To quickly grasp the difference between purpose and mission, think of pursuing a guiding star across a mountain range. Your purpose is the guiding star, always out there on the horizon, never attainable, but always pulling you forward. Your mission, on the other hand, is the specific mountain you are climbing at any moment. While assaulting that mountain, all your focus and energy goes into that specific ascent. But once you reach the top, you sight again on the guiding star (your purpose) and pick yet another mountain to climb (another mission). And, of course, throughout the entire adventure, you remain true to your core values and beliefs.

A crucial aspect of purpose is that it’s always worked towards, but never fully achieved, like chasing the earth’s horizon or pursuing a guiding star. The enduring aspect of purpose is well illustrated by Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and founder of NeXT:

I don’t feel that I’ll ever be done. There are lots of hurdles out there, and there’s always a hurdle that I’ll never reach in my lifetime. The point is to keep working toward it.

To achieve the mission, P&G took the audacious step of setting up a sales force to sell directly to retailers—a move that at the time was thought by industry observers to be insane. But CEO Richard Deupree had a simple philosophy about bold, audacious moves:

We like to try the impractical and impossible and prove it to be both practical and possible. You do something you think is right. If it clicks, you give it a ride. If you hit, mortgage the farm and go for broke.

Common to each of these companies was 1) a belief that they could fulfill the mission, and 2) a willingness to go for it. This willingness to put it on the line is part of the vision-setting process. Your task is to pick a mission that falls in a zone of discomfort—where it’s not a sure bet, yet you believe deep down the company can do it.

You set a mission not by pure analysis, but by analysis plus intuition. You’ll never be able to prove ahead of time that an audacious mission is going to be 100% achievable. You have to know in your gut that it can be done, recognizing this simple truth: once committed to a bold challenge, the probabilities of success change.

This, ultimately, is what goals are for: to help you manifest your values. They are your best mechanism for taking what’s inside of you and bringing it out where you and others can see it, and where you and they can benefit from it. Your goals define the dent you want to make in the world.

And this in turn means that the only criterion for what makes a good goal is that the person working toward it must set it for him- or herself, voluntarily. The only way a goal has any use at all is if it comes out of you as an expression of what you deem valuable.

The best leaders realize that their people are wise, that they do not need to be coerced into alignment through yearly goal setting. These leaders strive instead to bring to life for their people the meaning and purpose of their work, the missions and contributions and methods that truly matter. These leaders know that in a team infused with such meaning, each person will be smart enough and driven enough to set goals voluntarily that manifest that meaning. It is shared meaning that creates alignment, and this alignment is emergent, not coerced. Whereas cascaded goals are a control mechanism, cascaded meaning is a release mechanism.