Vision, role, mission, goal

One of my main peeves about standard business strategy-frameworks like the Business Rules Group’s Business Motivation Model is that they start way too far down, as if the organisation is the sole centre of the world. The framework I use starts much higher:

• Vision: describes a desired ‘world’ [examples: “a more sociable world” (brewers Lion Nathan), “boundaryless sharing of information” (TOGAF)] – always larger than the organisation, and never ‘achieved’
• Role(s): what the organisation aims to do and not do within that ‘world’ – identifies where the organisation intersects with customers, partners, stakeholders etc – will change slowly over time
• Mission(s): new capabilities and/or services the organisation intends to create (via Goals) and maintain – measurable, does not end when ‘achieved’, will change with normal business strategy cycle [frequently misunderstood / misdescribed as ‘vision’]
• Goal(s): project with a specified set of deliverables and a target date for completion – not measurable as such (other than conformance with deliverables and/or completion date), should end on completion, will change frequently [occasionally misunderstood / misdescribed as ‘vision’, with disastrous results]

More on this later, I think?