Malcolm GauldI once heard someone use the analogy of a bus driver to define and differentiate Mission, Vision, and Plan. Let’s say the mission is to provide safe and affordable transportation. The vision is to drive from New York to San Francisco in five days. The plan is to take Interstate 80.
In this paradigm, the plan is the most changeable element. Maybe construction work causes a route change. Maybe the passengers want a slight detour to cruise Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. Maybe Nebraska gets so boring that…. well, you get the idea.
A vision change is a bigger decision. Maybe the passengers insist on adding an extra day so they can check out Yellowstone or a Broncos game. Maybe they even decide that they don’t want to go to San Francisco at all. Instead, they vote to go to Vegas and bet all their money (and the bus) on the roulette wheel.
The mission is pretty much inviolate, to be changed only in the most serious circumstances. Maybe they encounter a broken down bus in Iowa full of passengers with the added factor of a tornado coming their way. They might decide to be Good Samaritans and fill their bus beyond the legal safety limits and give everyone a ride. You couldn’t blame them for changing the mission.
So, applying this paradigm to Hyde, our Mission is by the numbers:
1. One guiding statement: Unique Potential.
2. Two deliverables: we help people develop character and discover a deeper purpose.
3. Three simultaneous emphases: character, family, and college.
4. Four-Point moral compass: 1) clear character philosophy; 2) a faculty that will go to the ends of the earth; 3) the most dynamic student peer culture in American education; 4) family and school together.
5. Top-5 most profound experience.
Tune in tomorrow and Friday for the Vision and Plan pieces.
Onward, Malcolm
