I was connecting with Ben's point about the way in which people react
nowadays with the V word. I think in many ways it says more about the
methodologies people have been using to develop visions and share them
with people than it does aobut the conceptual difference between vision
and mission... My sense is that what ever new (or old) names we give it
if the process we use is to ram it down peoples throats or wave it at them
as a slogan then they will resent it. If on the other hand they have been
engaged in the process of telling a story of a future they want to create
for themselves and are ready to take responsibility for then you can call
it the V word and it won't matter because ti will mean something to them.
Ben also said
>Perhaps this is heresy -- if so, more power to it! but I really don't see
>that big of a distinction between mission and vision.
I did not think it was heresy - in fact I think he articulated an
organisational reality very well......
Personally for V I prefer to talk about a 'preferred future' and for M I
like to talk about purpose - or why we exist...
Peter Block does a great job of exploring the distinction between M and V
in The Empowered Manager (p102ff) He speaks of developing V as a way of
discovering that serving the organisation also serves our self-interest..
lofty and strategic.... capturing imagination and engaging spirit... a
declarationof a desired future... an ideal state... eliminating cautions
and reservations..... choose the frontier.... (p105 has some particulalry
good points about putting our own vision into words) .. forget about being
number one and focus on something worth doing for it's own sake...
philosophical .. the V can be expressed as a credo or core values or
guiding principles...
He distinguishes V and M by highlighting the dreamlike quality of V and
the businesslike nature of M ... M is a statement of what business we are
in (and sometimes our ranking) names the game we are going to play... our
work... our market... vary bsuiness focused
Love Julie
Julie Beedon
VISTA Consulting - for a better future
julie@vistabee.win-uk.net
--Julie Beedon <julie@vistabee.win-uk.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>