Effectively Capturing Stakeholder Views in the Mission and Vision Creation Process

Abstract

This paper outlines a case study of a mission and vision creation process in a small, public university. It focuses on the process used to create buy-in for key stakeholders, outlines how that success was assessed, and discusses how the process can be replicated. This approach used a representative system to create feelings of being heard, built feedback into the process of writing the statements, and then assessed respondents to measure alignment between the final product and their own view of the mission and vision. That alignment was high, and the process itself can be replicated and refined to fit the needs of institutions who have struggled with staff buy-in in the past.