136 Strategic Leadership
Mission and Its Frustrations
Most campuses regrettably identify their mission with the statements that have
to be revised once a decade for regional or specialized accreditation. Unfortu-
nately, anyone who has sat at the accreditation table for mission statements tries
not to return for a second helping. The process is often lifeless, with dicing and
splicing words and phrases the menu of the day. Or it is clear that the effort is
largely political, with individuals trying to advance disciplinary, administrative,
or other interests. Typically the process is not intimately related to the develop-
ment of strategy but is pursued as a requirement of compliance. Conversations
enriched by discussions of the key markers of strategic self-definition or the central
goals of student learning or the social forces affecting education or the results of
internal or external evaluations do not usually occur around this task (Meacham
and Gaff 2006).
As a consequence, most mission statements are bland and vague. The accredi-
tation panels, which must read dozens of them at a time, often joke about their
sameness. When Newsom and Hayes (1990) asked institutions how they actually
used their mission statements, they were unable to answer. They also discovered
that when the names of the colleges and universities were disguised, the mission
statements could not be identified by institution.
In an even more pointed critique of mission statements that reflects the political
realities of competition for resources in state institutions, Gordon Davies says, “It
is in no one’s interest that mission be defined clearly.... The recruiting slogan of
the U.S. Army, ‘Be all that you can be,’ is parodied in higher education as ‘Get
all that you can get’ ” (1986, 88).
Why are there such disincentives to clearly define the most fundamental fea-
ture of an organization, namely its purpose? The contexts of the effort provide
one answer. Both accreditation and budget processes can distort the strategic
significance of self-definition. In one case, the mentality of administrative
compliance can stifle strategic thinking, while in the other, the tactics of budgetary
gamesmanship makes it inopportune. Playing it safe with hallowed abstractions
about teaching, research, and service keeps peace at home, and the accreditors
and bureaucrats at a distance.
In substantive and strategic terms, of course, academic institutions cannot
even begin to hide their purposes. They are manifest and unmistakable in the
configurations of the tangible assets of a campus and in the intangible values
and programs through which an institution differentiates itself. Although
missions may be avowed only vaguely in words, they cannot be removed from
deeds and actions. George Kuh and his associates (2005) suggest that institu-
tions have two missions, one that is espoused in policies and print, and one that
is enacted in campus life and culture. Institutions that seem to be especially
powerful in reaching their goals for student learning are “alive” to their mis-
sion both conceptually and in everyday and strategic decisions (Kuh, Kinzie,
Schuh, Whitt, et al. 2005).