Replying to LO26788 --
Dear Organlearners,
Lana Choi <ecospirit2@MailAndNews.com> writes:
>perhaps i am making a major faux pax by asking or
>perhaps stating my thoughts on this notion of mission
>vs. vision... but as At aptly suggests, I am simply
>engaging in the kind of "free, civilised questioning" here
>that most managers strongly dislike.
Greetings dear Lana,
This dislike which many managers take to questioning always upsets me.
They cammand left, right and centre that their subordicates must solve
problems. But a simple question, the tiniest problem we can think of, must
not even be voiced.
>Without having done much research, my impression
>is the opposite: vision encompasses mission. I don't
>know the logic behind it, but this is just my gut impression.
Please see my answer to Fred Nichols. In it I try to answer how for me a
vision is as a whole a product of the imagaination, the result of one
single command "imagine the future". As such this command encompass all
the subsequent statements of my vision.
However, I have respect for what you say in the following sense. A number
of times I have been told explicitly to stop with my own inferior
imaginations and accept without question what management has imagined for
me. This, as many of you know me by now, makes my blood instantly boil.
Learning without imagination self is the cruelest torture possible.
>The soldiers therefore act on these commands,
>which are merely parts of a greater whole--ie, the
>vision or overall goal--without knowing what that
>vision may be.
I would have called that overall goal the mission.
>A vision, to me, sets out a larger purpose, in
>which the actual mission or commands may or
>may not be clear or specified right away.
As I understand it, I would call the "larger purpose" (or more precisely
"whole purpose") the mission. The dictionaries tell that vision has some
six different meanings, from "faculty of seeing" through "imagination" to
"foresight". I think that it is the "calling of the foresight" which makes
it so tempting to give vision a purpose. It is like the calling of the
horizon where the desert and the sky join -- it keeps me on with going
which is tough without ever commanding me.
>I think that no matter how big the mission is, it
>does not necessarily encompass or make clear
>the overall vision. A mission, to me, achieves
>something tangible. It does not necessarily fully
>encompass a vision, which I feel can be almost
>intangible, more of an aspiration, more amorhpous
>and therefore larger.
You articulate here something which I myself consider to be very
important, namely the actulaisation of the potentialities of an
organisation. But again, as I explained to Fred also, this is part of the
mission. The vision describes the potentialities. A mission makes
potensialities actual. When a large discrepancy begin to ensue between the
actualization of the potentialities and the vision, the organisation
usually experiences a crisis. Hence consistency between the mission and
vision is crucial to the future well being of the organisation.
>I am simply throwing in my two cents worth here
>--and perhaps BOTH possibilities along with infinite
>others may be correct. Something like the notion of
>"co-existence." I do not have much to back up my
>statements and suppositions. Please feel free to
>correct me.
I think that you have brough valuable new subjects to the topic. I also
liked in how you did it without rigid systematics. This made it easier to
suggest where they fit into my own systematics. However, where do they
these topics and all our systematics into the systemics (Systems Thinking)
of the organisation?
So I do not want to correct you at all. I would rather make one
suggestion. Let us try to get hold of the systematics of all things which
are entailed by the mission and vision. I am deeply impresses that both
are very complex, but when we finally formulate/articulate/express them,
we have to keep much of this complexity pregnant. I have seen in the foyer
of many an organisation magnificent explications of their mission and
vision -- and they horrified me because I could see many trees, but trying
as hard as possible, I could not see the forest.
>Also, I found this statement extremely useful. Thanks At!!
>
>>Since the middle eighties I decided to make use of
>>the following distinction. A vision is linguistically a
>>set of declarative sentences (statements). A mission
>>is a set of imperative sentences (commands).
This why I cringe when writing about my own thoughts. Although I said that
each is a set of linguistically different entities, I kept silent about
the fact that for me
* each set should be as small as possible
* each set should be pregnant with possibilities.
Here is an example which Chris Kloppers brought under my attention.
in a private email. Thanks Chris. When God gave the Israelites His Ten
Commands, the vision was strikingly short:
. I have lead you out of the bondage of Egypt.
It is preganant with
. "I will set you further free with the following ten commands."
What troubles me, is how we too often use commands to bind rather than to
set free. Perhaps it is in the way which we think of commands -- do only
what is commanded and as the 11th command (never given), ask permission to
do all which are of well formed character, but not explicitly commanded.
Some ten years ago I decided to scrap this 11th command from my life -- I
will never again ask anybody's permission to do what has not been
explicitly commanded as a doing. To articulate anybody's tacit knowledge
with commands is about the fooliest thing to do.
It is this 11th command figuring so much in the missions of many an
organisation which also horrifies me much. I see it not directly written
anywhere in the mission, yet I see it indirectly written everywhere in the
mission. It is a command which takes heavy toll here in our country.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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