The new year has begun. People have already started planning. One thing that usually happens around this period of the year is the confusion between the four above.
I. Although it might seem like a common error, the confusion between abstract and general and between concrete and specific can create important misleading in setting goals. My mission in this article is to help you understand and formulate the appropriate language for developing goals. [abstract and general]
II. To accomplish this goal, I use four examples; thus, in formulating the inferential message, you will masterfully develop the skill to notice the precise structure of the language so that you will be careful of the differences between these notions in the future. [abstract and specific]
III. The plan that someone would use to share such information would be laid down like this:
1. Create a clear representation of what you want to communicate or accomplish.
2. Upload a clear picture of the concept. Create conceptual separation. There are X categories. These are… (A, B, C, and D, etc.)
3. Share your structure of thought with other specialists: “What do you think about this?”
4. Present a message illustration for each category, giving an example. Thus, you will not only write about the concept but also embed a demonstration of the concept in the structure of its presentation.
5. Share the link for the article created.
6. Return to the article after a few years and improve it, like I did in the following paragraph. [concrete and specific]
I have read many books, I’ve been to a lot of training, and I can tell you from my experience I’ve seen, met, and talked to many well-intentioned people about planning, goals, mission, and vision. But, unfortunately, these people didn’t have the quite right structure in their heads. Therefore, in my opinion, they were causing confusion. But if you pay closer attention to what the terms mean, how they are used, and their etymology, you end with this conclusion. If you have any doubts about what I am asserting, just ask yourself this question, for example: “if this vision would be abstract, how would it be formulated?” and you will clearly see that, in this example, the vision is something more about how we do things, not about what we do, therefore, it is something concrete. Even Wikipedia [en, wiki] says that a vision is more precise than a dream and has lesser interpretations. Why? Because it is more concrete. In exchange, the mission can take a lot of forms.
The truth is that any concept can be represented as long as you have a structure.
The brain recognizes structure. You can understand a very advanced concept without a metaphor if someone presents it properly. I believe in demonstrating how the structure works.
Just because you can’t touch it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist… It just means nobody has yet presented it to you in the proper content structure or conceptualized its design.
IV. My vision is that after you read this article, you will have a precise image of the difference between mission, vision, goals, and plans. [concrete and general]
In a nutshell:
MISSION (The “Why?”) = abstract + general
VISION (The “How?”) = concrete + general
GOALS (The “What?”) = abstract + specific
PLANS (The “How exactly?”) = concrete + specific.
I wish you all an efficient year! May your vision deliver the right plans in attaining the goals of your mission!
The translated version of this article has been considered the best quality of all the articles I wrote and published in 2019.
Photo copyright © Irina Chiriță, 2015-present.
Text Copyright © Marcus Victor Grant, 2010-present, all rights reserved.
The materials on this blog are subject to this disclaimer.
Analytic Vision 