7

CHAPTERCHAPTER

Mission and Vision: The Heart

of Strategic Leadership

I

f strategy is to become a form of leadership, we shall have to put in place
a new set of criteria for its tasks. Leadership is demanding because it addresses
human values and purposes, wants and needs. It changes the intention of
strategic decision making and planning, even as it works within the same forms. In
a leadership process, integrative thinking connects findings in new ways. Decision
making becomes sensitive to symbolic meanings at the same time that it shapes
a systematic agenda for action.
The articulation of a mission and vision is that moment in strategy when
the dynamic of leadership inescapably takes center stage. Once these concepts
enter the strategic dialogue, the logic of management necessarily cedes to the
language of leadership. Leadership is asked to perform its distinctive role in
mobilizing commitment to shared purposes and goals. Intimately linked to the
definition of purpose or mission, the articulation of a vision is a requirement
of strategy and a responsibility of leadership. It cannot simply be tacked onto
a process of strategic management that otherwise would do business as usual.
In spite of all the ambivalence that academic communities have about how
authority should be exercised, they simultaneously insist on a clear sense of
direction.
As we have seen and will find again, leadership answers to deep levels of
human psychic need and expectation. So, strategy moves into deep waters when
it navigates questions of mission and vision. Not only must mission and vision
set an authentic direction that connects with the narrative of identity, but it
must also develop the mechanisms through which the organization can attain
its goals.