Intranet mission, vision, strategy and so on

Have you ever felt some people use words the wrong way? In Sweden sometimes I see a big, collective uncertainty about what vision, mission, strategy and some other words mean. Therefore many people misunderstand each other at meetings and other work situations, sometimes even at executive level.

At a company I worked for some years ago there was no consensus about what a process was and how that differed from a project. And last week I read a Swedish blog post stating that ”mission” is ”how we realise the vision”. (NO. A mission statement is ”a short written description of the aims of a business, charity, government department or public organisation”. (Cambridge Dictionary) Think about Tom Cruise and his “Mission: Impossible” (in Swedish “Omöjligt uppdrag”). The way a business ”carefully plan its actions over a period of time to improve its position and achieve what it wants” … hte “how” – is called a strategy. (Cambridge Dictionary)

Misunderstandings are not good. If the organisation at large fumbles with this framework it’s hard to do the right things at unit level and product level. The tasks you do should not just be random ”things”, but instead connect to all the high level thinking about what why the company exists, what the end-goal is, and so on.

Five years ago I felt I needed to bring some order to the buzzword mess in my head. Here is my own guide.