7 The Mission and Vision of the Group

What is your group really trying to accomplish? When the group begins, it is a collection of individuals with different wants, needs, and desires. Through the group process, you establish group roles for each member, you work out your processes and procedures, you set production expectations, and you get busy creating work products. So far so good. Ideally, the entire group understands the project requirements and is working collaboratively together to meet those requirements. But is that all there is?

It often happens that in the later phases of the project, the group really pulls together and starts to create ideas and productions that go beyond anything individual group members could have imagined. Those are the best kinds of collaborations.  In business terms, the ideal is for any organization to have a shared mission and a shared vision. The mission is a large, general statement of what the group is trying to do. The vision is a high level statement of how the group plans to fulfill its mission.  Some examples are groups that set out to create the best looking website in the class. Or they try to show off one or more very cool technologies. Or they create a game that is so much fun that everyone wants to play. Or they try to make a web application to help solve some major social problem. Anything like that takes the group beyond just simply doing the assigned work to earn a grade in the class. It means your group really owns its own creative vision and the group members really buy into it. These groups tend to work harder and longer than other groups. They also get the best grades, and they have the most fun. I hope you get to experience working in a group where the mission and vision of each group member aligns with each other!