Mission-oriented policy is gaining traction as a strategic approach for addressing persistent societal challenges. By prioritizing clear and ambitious goals, governments can support search and negotiation processes that enhance directionality in innovation systems. The question remains how mobilizing and aligning actors and resources unfolds when multiple missions are in place simultaneously. We examine this by investigating the Dutch electrification and circular economy missions, which both aim to drive transitions in the energy sector. Each mission draws on its own mission-specific innovation system, but these systems exhibit partial overlap in terms of actors, networks, and institutions as well as the solutions these are concerned with. Our analysis reveals that setting multiple missions does not inherently produce mutually reinforcing interactions or enhance the legitimacy and momentum of each mission. Instead, introducing multiple missions can result in actor confusion, fragmented attention and resource allocation, contestation over directionality, and, ultimately, the stalling of both missions. We conclude that the co-existence of multiple missions requires holistic mission management.