Activity: Mission Fit Madlibs

I AM CUTTING THIS SECTION

    It’s not always easy to focus on the mission when you are experimenting with new design and audience engagement techniques. (Why would an experiment be pursued if it did not align with some aspect of mission? Is random experimentation with audience engagement worth doing? SB) You may not be sure exactly where visitors' participation will go or how it will affect the bottom line. Additionally, some staff or board members may be seduced by participatory techniques (particularly those that use new technologies) without a clear mission-related reason. This is problematic for two reasons. If your work is not tied tightly to the mission, it is expendable, and your job is at risk. But more disturbingly, if you are not mission-driven, then you will not be seen as core to the success of your institution. You will not be in a position to influence the institution’s direction if your work is seen as tangential to the primary goals of the organization. (Also, if your efforts are not related to mission, then you are not contributing to the health and wellbeing of the institution. It is not just that you will "not be seen as core to the success of the institution", but you actually are NOT core to the success. People want to work where their work is valued and achieves results. Linking to mission is not optional for any effort or experiment. SB) (<-- but I would say that having one's own sense of how a project furthers the mission is not necessarily the same as it being obvious to everyone--"tangential" present efforts can be one way of shaping the future "core." MK  --for a possibly tangentially related take on planning, see http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/make_it_look_planned)

    Going back to the participatory design process, you should be able to write a sentence in this form: “We should try to integrate X into our exhibition/program/initiative/institution because it will enable us to carry out Y aspect of our mission by Z.” (This is a good way to capture the essence. I am still wondering if it is upside down. Is the first step to identify where the institution wants to go, or where it is in trouble, and then design a response to suit? The target issue has to be identified and clear, and then the solution (possibly participatory process) will be more easily integrated into management and staff agenda. 

    This sentence will help you talk about the project with decision-makers across your institution. It will demonstrate that you understand their needs and that you are taking a new approach because it will meet those needs, not because it's the latest and greatest thing.

(This section is a bit rocky. Alignment with mission is critical for success of any experiment or effort. This point was made in the previous case studies with COSI, and Wild. It could be reiterated there and this section could be deleted, except for the activity about writing the sentence. SB) (<-- I will respectfully disagree that this section is redundant, though it could use some clarification/expansion. "Mission" is a contested and negotiated concept in healthy organizations. There's a reason mission statements are a paragraph or two, strategic plans are noticeably longer, and policies and procedures manuals are *really* longer. MK)

Continue to the next section, or return to the outline.