leaders let's talk about how to get clarity in four main areas whether you're leading a team in organization a church whatever it is these four things you need to have clear in your mind and you also have to help the people in your organization starting from the top down or the bottom up however you look at your or chart make sure everyone has Crystal Clarity on these four things here they are first of all Mission now you can think of this like a big box and it answers the question why do we exist what are we here for the mission is something that you want to make sure that you're able to communicate not just to the people inside your organization but also the people outside of your organization your customers the people on the outside world these people need to know what your mission is as well and so it needs to be short and sweet and easy to understand and very descriptive now there's more resources on writing a good mission statement in the resources below but here's the the second thing now that you need to know and it's your vision and the simplest way of understanding vision is you're getting from now to later your vision statement answers the question where are we going now notice that your vision is contained within your mission it shouldn't go outside of the bounds of the original mission for which you exist a vision statement might be a 3 to 5year Vision which allows you to specifically articulate where are we going in the next 5 years now a mission statement is something that the whole world can know but the vision statement might only be something that your team knows and understands this might be an internal statement but you know what it is you know where you're going and what your goal is for the next 5 years and here's where your values fit in now your values are also a box and they contain the vision and they answer the question what do we care about what are the guiding principles what are the things that are going to be our boundaries so that as we're accomplishing our vision we don't go outside of the bounds of this now you can either think of the values being contained within the mission or the mission being contained within the values I guess you can debate that and talk about how you view that but all of that leads to the fourth thing that you need to understand and that is your strategy and your strategy answers the question how will we get there how will we accomplish our vision and ultimately our mission but specifically what are the tools what the training how are we going to get from where we are now to where we want to be later what is your strategy what are your strategic goals especially for accomplishing the vision and the context of the greater Mission so that's a great way to think about these four important things mission values vision and strategy now go ahead and use the resources below to have a conversation with your leadership team or with anyone in your organization to make sure you get this clear in your your mind