Strategic planning is an exercise that businesses use to decide what actions to take to be successful. There are a number of models for strategic planning and the one that I employ creates a hierarchy of Vision, Mission, Goals and Objectives. In this model there is one vision, supported by one mission, support by a number of goals that, in turn, are supported by a number of objectives (see image below).
These terms are defined as:
- Vision: Desire future state
- Mission: Our purpose
- Goal: What you need to achieve in order to fulfill your mission and ultimately your vision.
- Objective: What you need to accomplish in order to achieve goal.
I have been involved in strat planning and recently noted the similarity between the goals of strategic planning and one of the first Catechism questions:
Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
I realized that this effectively is a strategy for life in simple words.
Simply put, the Vision (desired future state) for all Catholics is to "Be Happy with God in the Next Life". Our Mission (purpose) is to save our souls and to achieve that, we need to accomplish the goals of knowing, loving and serving God in this life.
Whatever means (objectives) we take to achieve the goals, they all converge on the mission and vision. The critical success factor is alignment from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy. In other words, any misalignment introduces a risk of failure to achieve the goals and ultimately the vision.
So a key point is to reflect on our lives and look for any strategic misalignment between this strategy and your personal, spiritual,family and work life. The misalignment may be something that you do or something that you don't do.
I think that a theme we should weave into our life is the awareness of practising virtue in all aspects of our lives.
P^3
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