I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many leaders in different kinds of situations, and it’s surprising how many get stuck on the “big picture” terms of Purpose, Mission, Vision, Goals, Values, Principles, Strategies, Priorities, and so on.

You might even be surprised where I end up with today’s message.

In my own language, I tend toward what feels like the natural English definition of the terms:

  • Purpose: Why we’re doing what we do
  • Mission: Like purpose, adding a sense of movement and travelling together
  • Vision: The destination where we want to end up, how the world will look better
  • Goals: Concrete measurable things where we want to hit a particular level
  • Values or Principles: The guideposts for how we want to behave
  • Strategy: The high level statement of how we’re going to get where want to be
  • Priorities: What we have decided are the most important things to do

We could go on and on, including terms like Focus, Groundrules, Tactics … the list seems endless.

Clearly if we use all of these things at once we’re just going to confuse the heck out of people. Humans can only be motivated by focusing on a few things at once, not a laundry list of things which overlap a lot and can be hard to describe.

More words don’t help. We’re going for straightforward, compelling concepts.

Here’s the process I use with leaders to work through the mishmash:

  1. What is the context you’re operating in? If you’re inside a larger organization, it’ll have its own language for thinking about these things. Sometimes the industry you’re in (mission is much different for non-profits than for military organizations) pushes you to particular language.
  2. How is your leadership team currently talking about this? Do they focus on external impact, or process, or internal achievements, or behaviors, or what? Do they gravitate toward certain terms because they seem to clarify things?
  3. How large a scope are we trying to describe? Do we want to promote the idea that we’re working closely with external partners, or is it more about just us here in this organization? Are we working to change the whole planet, or our community, or our workgroup?
  4. Who are the people we’re trying to motivate? Employees? Middle management? Partners? Stakeholders? Customers?
  5. NOW we can try to select just two or three terms which seem to have the most impact. How short can we make the statements? Can we reduce a list of ten down to just five? Or three?
  6. Test first with your key leaders, then thought leaders who represent the target audience, so you can refine the language and concepts. When you have to say ten sentences to explain what you were trying to get across, it’s not clear enough. When people start echoing back – with enthusiasm – something quite similar to your message, now you’re getting there.
  7. Finally, what stories support your message? People remember and get attached to stories, especially ones which are real and powerfully reinforce the concepts. Images can also be powerful for certain situations.

At the end of all this, we realize that the terms we used really weren’t all that important. I might call something a vision when the word you’d prefer is mission – even for the same concept.

What matters is the message and whether it helps align and motivate people.

Keep it simple.