been engineered to ensure our tools meet user expectations.
- 🔒 {5} Objective 2.A User expectation regarding the suite of tools working seamlessly together is met.
- 🔒 {6} Objective 2.B User expectation regarding process guidance (from concept-to-launch) for each tool is met.
- 🔒 {7} Objective 2.C User expectation regarding sharing and collaboration content for each tool is met.
- 🔒 {8} Objective 2.D User expectation regarding ease of use for each tool is met.
- 🔒 {9} Objective 2.E User expectation regarding game engine format is met.
- 🔒 {10} Objective 2.F User expectation regarding game engine integration is met.
MEDIA
While the project management guides and crafting tools serve to help unlock creators, we are creating media to help inspire creators. Our media is meant to demonstrate the possible outcome for creators using our crafting tools. We also create responsible media – loosely defined as ensuring there is no ambiguity regarding toxic ideologies. The objectives for media have been formulated to support Cryptiquest’s values.
- 🔒 {11} Objective 3.A Media reviews report positive on inclusivity.
- 🔒 {12} Objective 3.B Media reviews report positive on uniqueness.
- 🔒 {13} Objective 3.C Media reviews report positive on consistency.
- 🔒 {14} Objective 3.D Media reviews report positive on entertainment.
- 🔒 {15} Objective 3.E Media reviews report positive on quality.
- 🔒 {16} Objective 3.F Media reviews report positive on concision.
PRESENCE
A critical caveat to our vision is that we reach creators of any and every identity – that includes being found for those actively looking for us. We want to ensure that creators (both unlocked and inspired) will be able to discover us when they search for a creative solution either online or in person. These objectives have been designed with these users in mind.
- 🔒 {17} Objective 4.A Cryptiquest is returned on the first page of results when users search for targeted keywords.
- 🔒{18} Objective 4.B Cryptiquest is present at industry events, annually.
- 🔒 {19} Objective 4.C Users who go to industry events report seeing us at industry events.
BRANDS
Creators can neither be unlocked nor inspired if our products are not being used. Therefore it is imperative to assess consumer value for the brands by measuring their popularity. Media brands need to be profitable so as to increase capital and to fund further outreach to creators. The following objectives are important for fostering these opportunities, though it’s also important to point out that these do not apply to all brands (i.e. creative tools will always be free).
- 🔒 {20} Objective 5.A More than four brands are profitable.
- 🔒 {21} Objective 5.B Brands are popular among creators, globally.
- 🔒 {22} Objective 5.C The brands span at least three different media types.
REPUTATION
A key theme throughout our vision and mission statements is responsibility, and while that can be interpreted as how we manage the messaging in our media, we also desire to be a role model for the way we interact with people – whether they be creator, partner, or staff. We are serious about responsibility. In addition to our conduct, we aim to serve as a role model and authority within the industry. The following objectives are intended to help mold our reputation in both humanistic integrity and subject authority.
- 🔒 {23} Objective 6.A Users/employees report that Cryptiquest is an honest company.
- 🔒 {24} Objective 6.B Users/employees report that Cryptiquest treats its employees well.
- 🔒 {25} Objective 6.C Users/employees consider employees of Cryptiquest to be industry experts.
- 🔒 {26} Objective 6.D Users/employees report having a meaningful relationship with Cryptiquest, its brands, or its products.
- 🔒 {27} Objective 6.E Users/employees consider partners of Cryptiquest to be industry experts.
- 🔒 {28} Objective 6.F Third party reviews of the company are positive.
ACCESS
Our vision states that we reach creators of any and every identity – that includes actively seeking creators who cannot access us. We intend to literally reach every creator – with a goal to not only be inclusive but connect to creators walled off by social, economic, or other invisible barriers throughout the world. The following objectives serve to support this part of the vision.
- 🔒 {29} Objective 7.A Tools are translated to support users, globally.
- 🔒 {30} Objective 7.B Solutions are discovered to provide tool access to communities, globally.
- 🔒 {31} Objective 7.C Solutions are discovered to provide tool access to regions, globally.
