For any idea to move from the seed to a business, vision, mission and strategy has to be in place. VMOSA (Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies and Action Plans) is a planning process to define them and enlist action points. VMOSA is applicable for both short term and long term objectives by laying out the steps very vividly.

The acronym was described by Jenette Nagy and Stephen Fawcett as a practical process to provide a blueprint to your ideas or dreams so as to action into community programs or enterprise realization.

Why use VMOSA?

• Vision is to clearly communicate the ideology or the core ideology which is the combination of core values and core purposes. These ideologies are further described as vision statements conveying the dream. This needs to be counterbalanced with relentless actions to drive progress.
• Mission sets the tone for the ‘What” and the “Why” the organization stands for or What they are going to do and Why? thus counterbalancing it with action orientation, explaining the outcomes, that are inclusive, and not constrained to sectors or strategies
• Objectives are framed after developing the mission statement. Specific objectives are meant to focus on achieving mission and specific measurable results for the broader goals. Generally, it specifies how much of what will be achieved and by when, by the organization.
• Strategies are developed as a next step to Objectives to define the path so that the initiatives find a way to reach its goals. These strategies include the people, all stakeholders, and the resources, from all the parts of the community clearly defining people, processes and procedures.
• Actions are plans that describe to fine tune how the strategies are to be implemented to fulfill the set objectives. These plans are inclusive of all the stakeholders, the specific steps to bring about the plans to action in all relevant areas of the organization or the community.

When to use VMOSA?
This process of strategic planning is best suited to set direction, to start a new organization, to move towards a new business, or a new phase of a project, or to innovate something that has lost traction, seeking seed money or venture capital. Vision and Mission statements can be short and concise, capturing the essence for what it stands. But essentially that has to capture the core philosophy, core beliefs, core purposes, core ideology, core values and the envisioned future. Once the Vision and Mission is set, how much of these can be accomplished and by when (the timeline) ensures the objectives. This has to be enacted through guiding principles, without forfeiting the envisioned future. The objectives can be anything from behavioral objectives, community-level outcomes, and organizations outcomes, while these types of objectives aren’t mutually exclusive and all the three objectives or categories could be developed in silos or as a system. Behavioral objectives could be understanding your customer behavior in terms of your product or service, or changing customers towards the products of their behaviors.

How to use VMOSA?
The ‘How’ part of VMOSA is the Strategic development to visualize and narrow down the strategic initiatives to reach the objectives or goals. These strategies can be very broad to very specific inclusive of people, processes and resources. Specific Strategies can help to provide guidance in providing information and enhancing skills in training conflict management or decision making skills, enhancing services and support for skill development such as mentoring or creating business plans, providing platforms for crowdfunding or to modify access, barriers and opportunities, provide incentives for community members or for volunteers, or Policy modifications.

The Action plans stipulates how these framed strategies could be carried out, What change will happen? By when and who is the custodian of What? So as to achieve the strategic objectives and goals. Therefore, the steps in the action plan are developed at each stage, for each component of the plan for which it has to be actioned upon for change, enhancement or value addition and includes the parameters of timing, what is to be done, who has to do it, resources and support required, the bottlenecks or constraints identified and a plan to overcome that, who are the external sources required.

To be on the premise of long term vision and mission, they fairly remain the same, but the strategy and objectives may change for inclusion of various aspects and the action plans may have to go through various iterations, based on results, feedback, and many other contributing factors.
In summary, it is effective to build processes, plan people and resources around your dreams and ideas to drive your vision and mission through objectives, strategies and actions. This helps to streamline short term as well as long term objectives and goals. This forms the management blueprint or framework for the ideas to become a reality and an outcome based business.

Each entrepreneur or each business has to frame their VMOSA to take forward their ideas or dreams to define their Vision, Mission, Objectives and to set their goals and action plans to materialize those goals into actionable processes to realize their dream and generate outputs. The early stages of each business is critical, even when the business matures to be operational, the processes do not end or rather it has to be enhanced for efficiency and value additions, for substantial sustainability, and also reflects the exact reason for why businesses fail? Many businesses failed without realizing this or many succeeded realizing this or finding greater opportunities after launching their business or through iterations of strategies, objectives and actions. This VMOSA framework centers this abstraction.