Establish Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Wagner[Edit][Delete]: Establish Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals, Educational Technology and Life [Edit][Delete] November 15, 2006
When talking about groups and networks recently I have commented a few times that the person who came up with the idea of the 'vision statement' ought to be thrown out the window. That's perhaps an over-reaction, but I still disagree with advice such as this: "In order for any large-scale or long-term change to be successful in an educational institution, the organization must have a sense of mission, or what DuFour and Eaker (1998) also called a shared 'sense of purpose'." I think managers are fooling themselves if they believe they can achieve this. Yes, staff may give lip service to the vision, but in the main, they have a very different view of their purpose in life than does the manager. Compare this: "This is not unlike the imperative of moral purpose that Fullan called for (in the breadth portion of this KAM)." How many people want their morality defined by their managers? Or even determined through some sort of group process of shared vision? Vision and morality - these are personal, and not the subject of some sort of subsumption to a corporate authority. More...