Mission and Vision 149
To disclose these characteristics in the work of strategy is to contribute to a vision
as an emergent process of collaborative leadership.
With those distinctive competencies and characteristics as their foundation,
the institution can seek to enlarge its level of quality in steps and stages, moving
from strength to strength. If the vision is authentic, it will be of decisive impor-
tance in helping to drive the momentum of achievement. A vision is fueled by the
way these distinctive and generative core competencies are translated strategically
from what a place does best into being the best in a carefully defined class of
institutions or programs.
Envisioning: An Imaginary Campus Tour
Some strategic plans display an interesting method of developing and testing a
strategic vision that uses the narrative form in a distinctive way. Though usually
not done systematically or comprehensively, they use a process of envisioning the
actual programs, practices, resources, and achievements that would be in place
were the vision to be realized or progress made toward attaining it in a given
number of years. It involves the effort to imagine coherently what is not yet real
in order to bring the future into the present. The strategic imagination works
through a disciplined and integrative method of reflection based on various pat-
terns of evidence, for it is not an exercise in creating fantasies and wish lists. It
draws on the best quantitative data available, uses collaborative methods, and
connects its projections to the institutional narrative and to its current and future
strategic position. So, it represents an act of intellectual synthesis.
In an analysis that parallels many of the ideas proposed here, Ramsden suggests:
“A vision is a picture of the future that you want to produce... an ideal image...
of excellence, a distinctive pattern that makes your department, your course or
your research... different” (1998, 139). In a similar vein at a recent seminar on
strategy, the leader proposed that we think of strategy as similar to the work of
assembling the pieces of a puzzle, and of a vision as the picture on the box that
guides the process (Stettinius 2005).
To illustrate one way that envisioning occurs, consider a procedure in which
a group of participants is asked to take an imaginary tour through the campus
when it has fulfilled the vision established for it (cf. Baylor University 2002,
University of Richmond 2003a). The tour will give concreteness and clarity
to the meaning of the vision as well as test its plausibility. What will people
see as they make their rounds, and how might it be different from what is here
today? What are the most significant discrepancies between the way things might
be and the way they are now? (Gioia and Thomas 2000). Where are improve-
ment and change most needed and most obvious? What are the most distinctive,
compelling, and attractive features of the vision? How is the future described in
narra tive form?
As we shall show below, the set of concepts and images that emerges from
a visioning process can be complex and comprehensive. They will have relevance