Leading by Design

I'VE ALWAYS VIEWED CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL VISION as exciting opportunities to put a whole host of ideas and convictions from the sublime to the ridiculous out on the table for everyone to think about.  You never know where a spark might come from that will light the path for an organization's direction and en lighten thinking.  I've always been puzzled by folks who think visioning is nothing more than silly, unattainable chatter.  I suspect that these naysayers have participated in enough visioning discussions where nothing was done to pin down key concepts so that all of it floated away like a clutch of helium balloons.  I hear that. The absolute requirement for me is to never leave a visioning discussion without pinning down key concepts or common threads of ideas.  These, then, become the contextual frame which holds all the nuts and bolts discussions of strategies and tactics.  As I've written here , I am believer that the nuts and bolts oug...

A KEY AND EARLY COMPONENT OF STRATEGIC PLANNING involves a critical review of an organization's vision and mission statements.  Most of the cultural nonprofits I work with have mission statements; few of them have vision statements.  I often refer to mission statements as the articulation of where an organization is now (and its importance for being, serving, and providing a public benefit) and the vision statement as the embodiment of the organization at some future point in time.  Sure, that's what visions are all about, but shouldn't they be about something more? That's where impact comes in and thanks to practitioners like Hildy Gottlieb and her Community-Driven Institute , the women of the Social Change Divas Daily and others, I really do think that the vision statement must answer this question:  if we consistently meet or exceed our mission, what will be our organization's impact on our audiences and our community?   Without long-term external impa...