Which comes first – Vision or Mission? Frankly, why should I care? In our view, vision (clearly defined strategic direction) should always come before mission, because if you don’t know where you are going (desired impact) how do you know what you need to do to get there (mission)?
As one sees most times if an organization has both a vision and mission, which isn’t always the case, the latter is often presented first. This is a topic that we teach in our Strategic Leadership Essentials program www.jblstrategies.com/sle for nonprofit executives.
Carrying on that subject, I read a great article recently asking the question is vision a noun or a verb? https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2018/01/vision-its-verb
That same week I saw this report on nonprofit trends for 2018: http://johnsoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/11-Trends-for-2018-Report-FOR-WEB.pdfjohnsoncenter.org. The latter piece brought up the question I’m now asking you – which comes first Vision or Mission? I hope that the answer is now abundantly clear!