People say organizations should have Mission statement, Vision Statement, etc. I say everything boils down to only one word – Purpose.

To better understand these things, I took a small example of a person who wants to shift his career from IT to Marketing. Let us see these things from his perspective:

MISSION – Why does the student wants to go from IT into Marketing?

VISION – What does he want to become in Marketing?

STRATEGY – How does he want to become what he wants to become in Marketing?

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES – How does he break his strategy into different objectives?

SUCCESS/FAILURE INDICATORS – How does he know whether he succeeded or not? What are the performance indicators?

This sort of strategic thinking is the same even for an organization or an individual. Of course, with changing situations, environment, operational, financial, competitive, etc. you actually change your strategies. So, strategy is all about Purpose and Future Thinking.

It is about where are you now, where do you want to go and why, and how do you want to go and why?