My training and development function has moved from providing canned,
calendar based training to more interactive, consultative partnerships
with internal University departments.
We started off thinking that we had to "manage change" only to find that
focusing only on the process of change was sterile. We need to examine
where we are going as departments, as a University, and develop a "mission
statement" that is alive and dynamic, which gives real meaning.
Hamel and Prahalad, in their provocative book, "Competing for the Future"
noted that "if we took the mission statements of 100 large industrial
companies, mixed them up tonight while everyone was asleep, and
re-assigned them at random, would anyone wake up tomorrow and cry "My
gosh, where has our mission statement gone?" " In fact they presented the
mission statement of a competitor to one of their clients, and everyone in
the meeting assumed that that was their own....... (p133, Hamel and
Prahalad, 1994)
So here is my question to you.... What should be in a mission statement?
What makes one effective, meaningful? What are the core characteristics?
I am beginning to suspect that it is the process of creating the mission
statement which has meaning - rather than posting one on the wall - which
really provides the focus...... The traditional approach is to select a
few inner-clique types to "create" the statement, mull over the semantics,
and finally come up with some pious verbiage, which is duly posted and
then ignored.......
Or am I being too harsh? I would love to hear about some success stories.
A search on the net, using Inktomi, Lycos and Magellan in turn, simply
yielded thousands and thousands and thousands of studiously crafted
mission statements. There was nothing on how to craft these.
What references or models do you use in crafting mission statements? Upon
which assumptions do you base your language? Who do you involve in the
development of the statement? Does anyone have a best practise in getting
employees/staff/their community to actually reference what they do to the
statements.
Please post your responses to the listserv. I would love to see a
provocative discussion on this topic, open to all comers. I now have
space limitations and am unable to save, edit and summarise stuff the way
I used to.....
Looking forward to the energy this list can generate.
Thank you so much for your input.
Lisetta Chalupiak
Laurentian University
Sudbury, Ontario
Canada
PS: I could always just use the Training magazine cartoon, now adorning
my noticeboard, which has a person at a desk with a big sign saying
"SURVIVE" above his head. The caption reads "That's my mission
statement". I laughed naively when I posted it..... the ring of truth
seems louder....
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Lisetta Chalupiak Personnel Services
lchalupiak@admin.laurentian.ca Laurentian University
Voice Mail: (705) 675-1151 ext.3014 Sudbury, Ontario
Fax: (705) 675-4867 Canada, P3E 2C6
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