- Determine where you are.
- Assess your context including collaborators, partners, competitors, trends, funding priorities, priorities of the Institute and university, budget model, etc.
- Analyze strengths and opportunities for your unit. Several frameworks exist for assisting in this analysis including SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and SOAR analysis (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results). Whatever framework is chosen, consider both internal and external strengths and opportunities.
- Define your vision and mission
While this is important, the drive to get it right can be a barrier to developing the road map. The idea is more important than the wording during this step. Dream big. Be bold. Don’t worry about crafting a catchy statement. The vision and mission statements will come as you go through the process of developing the road map. The important thing at this step is having a good idea of what the destination is, not what it is called.- Vision: an aspirational statement of what your contributions will help to achieve over time. It is a statement of what you are working toward. It represents what you are pursuing as your cause. It is often a bold statement characterizing the potential impact of your or your organization’s efforts. For example, the vision of Microsoft at the time of it’s founding was “A computer on every desk and in every home.” This was not something that Microsoft was going to be able to accomplish on its own, but it was a clear aspirational statement of what the company and its employees were working toward. It was motivational. Employees, regardless of job responsibilities, could see how their contributions were contributing to the achievement of the vision.
Mission: A mission statement often operationalizes the vision. It tells what your specific contribution will be to the bold goal characterized in the vision and how you are going to get there. Mission statements often identify strengths and how those might be mobilized to contribute to accomplishment of the vision. It is a declaration of the core purpose and focus of your organization. While the wording of the statement may change, the mission remains relatively unchanged over time.
Examples include the following:
- To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy (Tesla)
- To reinvent how people share knowledge, tell stories, and inspire their audiences to act (Prezi)
- Spread ideas (TED)
- To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful (Google)
- To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful (LinkedIn)
How mission and vision interact can be illustrated by the following statement: our mission is to do X so that we can achieve Y (the vision). A vision statement tells us why we are doing what we are doing. A mission statement reminds us the pathway for getting there.
The vision and mission of a subunit (e.g., department, school, center) of the larger organization (e.g., IANR, UNL) should align with that of the larger organization and should contribute to the mission and vision of the larger organization. Failure to achieve that alignment will result in a fracturing of the organization in which neither the subunit nor the larger organization will be able to fulfill its mission nor make gains toward achieving the vision.
- Define collectively held values. In the context of strategic visioning, values are the core principles and beliefs that ensure that the organization’s decisions and actions are aligned with its mission and vision. Values serve as a compass for behavior and decision-making, shaping the culture of the organization and guiding it’s strategies. While values are inherently aspirational, the identified values should guide decisions and behavior. They should also be shared and actively nurtured within the organization. While it might be tempting to identify a large number of feel-good values that are aspirational in nature, the list should be short (4-7) and focused on only those values that are collectively held, uncompromising, and that can realistically guide action.
- Define your goals (tied to your vision and congruent with the mission). A helpful way to think about goals, distinguishing them from objectives, is to see goals as pertaining to the entire organization: This is what we are going to accomplish as a group in fulfilling our mission.
Identify objectives. A helpful way to think about objectives, distinguishing them from goals, is to see objectives as pertaining to how each subunit (e.g., program, team, individual) will contribute to the goals: This is what this subunit of the whole will do to contribute toward achievement of the goal.
Be aware that there may be some subunits that don’t directly contribute to a particular goal. Not every subunit needs to contribute to every goal. Many subunit contributions are indirect and essential for accomplishment of the mission. Leaders should find ways to recognize these contributions so individuals within these subunits do not feel that their contributions are undervalued or marginalized.
- Determine what we can do with the resources that we have available (including those that we can leverage through partnership and collaboration).
- Determine how available resources will be allocated to accomplish goals (apportionments, how money will be used as a tool to accomplish goals; decision-making indicators for resource distribution).
- Determine gaps that will need to be filled (e.g., hiring plan) to accomplish the mission.
It may be tempting to jump over steps #6 and #7 to #8. But, step #8 should be addressed only after a thorough exploration of how existing resources and strengths (including those that exist outside the organization) can be leveraged to accomplish goals in fulfillment of the mission. For example, jumping to step #8 before steps #6 and #7 can result in stunting creativity, innovation, and opportunities for collaboration. It can also result in unnecessary redundancies in expertise that can limit, rather than expand, achievement of vision and mission. Also, avoid the temptation to engage in the it-would-be-nice-if-we-had-someone-inhouse-with-X-expertise type of conversations and decision-making, without first engaging in a thorough assessment of where that expertise currently exists and how it might be leveraged.