LCHALUPIAK@ADMIN.LAURENTIAN.CA asks about crafting mission statements:
My first reaction was to recall Dilbert saying something like:
"an organization is really in trouble when it has (takes?) the time to
write a mission statement..."
I have a more pragmatic outlook. Like any other communications activity,
the crafting of a mission statement CAN have a beneficial effect. What
I Have found most distructive if it is created by staff and approved by
management, then ANNOUNCED.
What is most useful is when input is gathered broadly (use the examples
you already have in the sessions to solicit inputs) and the result
distilled and then explained in the context of all the themes that
were input.
The best advice I can offer is that you should do a business case for the
time and effort to create one. This process will help you formulate why
it is being done before actually doing it. The result will be better
when you have some concrete measures for the success of the effort.
Another useful exercise is to write all the mission statements down on
a couple of pages without the source (these are the ones you collected
off the net) and then see if they add any meaning to your thinking about
the organization that created it? What value do they provide and for
whom? ...Keith
(PS Our "motto" is "Using technology to drive business leverage." Do you
have any idea what we do and for whom?)
--Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>