Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/111663
1 View the mission statement as a complement to the school���s overall strategic plan. The school���s strategy must drive the mission statement, not the other way around, notes Bernard Ramanantsoa, dean of HEC Paris in France. ���Don���t try to write the mission statement from scratch, then try to write the strategy afterward.��� Development of the strategic plan and the mission statement were closely intertwined at Victoria Business School of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, says professor Bob Buckle, pro vicechancellor and dean of the school. A few years ago, the school developed its strategic plan���in part to put in place a continuous improvement process, and in part to make sure the school���s goals and vision aligned with the university���s. Buckle set up a structure and timetable that allows him to gather feedback from his management team and advisory board every year as they consider what initiatives and priorities to set for the coming year and how to budget for them. He says, ���We have an annual cycle for the development of our strategic plan, with the mission statement providing an overarching, longterm anchor for what we try to do each year. It���s a succinct statement of what we���re trying to achieve.��� 20 March/April 2013 BizEd 2 Identify your strengths. When Virginia Tech���s business school originally developed its mission statement, administrators ���rst considered the strengths of the home university, which included excellent engineering and computer sciences programs. They also did a SWOT analysis of the market and realized the school could not compete head-to-head with the well-funded full-time MBA at a nearby university. ���So we purposely staked out different territory,��� says Sorensen. ���We concentrated on our undergraduate program, we made sure our graduate program served different areas of the state, and we developed joint programs with IT and engineering departments.��� Virginia Tech���s mission statement speci���cally re���ects those goals. In addition to using the mission statement to identify its strengths, a school can use the statement to spell out what makes it distinctive, says Buckle of Victoria Business School. ���For instance, we���re very serious about the importance of engaging with the government and the public sector. We also attach importance to providing our students with an international perspective. So these are re���ected in our mission statement,��� he says. ���The mission statement is a useful guide to the sorts of initiatives and priorities you might have in the coming years. It helps you ensure consistency with your raison d���etre.��� 3 Identify the strengths you want to have. Globalization wasn���t a core value when Pamplin began writing its mission statement, but faculty members insisted that global experiences would be immensely bene���cial to students. ���At that time, most of our students had limited travel experience, and many came from middle or lower socioeconomic groups,��� says Sorensen. ���It DAVE G R E E NWOOD/G ETTY I MAG ES Mastering the Mission Whether a school is writing its ���rst mission statement or extensively revising one to re���ect a new direction, administrators might ���nd it useful to consider these ten steps: