Mike, I enjoyed your analysis of why organizations have negative
experiences with "visioning." I have often talked about leadership
statements on the wall as a piece of organizational archeology, not part
of the organic fabric of the organization.
In fact, (forgive the extended analogy -- I know we've hashed through
these before) I tend to see successful "visioning" as but one artifact of
a robust organization -- one in which the circulatory system is vigorous
enough to move information and ideas effectively to where they are needed,
when they are needed. Such a robust system fuels emergent (generative?)
dialogue. If a visioning exercise succeeds in strengthening the
organization's ability to use dialogue to speed info. and ideas around to
organizational "hot spots", then I would judge it to be useful, not
because it resulted in a vision statement everyone could buy off on.
Marilyn Darling
mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu