In philanthropy, I see people confusing objectives with missions all the time. A mission is directional. An objective has a set of concrete steps that you’re intentionally engaged in and actually trying to go for. It’s fine to have an ambitious objective, but how do you scale it? How do you measure it? I think it’s getting better, though. Philanthropy is bringing in more people from high-performance business environments, and they’re tilting the culture. Having a good mission is not enough. You need a concrete objective, and you need to know how you’re going to get there.
