Mission

What we actually do to realize the Vision, the Intention and the Goal — the doing layer, sitting beneath the seeing layer and above the week's work.

A Vision is what it would look like. An Intention is what is willed. A Mission is what is being done about it — the standing work a body has taken on, stated so that a stranger could tell whether it was being done or not. The distinction earns its keep because bodies constantly mistake one for another: a beautiful vision with no mission is a mood, and a busy mission with no vision is motion without direction (The Intent · Purpose · Alignment).

It sits in the middle of a cascade and takes its authority from above it. The Goal does not change; a Mission is one current best answer to what shall we do about it, and it is expected to be revised as understanding improves (The Goal · The Creative Cascade · Current Best Understanding · Everything Is Current Best Understanding). Below it, the Mission breaks into the things that can actually be worked: a Quest this season, milestones, commitments in a week (Every Quest Is A Project · Stacking Up And Aligning · The Turn).

Every scale has one. A person has a mission; a Cell has one — it is the fourth of the five functions that make a Cell complete rather than merely gathered; a federation has one. They are meant to nest, each serving the one above without being dictated by it (Holarchy · Subsidiarity · Sovereignty At Every Scale).

Two disciplines keep the word honest. A mission is written down, because an unwritten one drifts into whatever the body happens to be doing anyway (Declare · Charter · Drift). And a mission is testable — if no observation could show it was not being carried out, it is a slogan (Conditions of satisfaction · Measurement · The Record).

Also called: what we do about it Stands on: Vision · Intention · The Goal · Purpose Opens onto: Quest · The Creative Cascade · Stacking Up And Aligning · Cell · Charter · LIØNSBERG Mission Control · Milestone · Every Quest Is A Project In play: the Room, where a body states what it is for; and the season, where the Mission becomes a Quest that can actually be run Sources: Mission (root page, stub — two lines defining it against Vision, Intention and Goal, and pointing onward) · LIØNSBERG Mission (root page) · Vision, Intention (root pages) · lionsberg.wiki: Mission Open: The root page is a definition and a redirect; the canon carries Mission and LIØNSBERG Mission as two pages and does not say whether the second is an instance of the first or its real home. · Distinct from LIØNSBERG Mission Control, which is a room, not a mission.