- 🔒 {32} Objective 7.D Solutions are discovered to provide tool access to disenfranchised groups, globally.
That’s a lot of stuff (and this doesn’t include the ideal state or strategy!)
I see now where I was getting confused. I was thinking that there were some aspects of Cryptiquest Values being left behind (I specifically pointed out “novice creator” as an issue) but when I developed Cryptiquest Objectives, I indirectly included those aspects.
For instance, the value that points out the “novice creator” states “Useful: Tools must be engineered for ease of use by the novice creator.” and (8) Objective 2.D covers this by assuming the novice creator as part of all users: “{8} Objective 2.D User expectation regarding ease of use for each tool is met.”
Having said that, the “How to Make Guides” project does not have this as an objective because I only looked at the “unlocked” objectives. This one is still locked since the feedback collection process isn’t in place yet. Also, I didn’t consider guides to be tools – I was under the impression that tools were going to be crafters. However, these guides do seem to fit within a sub genre of guides.
With fresh perspective, here are all the objectives that apply to guides:
- 🔓 {1} Objective 1.A Our projects follow our project management standards.
- 🔒 {2} Objective 1.B Our products use our crafting tools and guides (as they are available).
- 🔒 {3} Objective 1.C Our products follow draft and version protocols.
- 🔒 {5} Objective 2.A User expectation regarding the suite of tools working seamlessly together is met.
- 🔒 {6} Objective 2.B User expectation regarding process guidance (from concept-to-launch) for each tool is met.
- 🔒 {8} Objective 2.D User expectation regarding ease of use for each tool is met.
The Access level of objectives also apply but I just do not have the capacity to fulfill that at this juncture. I have a TEST phase that I have to include in the project which will help Objectives 5, 6, and 8.
So what’s the next step? I need to add these objectives to the project objective list and ensure there is a test phase.
I think I now see a need for some sort of project page that’s separate from these notes. A page or some or other entity that serves as the actual project document. Perhaps this can live on the site – perhaps as part of the Retrospective? Maybe I could replace “Retrospectives” with “Project Tomes” (or something like that)? Or maybe projects need to be a collection of documents? Some sort of project creature – something that says “living” and “created” (like a golem?).
There are projects and products. The documentation that goes along with the project isn’t the actual project but plans and records for the project. Like a case file? Project Files? Project Profiles? Project Lives? Project Histories? Project Essences? Project Cases? Projectopedia? Project Wiki? Project Monster? Project Creature? Project Dossiers? Project Biographies? Projectographies? Project-o-graphs? Project Scribes?
Let’s assume I go with “Project Tomes” – I need to then figure out what exactly a tome will contain and how it will look. I think I could convert retrospectives into tomes but I think Retrospectives should be PART of tomes, yes?
Projects are in the navigation. So the options for projects are “In Progress”, “Completed”, “Current and Past Deliverables”, and “Future Project Shelf”.
Each Tome contains the project deliverables for each phase. These deliverables are updated as needed throughout the project. By having a specific location for these deliverables, analyzing and referencing project elements would be much easier. This should use accordion functionality.
How should this be implemented? Like, the assumption is that I should do this for the “How to Make Guides” project but what about the two other outstanding projects? What about past projects? Let’s assume I create this only for projects that need them (including all future projects).
I would create a new page of “Current Projects” and add it to the navigation. Then what? Do I create a post or a page for each tome? Tomes should not pop up in the project notes so they should be pages. On the other hand, pages cannot have categories (without a plugin) but I could just get the plugin if it’s a big deal. Something tells me it’s not a big deal.
So I create a page, add some accordions for what?
- Project Summary
- Include original project category information
- Project Goal
- Project Objectives
- Project Tasks
- Design Specs
- Latest Draft
- Launch Materials
- Lessons Learned
- Include a link to the retrospective
- Closure
Sounds innocent enough. I guess the new goal of the exploration phase is to identify the scope of the project then use the planning phase to convert the scope to objectives.
I’ll implement this, update the objectives and move on. See you in the next session!