The Vision Thing

I have a thing about management jargon. Recently I received an email from someone which announced that his organisation was 'experiencing some issues around the telephone system'. Later that morning I received another email explaining that the 'issues' had been 'resolved'. He meant, of course, that the system had a fault (which had later been fixed) so I shouldn't try to phone him. I won't tell you how cross this sort of thing makes me. Imagine John Humphreys losing it while interviewing a particularly stubborn and taciturn Gordon Brown and you'll get a good idea.

The word 'Vision' is also bandied around a lot in organisations these days. Every organisation must have both a Vision and a Mission and must talk about 'their plans, moving forward' (tautology is compulsory in the world of management-speak) being 'driven' by one or both of them.

So why, if I get so cross about these terms, am I happy to work on the development of a Vision for Thatcham? Well, the fact is that whatever you call it, you need some kind of picture of where you want to be if you're trying to achieve something. Great innovators (the Wright Brothers are probably top of my list) are driven by a very clear idea of not only what it is that they are attempting to do, but also how the world would change if they achieve it.

Similarly, if a town is to develop and improve we need a very clear idea of what we'd like it to be like - and that's what we're calling a Vision.

There's more to be said about how, in my view, that picture of the future should be produced but for now returning to the world of management speak, click this link to view what could be the worst mission statement of all time (they don't appear to have a 'Vision'). Unless you know of any worse ones, that is.