Business Motivation Model
The Business Motivation Model separates what an organisation wants (Ends: vision, goals, objectives) from how it gets there (Means: mission, strategies, tactics), so vague ambition and the plan to deliver it stop getting tangled together.
Reach for this when…
- Your strategy document reads like a mission statement with numbers bolted on.
- Different parts of the business are chasing the same goal with contradictory tactics.
- A board wants to see the line from vision to daily decisions and you can't draw it.
How to run it
- Write down the Ends: your vision, the goals under it, the specific objectives under those.
- Write down the Means: the mission, the strategies chosen, the tactics that carry them out.
- List the Influencers pushing on both: competitors, regulation, culture, resources.
- Assess each Influencer - is it a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat to your Ends and Means?
- Turn what the assessment surfaces into Directives - policies and business rules people can act on.
A worked example
Situation. Bat-Erdene Ganbold's freight company Altai Logistics, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, had a mission statement about being the country's most trusted partner - but the sales team was chasing volume tactics that undercut margin, while ops chased speed tactics that raised cost, each team meaning well and pulling in different directions.
Applied. He laid out the Ends (grow a trusted brand, protect margin) and the Means (the tactics each team was actually running), then assessed the Influencers behind them. A rival's price war turned out to be a threat driving the volume-discount tactic - but assessed against the stated End, that tactic was eroding the trust the End depended on.
Result. The discount tactic was cut within two quarters and margin recovered. Directives were set requiring any new tactic to name which Influencer it responded to and which End it served, so habits stopped substituting for strategy.
The catch
The BMM is a filing system, not an oracle - it won't tell you which vision is right, only whether your means actually serve the one you've chosen. Get the Ends vague and everything downstream inherits the vagueness. It also assumes a tidy top-down organisation; where strategy genuinely emerges bottom-up, forcing it into Ends and Means can flatten what's actually happening.
If you can't say which End a given tactic serves, it isn't a Means. It's a habit.
Origin: Business Rules Group / OMG