152 Strategic Leadership
side of initiative by the leader in the assertive formulation, communication, and
enactment of a vision.
Summary: The Criteria for a Vision
The project of transforming strategy into a process and discipline of leader-
ship clearly turns on its capacity to develop, articulate, and implement a vision.
If leadership is to accomplish this task, a variety of criteria have to be satisfied.
Since many of them relate to the development of an effective mission as well, it
will be helpful to pull these together here in an explicit summary form. To serve
the purposes of leadership, a vision statement should be (cf. Kotter 1996; Sevier
2000; Tierney 2002):
- Clear
- Concise
- Focused
- Differentiated
- Aspirational
- Plausible
- Motivational
- Shared
- Authentic
- Worthwhile
- Measurable
Mission, Vision, and Structural Confl ict
We have argued that strategic leadership is able to address the structural value
conflicts in collegiate governance systems in ways that make a practical difference.
Similar to the integrative power of narratives of identity, penetrating statements
of mission and vision also provide a framework for transcending the deepest con-
flicts and worst complications of shared governance.
A vision is not a romantic ideal that a leader has plucked from some hidden
world, but an authentic contextual articulation of purpose that has arisen through
open debate and dialogue. As to process, it expresses and builds trust. As to sub-
stance, it provides values that differentiate, mediate, and reconcile the structural
conflict between autonomy and authority, and the intrinsic and instrumental
worth and measurement that typify academic decision making. The values of the
mission and vision have to become embodied in a specific organization and enacted
in its identity. They provide an academic community with professional and moral
purposefulness that reconfigures the meaning of both autonomy and authority. It
renders authority more conscious of the academic and moral responsibilities that