V2MOM
Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures
Salesforce’s five-question alignment framework: what, why, how, what’s in the way, and how you’ll know.
V2MOM answers five questions in order: what do you want (Vision), what’s important about it (Values), how will you get it (Methods), what’s in the way (Obstacles), and how will you know you have it (Measures).
Its strength is sequence. By naming Values before Methods, and Obstacles before Measures, it forces honesty about trade-offs and risks instead of jumping straight to a task list.
Created by Marc Benioff in the earliest days of Salesforce to keep a fast-growing company aligned.
The V2MOM template
Vision
What you want to achieve. One clear, ambitious sentence.
Values
The principles that matter as you pursue the vision, in priority order.
Methods
The specific actions you will take to get there.
Obstacles
The challenges and risks that could stop you.
Measures
The results that prove you achieved the vision.
A worked example
Throughline is framework-agnostic — bring your V2MOM straight in and it becomes a living plan: priorities cascade to your team, progress flows back up, and when something changes the whole plan adjusts.
Build your V2MOM in Throughline — freeFrequently asked questions
- Who uses V2MOM?
- It originated at Salesforce, where every employee still writes one, but it is widely used by startups and teams that want a single page connecting vision to measurable results.
- How is V2MOM different from OKRs?
- OKRs cover the objective and its measures. V2MOM wraps more context around them — explicit values, methods, and obstacles — making it a fuller planning document rather than a pure goal-tracking format.
- How often should you write a V2MOM?
- Typically once a year at the company level, then cascaded so each team and individual writes their own aligned V2MOM.