When you ask yourself, “What mountain do we want to climb?” What you are really asking is, “What big problem would we love to solve?” Or, “What kind of world would we love to live in?”
If everything went right over the next 1, 3, 5, or 10 years, what would you have solved through your work?
Some examples would be:
- A world in which no one is hungry.
- A campus where every student is respected.
- A campus with zero waste.
- A campus where everyone feels safe.
- An organization where our creativity has no limits.
- A campus with zero student apathy.
- A department where everyone gets accepted to their dream job.
Notice that each of these examples is broad and ambitious. You want your vision to be inspirational. It shouldn’t be easy to achieve. It should take a long time and might even extend past your tenure with the group.
Some Real-world examples would be:
- Patagonia: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”
- Teach For All: “One day, all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.”
- Charity Water: “We’re on a mission to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet.”
- Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
- Microsoft: “Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
- Airbnb: “To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.”
- Khan Academy: “A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.”
- WWF (World Wildlife Fund): “To build a future in which people live in harmony with nature.”
- TOMS: “To improve lives through business, using our purchasing power to bring about positive change in communities worldwide.”
These examples highlight the vision statements of well-known companies and nonprofits that inspire action, embody their core values, and express a larger mission to make a positive impact in their respective fields.
Now it’s time for you to create your vision statement.
Some prompts to get you started would be:
- The vision of our group is to live in a world where…
- One day, we envision a campus that…
- Our vision is to…
- In 10 years, we will have…
Once you’re done, send your vision statement to [email protected] and we’ll review it for you!
In the next post, we’ll go through the process of creating a mission statement. Then, we’ll answer the main question: What path up the mountain will you take?
