Definition of Purpose, Values, Strategies, and Priorities

We use four key terms that everyone on staff and board can learn to engage in strategy activation. It's critical that leadership commits to using words hyper-consistently so that everyone can learn and speak the language of strategy across your organization.

The Four Terms

PURPOSE

Our organization's core reason for being

VALUES

The beliefs that inform our analyses and guide our behavior

STRATEGIES

Your organization's big directional commitments toward advancing its purpose

PRIORITIES

What we must do this year to activate our strategies

Why Only Four Terms?

We don't believe that everyone in an organization can, will, or needs to learn more than these four terms to engage confidently in strategy activation from wherever they sit.

When we introduce too many terms that are nearly impossible to distinguish from one another, people, understandably, tune out. Confusion and even cynicism about strategy set in.

Cross-Walking Your Existing Strategy Language

If need be, it's very possible to cross-walk other strategy terms from your strategic plan or theory of change to the JustOrg Design system.

In fact, we believe it is necessary to do that if you want everyone on staff and board to engage in strategy activation every day.

What this means:

If your organization currently uses different terminology—like "mission," "goals," "objectives," or "initiatives"—you can map those terms to JustOrg Design's four-term framework. The important thing is that everyone learns to use the same language consistently when talking about strategy.

This consistency is what makes strategy accessible to everyone in your organization, not just senior leadership.

The Bottom Line

These four terms—Purpose, Values, Strategies, and Priorities—give your entire organization a shared language for strategy. When everyone can speak this language, strategy activation becomes possible at every level.

Related Articles

→ The Relationship Between Strategies and Priorities in JOD - The structure and purpose

→ How to Write Clear Organizational Strategies and Priorities in JOD - Creating strategies that work

→ Linking Actions and Decisions to Strategies and Priorities - How staff connect work to strategy

→ Understanding Actions - What Actions are and when to capture them

→ Understanding Decisions - What Decisions are and when to capture them# How Strategies and Priorities Work in JustOrg Design

Updated on: 14/01/2026