Monica Hingst, Senior Consultant, Schunk Moreland Strategies
Most organizations have a vision and mission statement. Far fewer have a north star. A vision describes the future that an organization hopes to create. A mission declares why an organization exists, including what you do, who you serve, and how you serve. A north star answers a different question: What are we ultimately trying to achieve together?
For mission-driven organizations, this distinction matters. Unlike businesses that often look to profit margins as a guiding metric, nonprofits need to navigate competing priorities without a single profit-centered measure of success. A north star guides decision-making, keeping people aligned, and helps organizations stay focused on what matters the most as they pursue their mission and vision.
As organizations face competing demands, limited resources, and pressure to create meaningful impact, a shared north star becomes essential. This article explores why north stars matter, how they support second-order change, and how shared utility framing can help organizations make better decisions together.
Why Decision-Making is Challenging
Inter-organizational competition is everywhere, but it is especially common in the nonprofit sector where budgets, resources, and organizational capacity are often limited. These tensions become even more pronounced during periods of second-order change, which is any change that is complex, structural, or requires people to rethink big things like systems, human behaviors, or ways of working.
When nonprofit leaders face decisions about which programs to fund, which opportunities to pursue, or what initiatives to sunset, they need a clear way to evaluate competing priorities. Without a shared north star, or a shared utility framing, decisions can become political or personal instead of strategic.
Second-order change alters existing systems, structures, rules and assumptions, not just behavior within a system. In my research about navigating second-order change, I found that people naturally default to protecting their own interests. Within the public sector (e.g., nonprofits, government, higher education), this can look like departments competing for resources or working in silos to meet their own goals. It can look like board members advocating for their favorite initiatives or funders unintentionally pulling an organization in multiple directions. These dynamics are rarely driven by selfish intent. More often, they emerge when people lack a shared framework for evaluating decisions. The issue is the absence of a north star, not the competing interests themselves.
What is Shared Utility Framing?
Shared utility framing explains how a proposed change benefits an organization as a whole while also acknowledging how individual interests will be protected. Shared utility framing asks: How does this decision benefit the entire organization, not just one person, department, or program? For shared utility framing to work, stakeholders need to understand how value is created collectively. They also need confidence that their interests are recognized and protected in that shared value. Without both conditions, people often default to defensive positioning and zero-sum thinking, where one group’s gain is viewed as another group’s loss. Zero-sum thinking slows progress and makes change difficult to achieve.
During periods of second-order change, conflict often emerges when individuals or teams fear losing access to resources, influence, funding, staffing, or other things of value. Shared utility framing requires stakeholders to step outside of their silos and consider how value is created and distributed across the organization as a whole. When leaders clearly communicate how organizational value is created and how success will be measured through outcomes connected to the mission and vision, they address many of the concerns that can stall change. Teams, boards, and partners need to understand how the organization creates value collectively. They also need confidence that their interests are acknowledged and protected.
A North Star Creates a Shared Definition of Success
When nonprofit organizations face major decisions, conversations often focus on questions like: What does my department gain? What will my program lose? What does this mean for my workload? A north star shifts the conversation toward a different question: How does this move us closer to what we are trying to achieve together?
Here’s an example. In 2023, Indiana passed a law to automatically enroll eligible students in the 21st Century Scholars program.1 Stakeholders involved in the process initially focused on administrative concerns, implementation costs, staffing needs, and potential operational disruptions. Progress accelerated when leaders identified two broader outcomes that stakeholders could collectively rally around: improving the quality of life for Hoosiers and strengthening Indiana’s workforce and economy. Once those outcomes became the shared north stars, stakeholders could see beyond their individual concerns. The conversations shifted from organizational impacts to collective outcomes. A broader coalition formed around a shared purpose, and the policy ultimately passed.
The same principle applies within nonprofits. Coalitions form more easily when people rally around shared outcomes rather than organizational interests.
How to Establish a North Star
If your organization has a strategic plan, start there. Ask yourself: What are we ultimately trying to achieve with this plan? Who benefits if we succeed? How would we know we are making progress? What outcomes matter the most?
If the answers to these questions are unclear or open to interpretation, it may be worth considering a neutral facilitator to help your leadership team arrive at a shared north star. A facilitator can guide a structured conversation, surface areas of misalignment, and help the group develop a shared understanding of what success looks like.
One way to begin is by asking each member of the leadership team to identify the three most important outcomes for the organization. If those answers vary significantly, there is a good chance your organization does not yet have a clearly defined north star.
While this exercise can be led internally, there are advantages to having a neutral facilitator guide the conversation. Team members are often more candid with someone who is not tied to organizational politics, departmental priorities, or reporting relationships. A facilitator can also ask difficult questions without being perceived as advocating for a particular outcome, helping the group move beyond individual interests and focus on what is best for the organization as a whole.
Put Your North Star to Work
A north star only works if it becomes part of daily organizational life. It should inform planning, prioritization, progress monitoring, partnerships, board discussions, hiring decisions, and, most importantly, budgeting. Where you allocate your resources should reflect your north star.
Strong organizations do not eliminate conflict within organizations. They create enough shared utility framing to foster understanding and make disagreement a productive exercise. When people know what they are trying to achieve together, they can debate tactics without losing sight of purpose.
A north star does not make decision-making easier. It makes decision-making clearer. The most effective and sustaining types of change begin with the question, “What are we ultimately trying to accomplish together?”
