Is your vision clear — or blurry?

I’m working on a post about research articles, but it’s not ready for the world yet. So I wanted to share a terrific piece on vision statements from Gavin over at Make A POWERful Point.

He contrasts this vision statement attributed to Albertsons:

Guided by relentless focus on our five imperatives, we will constantly strive to implement the critical initiatives required to achieve our vision. In doing this, we will deliver operational excellence in every corner of the Company and meet or exceed our commitments to the many constituencies we serve. All of our long-term strategies and short-term actions will be molded by a set of core values that are shared by each and every associate.

with this one he jokingly attributes to JetBlue:

To bring humanity back to air travel.

How can you NOT prefer the second one? It’s a plain language mission statement.

Gavin’s post caught my attention because I’ve been involved in strategic planning, which includes developing a mission/vision statement, for my college over the past six months. It’s been painful. In order to get every stakeholder’s buy-in, we’re going to include everything and end up with a pretty long-winded version. I don’t see any way around this unless you’ve got a very small number of people (I think that means a maverick leader) doing the writing.

Anyone else work in higher education? Maverick leaders don’t last long herding cats. Ha!