A long list of “things to do,” often mislabeled as “strategies” or “objectives,” is not a strategy.

1. Mission: What are we trying to achieve?


2. Vision: What does the world look like when we’ve achieved it?


3. Strategy: How will we achieve it?


4. Goals: How will we measure our progress towards it?


5. Roadmap: What do we need to build to get there?

Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets, and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy. Despite this, most organizations will not create focused strategies. Instead, they will generate laundry lists of desirable outcomes and, at the same time, ignore