A great article over at eduDesigners.com. I’m not a fan of mission statements, but I love the ending of this piece. Mark Greenfield needed to create a mission/vision statement about his university web job:
The final product was a five-page, single-spaced essay using “every big word” he could find to impress the university hiring committee. That night, over dinner, he read it to his wife. She listened and then gently told him she didn’t understand one thing he was talking about.
Greenfield started editing. The more he edited, the more he edited and edited … until he boiled it down to nine words: Understand the business. Understand the customer. Understand the medium.
I couldn’t agree more. It really comes down to those three things. Of course, ACTING on those understandings is probably important too.
