I am on the board of a small newsletter that has provided good information services to its subscribers for many years. It is cheap and trustworthy and solvent. Recently, some board members have worried that the newsletter lacks an identity, a mission, a vision. I am caught in a strange bind on this question. I realize that there are several new good and valuable things we could be doing. I am also reluctant to give up the comfort of doing a simple job competently. I am reluctant to buy into the idea that a vision needs to be anything grander than: producing a competent newsletter, on time, for cheap.
So many institutions in our society have frustration built into them: their natural mission is conflicted and huge, and they will always fall short in some dimension. Colleges are like that, and families, and marriages, and charitable organzations. It seems as if the human pattern is to produce glorious enterprises that make us feel guilty and stressed.
But my colleagues on the board would say, with some justice, that the natural and admirable human quality is for people and their organizations to stretch themselves, to grow, to learn, to make things better.
I'm confused -- but this isn't the first time for that.
Posted by shea0017 at March 8, 2005 11:23 AM