Goals
Demystifying Strategic Planning Steps
It’s that time of the year. Perhaps not the “most wonderful time of the year”, but the time of the year that businesses and nonprofits alike go through the process of strategic planning and goal alignment. The notion is this: direction gets set at the top, then is cascaded down the organization through a goal alignment and setting process.
Today, I’m not going to quibble with the process. I’m going to attempt to demystify the language, as I observe much head scratching (and some of it’s my own) when asked to participate in the process. What is an objective? How does it differ from a goal? Should I have a mission? A vision? And when someone tells me I should be more strategic, what do they mean?