Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Meaning of Missions, Visions, Goals, Objectives, Tactics and Tasks

I'm reviewing a strategy plan and fine tuning the slides and it dawned on me that I did not have a strong grasp on the difference between goals  and objectives.

Well, I did a little search and now I think I do.

I found two sources that when combined give clarity:

Bruce Kelley took a shot at defining the similarities and differences of these words: vision, mission, goal, objective, strategy, execution and tactics and this San Diego State University source does a good job distinguishing between goals and objectives.

Here is my amalgamation of these sources combined with my own take.
  1. Vision - A broad, very qualitative future minded aspiration lofty in nature and often associated with an individual person fundamental to an organization (i.e. Steve Jobs)
  2. Mission - Also a broad qualitative aspiration. In my experience this is a corporate processed statement attached to a larger organization that ties to a vision but includes more tangible statements. This collective processing allows individuals to feel some ownership of its meaning. (i.e. HP Invent)
  3. Strategy - Lofty in nature but a representation of both qualitative and quantitative statements. I think about this as the aggregation of everything that follows, Goals, Objectives, Tactics.
  4. Goals - Lofty aspirations yet again, though incremental pieces of a mission and something that an individual team or functional business area can accomplish.
  5. Objectives - Measurable statements that have a discrete beginning and end that when aggregated accomplish the goals.
  6. Tactics - measurable subsets of objectives that describe the "who" "what" and "how".
  7. Actions or Tasks - The smallest statements of work that are achievable by an individual person in a relatively short period of time.
Execution does not fit into my taxonomy of terms and in my use is the act of delivering or progressing toward any of the above.

What do you think?
 





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