Take a look at the goals in the following table. Do you see how the wording of the first three goals has a different style and format than the last three goals?
I organized the table to highlight two different types of goals that you’ll want to consider including in your plan. The first three goals listed are “results” goals and focus on a numerical result. The last three goals are “process” goals and lead to the completion of a plan, process, or system.
For the first decade-plus of my consulting career, I helped our customers capture and track their strategic plans in Microsoft Word and Excel documents. That worked fine.
However, Word- and Excel-based plans were fairly static and didn’t actively engage teams to take any action. Plus, not everyone felt comfortable using Excel, and the plans were avoided as a result.
I had a nagging thought that there must be a better way.
Recently, Mission Met’s co-founders, Eric Ryan and Ricky Chilcott, had a conversation with Laura Andersen of LeadingX2. Her and her business partner, Dan Mulhern, started LeadingX2 to promote and support the idea of shared leadership. The company provides coaching for co-leaders to cultivate success in leadership pairs.
I’m thrilled to tell you that later this year I’ll publish my upcoming book, Mission Met: Proven Strategic Planning Guidance to Help You Build a Financially-Secure and Impactful Nonprofit. The book will provide you with a suite of practical strategic planning practices that I’ve learned in over two decades of guiding and working for nonprofit leaders.
This blog entry, about mission and vision statements, represents the first in a series of four articles where I’ll share a brief preview of some of the guidance that I provide in the book.
