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.

Unlike purpose, which is never achieved, a mission should be achievable. It translates values and purpose into an energizing, highly focused goal—like the moon mission. It is crisp, clear, bold, exhilarating. It reaches out and grabs people in the gut. It requires little or no explanation; people “get it” right away. Once a mission is fulfilled, you return to purpose to set a new mission.

UNCOMMON TAKEAWAYS

• The goal of an excellent service organization is to deliver outstanding results with average employees.

• Many companies design service models for employees they don't have — for a payroll filled with superstars when, in fact, there's a healthy range of talent and initiative on the team. Capture this reality in the design of the business model.

• Successful employee management systems have four main components: selection, training, job design, and performance management.These components must be internally consistent and aligned with the rest of the service model. There's no such thing as good or bad selection, for example. The issue is whether it's consistent with the rest of the employee management system and whether the system is consistent with the rest of the service model.

• IT solutions can help or hurt your employees' productivity, often in dramatic ways. IT tools that work are sensitive to the employee experience, including how and when data is entered in the rhythm of a particular job.The best solutions are developed in tandem with the role itself — not piled on after a job design is already in place.

• The average service employee is overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of his or her job. When a company identifies a gap like this between operational complexity and employee sophistication, it has two choices: change the people or change the job. In other words, (1) train and hire differently or (2) redesign the job so that your current team can do it.

When we create development plans with leaders in launchpad positions, we break down areas for development into four core categories: strategic vision, mobilizing team and organization, stakeholder engagement, and self-development. Your current position provides you with good development in some of these areas, but not in others. CFOs, for example, obtain good experience with strategy and with board relations, whereas COOs generally do not. Clearly, your plans should focus on the types of experience your current role is not helping you with.

First, the mission centralizes talent by rallying them around a grand ambition, exactly in the way John McCarthy did with his coining of the phrase artificial intelligence. “The most successful founders do not set out to create companies,” Altman reflected on his blog in 2013. “They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion, and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so.” Second, the mission centralizes capital and other resources while eliminating roadblocks, regulation, and dissent. Innovation, modernity, progress—what wouldn’t we pay to achieve them?