What is Your Strategic Vision?

<p>A familiar Biblical Proverb states: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I would argue that this principle is true for communities and organizations as well. Perish may be too strong a word, but I do think we could say something like, “when a community or organization has no vision, they are prone to stagnate, go nowhere, or decay.” Does your organization have a strategic vision? What about your community?</p> <p>I have been serving for several years now on the board of directors of a local charter school, the last year and a half as chair. The school has gone through a lot of change in the past several years and one thing that became painfully clear as a board was that we had no clear vision for the future. We had a mission statement, and beyond that, a strong culture at the school around that mission. But with growth and change came inevitable pain and discomfort, and a sense that we (as a school community) could possibly lose what made the school special if we were not strategic in how we navigated that change. A lot of folks talked about aspects of the school they did not want to lose, but what was lacking was a vision, a shared image of the school in the future—a destination we wanted to navigate the school toward.</p> <p>Faced with divergent paths, Alice in Wonderland asked the Cheshire Cat which path she should take. Do you remember how the cat responds? The cat asks, “where you do you [...]</p>