To Hamilton, where McMaster University has released a new vision statement. To be honest, I am not sure I have ever seen a vision statement quite like it: not only is it detached from any kind of strategic planning exercise I am aware of (from whence vision statements usually spring), but it is also more or less unparalleled as an assault on the English language. Here it is:
“Impact, Ambition and Transformation through Excellence, Inclusion and Community: Advancing Human and Societal Health and Well-being.”
Yes, really. And in case that is not enough for you, there is also a video to explain it.
To understand how weird this statement is, we should start by clearing up some issues are what vision statements compare to mission statements, since the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
A mission statement, basically, tells the world what your purpose is. It covers things like: who do we serve? How do we serve them? It is not an aspirational statement so much as a job description. A vision statement explains why you do what you do. Thus briefly, mission = who/how, and vision = why. Additionally, a mission tends to be rooted in the present while the vision is firmly placed in the future, as an aspirational statement.
Good, unique mission statements are really, really hard for universities, for two reasons. First, it’s hard to stand out because in practice the “who/how” is pretty much all the same: universities are far more isomorphic than their marketing materials let on. Second, because – as Peter Drucker noted more that once, good mission statements need to tell people not just what to do but also what not to do – for maximum impact they need to be limited and focussed. And universities, for a variety of reasons, are terrible at limited and focussed. They can’t do it. You might as well ask them to recite the Rigveda backwards, in Serbian whilst doing the Macarena. So, what tend to get are a bunch of substandard mission statements that somehow reference teaching, research, community (if you’re lucky) and “excellence” if you are not, because that’s what people can agree on.
So let’s go back to the McMaster Statement: Impact, Ambition and Transformation through Excellence, Inclusion and Community: Advancing Human and Societal Health and Well-being.”. Being generous, the bit after the colon mightbe a vision statement. Sort of. If ignore the use of the present participle, you can kind of see how an institution like McMaster might imagine its purpose to be to advance human societal health and well-being. I can see that. It’s bland, and with only minor modifications might be the mission statement of the university’s next research plan, because it’s the kind of statement which is neither definitively in the here and now (mission) nor in the future (vision), but conceivably it’s a vision statement.
But those words before the colon? Hoo boy.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with any of the words individually. In fact, together, they make a reasonably good summary of the institution’s values. But values are not neither vision nor mission: they are a third category which certainly informs the vision (and to some extent the mission) but they are not the vision itself.
Plus, grammatically it’s a nightmare. It’s two sets of three nouns apiece, linked together with the word “through”. This technically sets up a weird 3×3 group of noun pairings which are, at least in theory, the reason why McMaster will “advance human and societal health and well-being”. And of the 9 “through” statements perhaps six actually work (it would probably work better if they swapped excellence and ambition on either side of the “through”).
| Impact through Excellence | Impact through Inclusion | Impact through Community |
| Ambition through Excellence | Ambition through Inclusion | Ambition through Community |
| Transformation through Excellence | Transformation through Inclusion | Transformation through Community |
In sum: what McMaster has done here is adopt an ok-but-nothing-special vision statement and tried to cover it up by cramming an entire statement of values into nine words and sticking them awkwardly on the front. Obviously, no university ever really suffered for having a poorly-crafted vision statement, but this really could have been better.
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Four “and”s in a declarative statement? Result of too many focus groups and someone dropping the agreed upon words and putting them back together in the wrong order. Genuinely wonder how many hours were consumed?
Having been engaged in organizational change and transformation work, this kind of vision statement gets in the way of focused work. It would be easier if they had just said “McMaster – No Worse Than Anyone Else”. Seriously, just exactly what strategic intention is revealed here and what metrics would be used to demonstrate progress. Really. McMaster “All things to all people..”.
Reciting the Rigveda in Serbian whilst doing the Macarena would show a commitment to South Asian literature, Slavic languages, and dance. And they were dropped in the last planning exercise.
This is what the term “word salad” was invented for.
The first nine words are almost physically jarring. Lack of semantic coherence is the main reason. Try arranging both groups of three thus: necessary condition / action / achievement. 1) Ambition, Transformation, Impact. 2) Inclusion, Community, Excellence. Now you have the basis for commitments: 1) aim high, tackle problems that matter and make an observable difference; 2) build a culture of power-sharing, presence in the world and measuring up.
Whether that’s values, mission or vision, at least it makes sense.
As for the last half, it sounds like part of an attempt to reverse-engineer the entire institution in alignment with McMaster’s distinctive health-sciences brand. Which, to be fair, might be a genuine effort to differentiate. But “Advancing Human and Societal Health and Well-being” doesn’t come close to articulating it. “Advancing” is grammatically weak and at the same time arrogant, as if it’s something the University can achieve on its own. I suspect the double pairing, human/societal and health/well-being, was intended as “societal health and human well-being,” the former including everything from good governance to clean steel mills, the latter encompassing safe schools and world-class cancer surgery. But “health” is hotly contested lexical terrain, for epistemological and practical reasons, hence this lowest of common denominators. (Plus, isn’t “societal” an ugly word?)
The present participle is ubiquitous in advertising, which may be why the whole thing sounds like a slogan. Statement crafters ought to be aware of this danger, and marketers’ presence among them should be proportionate.
A curious thing in higher ed is the extent of differentiation in mottoes. UBC: Tuum Est (It’s yours / It’s up to you); U of T: Velut Arbor Aevo (As a tree, over time / As a tree ages/grows), Ryerson: Mente et Artificio (Mind and skill). Concise, distinctive, defensible.