There were references of "North star" as a personal/business objective/guide before 2015. I Googled the term "My north star" and there were a book "Finding Your Own North Star" published in 2001. So it was definitely something back in 2015. There was another book published in 1997: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66140.Finding_Your_Own_N... but I think it is the same book and Goodread might got the year wrong. But I'll take 1997.

I found another webpage from 1987 that took "North Star" with the same concept. https://reprieve.org/uk/our-history/

> This mission is our North Star when it comes to taking on new cases and moving into new areas of work. We continue to fight for justice and save lives,

Another one from 1978: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/j-thomas-fyans/prophet-north-...

Anyway, I do agree with Raymond (if he did think so) that business slogans are annoying.

Does anyone have a better term? “Guiding vision” or “target state” don’t really convey the same intuition.

"guiding star" is what popped into my head, search notes that the North Star can be called that, and sailors don't just head towards the North Star, so I guess it kinda works, but "guiding star" has what that phrase means in the name, something to be guided by rather than toward

I also thought "blue skies", but that's more open-ended, just a (nice?) space

(this makes me think of cybernetics vs systems theory, and the "relational turn" with society, but that's enough half-baked thoughts)

((which made me think of https://www.halfbakery.com but this is tangential to the point))