Setting Effective Goals

Frameworks for Community Goals

In community and individual life, one of the challenges of goal-setting is that we often don’t end up accomplishing those goals. Or we don’t know what “accomplishing” the goal really looks like.

Context: Vision and Mission

First, whatever framework you’re using, community goals are only effective if they are serving the vision and mission of the community. If you don’t have clarity and general agreement within your community about the vision and mission of the community, setting and achieving goals will not help.

In a humanistic community, there sometimes is what a mentor of mine, Walter Lawton, called “double vision.” There may be a vision of a community working together to create a better world. And there may be a vision of a community that is a sanctuary from the culture of traditional organized religion. These are not always compatible — doing social justice work for humanistic values, in a culture of traditional religion, may create discomfort, not a sense of safety, for instance. And the second vision may mean focusing primarily in the public sphere on freedom of religion and not other humanistic values.

(Post continues for paid subscribers with more on mission, strategy, and two useful frameworks for action goals.)