“Missioning”: the Activity of Bringing Your Mission to Life

I think I just made up a new term: “missioning”. It is the activity of bringing your organization’s mission to life.  This spring I have been focusing with school leaders on the relationship between three critical aspects of institutional sustainability: vision, systems, and value.  Creating a vision is actually pretty easy.  Developing systems-wide alignment between resources and vision implementation is complex, messy, time-consuming…and critical.  And none of it is worth a darn if the organization does not effectively communicate their differentiated value to the market.

So when I saw Brett Jacobsen of Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School post this video on his blog, I watched it, and this is what it communicated to me: senior administrators who work together; like to have fun; really think their students are beautiful, and are willing to get a little silly to prove it.  Who does not want that for their kids? Looking for ways to communicate who and what makes your school a better place?  Think about how, or if, you bring your school’s mission to active life. Take a couple shots at “missioning” in ways you have not in the past.