Blog #4

Blog #4.

This week you will continue with your weekly blog post. The blog will serve as a chronological accounting for your activities in this course, but more specifically, it should highlight your experiences related to performing the mini projects and the main final project for this course. As such, within your post you should include the following recap for the week:

* Briefly describe the main points of what you learned from the readings for the week

The main points I learned from the readings was to develop a strategic vision, ensure that it is positive, compelling, emotional, energetic, uplifting, inspiring, and that it draws upon the beliefs of the organization’s mission and values. It should be a powerful phrase that will affect everyone, for example, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.’s vision is to "Provide women with an unparalleled opportunity for financial independence, career and personal fulfillment; and to achieve total customer satisfaction by delivering the products and services that enhance a woman's self-image and confidence." I learned that brainstorming is a key idea when gathering an organization to create a vision plan. It is very important to involve only the key people involved and gather their thoughts from the brainstorm exercise and create a compelling vision statement and submit it to each person for review. This will hinder public wordsmithing and hurt feelings. The Cassidy reading was more geared toward a business but I learned a lot from it too. According to Cassidy, a vision team should not be a large group, a minimum of 25 depending upon the organization is best. She includes ideas to get everyone involved excited and supportive of the vision process. For example, she suggests sending an email notification on page 78. The email notification is confidential surveys of questions which are focused objectives to assist an employee do their job. If the employee completes this task by the deadline it offers a chance to be entered into a drawing for a $100.00 gift certificate.

* Identify areas that were a little confusing from the readings

This week the Cassidy reading and the book were hand in hand and I like the of all of the readings. It helped me to understand and it literally was the most understanding material thus far. The readings this week taught me how to create a powerful vision that is a positive, emotionally charged, and uplifting vision. I am more excited about our meeting next week and more relaxed now that I understand the material more.

* Discuss your work on your mini projects and overall technology strategic planning project including successes and setbacks

Everything is going as planned and I cannot express how much I am excited and how much I truly believe this is the perfect fit that I truly need. Both of the organizations each have a mission, vision, and values but their collaboration project has yet to develop one. The collaboration project has a set of values and a mission statement but has not began the vision statement. They wanted to merge both of their visions together but have yet to decide. I know understand how beneficial it is for me to complete this task of being the facilitator and helping them achieve the vision that meets their committee’s needs. We have a meeting scheduled for this Wednesday, September 28, 2010 at 5:30 p.m. I was very concerned about what I intend to say but I think the outline will be of a great assistance to me. I seem to become tongue tied if I don’t have a script…I noted to one of my friends that I feel lost without notes when I am speaking to a group. She noted that even President Obama uses a teleprompter so not to feel bad about it. This week was very smooth because I did not have any setbacks, only the success of gaining more knowledge and experience in the vision statement planning part. I am sure this upcoming meeting will be great and I am prepared as well as excited!


Best wishes to us all on our meetings! :-)
:-)