146 Strategic Leadership
As ambitious and inflated as they often sound, the claims about being the best
and its variants show signs of realism because they are almost always differentiated
by institutional mission and type. The references are about becoming the best
liberal arts college, or the model of quality for the very small coeducational liberal
arts college or the private research university. Many smaller and midsize private
universities explicitly refer to their dual aspirations as undergraduate colleges and
graduate research universities.
Although vision statements are brief, they typically differentiate themselves by
recounting aspects of their narrative in the texts that surround them. So, Rhodes
College (2003) describes its path toward excellence and its place among the top
tier of liberal arts colleges by describing the influence of President Charles Diehl,
who boldly moved the campus to Memphis in 1925 and suggested that “The good
is ever the enemy of the best.” To be the best and in the top tier may be mutually
exclusive logically, but they show the way narrative and metaphor shape state-
ments of vision.
For years the University of Connecticut has had a mission and vision to be
“a great state university” and, since 1994, to be the nation’s “outstanding public
university.” During the past ten years, the vision has served as a rallying cry to
turn the dilapidated campus, once called “a neglected embarrassment” by the local
newspaper, into a showplace worthy of its high aspirations (MacTaggart, 2007b).
A staggering $2.8 billion has been invested in remaking the campus and creating
fifty-three new buildings, as well as making dramatic improvements in applica-
tions, selectivity, funded research, and other strategic indicators. The ambitious
vision has taken on local significance by triggering the will of the university and
the government to take the lead in meeting the educational and economic needs
of the people of Connecticut (MacTaggart 2007b).
Many of the sample statements that we have listed represent another common
way to frame a vision statement, which is the goal to be “among the best,” a claim
that involves a large number of variant phrases such as “in the top tier,” “among
the top ten,” or simply “to be a leader.” In setting such a goal, the aim is to draw a
circle of shared reputation around a group of top performers that includes or will
eventually include the institution. The vision may acknowledge tacitly that the
purpose of its strategy is to reach a level of quality that it does not now have or it
may affirm its ambition to maintain its current position within a leadership group
of peers (cf. Gioia and Thomas 2000). Again, the aspiration is differentiated by
mission and by the taxonomy of institutional types that consists of such variables
as national and regional, public and private, undergraduate and graduate, and
liberal arts and professional.
The Vision to Do the Best
A quite different approach to constructing a vision involves the aspiration to
reach a high level of achievement in designated educational programs, methods,
and outcomes. The emphasis shifts from seeking to be the best to doing the best.