Sharing the Vision

[CNYScouter]

This weekend the Ship is having a Quarterdeck Training Seminar.

There is still one area where I am not 100% sure how I am going to accomplish it.

 

One of my goals to come from this is to have a shared vision of what the Ship is going to be.

One of the sections deals with creating a Vision or Mission Statement.

In another session I want to have the Ship members to set some goals for the Ship.

 

I have a pretty clear vision on what I would like the ship to be.

I am not sure how my vision lines up with what the youth members see the Ship to be.

 

In trying to keep with youth-run I havent been pushing my vision for the Ship.

In Cubs and Scouts I think it is much easier to share a vision than in Venturing/Sea Scouts because of the wide-open nature of the Venturing Program.

 

Some of my WB ticket goals do work towards this vision (Training, Advancement and planning towards attending a Regional/National Sea Scout Event) but they are really more towards teaching basic skills and laying a solid foundation for a ship.

 

So any suggestions on how to:

1) Bring out what the youth members vision of the Ship is, in terms they will understand.

2) To create one common vision we can all work towards.

 

[Beavah]

I've never been all that fond of the rush to visioning and vision statements and all dat. Yah, sure, it's true. Groups with a common vision and a sense of mission are very successful. I just don't think havin' a retreat and a big session to write up a mission statement has anything to do with it, eh? Or, more properly, the vision statement is more like an end product, a statement of who we are (already). It's not the starting place.

 

Real vision is lived, not manufactured. How you behave each day with da members of the ship, what things you choose to "make important" in terms of where you spend your time to get it to work, how you acknowledge and use the ideas of the crew members - those are da ways you set and show your vision, eh?

 

To work, vision has got to be like breathin'.

 

With boys in particular, I think you build vision by doin' things. The things you choose to do and how you choose to do them, and then the conversations yeh have in that context is how you build a sense of mission. Girls are smarter, eh? They're able to get things from words faster, without quite so much action. So yeh might converse more with them, but yeh still have to put things in context and into action.

 

So go do stuff, and along the way talk about the what and the why of the doing. Share your thoughts. Listen to theirs. Build a sense of mission as yeh build a sense of community, not as a separate activity.

 

[OldGreyEagle]

Sharing a Vision can be a tough thing, I think developing a Vision Statement is one of the first items on Venturing's VLSC (Venturing Leadership Skills Course). Crews are asked to develop a Vision based on what they want their Crew to be. One Crew last time I helped staff such a course had a statement that went something like, "Crew XXX is a high adventure crew, we seek to camp out once a month and not let weather stop us". This statement gives a glimpse of how the Cerw sees itself and what it wants to do. Weatherphobes need not apply. Another Crew was more oriented towards Whitewater Kayaking, and their Vision statement reflected that. In the end, the Vision statments help define and describe the crew to others and sometimes even to the members. If an adult has a Vision for the organization, it can be presented and discussed but care has to be taken that the youth dont feel like they are carrying out an adults agenda, it has to feel like their own unit, their own plan, their own way. BTW, I struggle with this all the time.

 

let the ship shape its own vision, add your ideas, but as ideas only, as starting points for discussion, if they like the ideas, they will stay around in some format. If they dont like the idea then it will be lost and better to find out they dont buy it now than if you built a program based on an idea nobody embraces

[Eamonn]

The Vision thing can take a very long time!!

Think back to the presentation at the course.

The church builders wanted to ensure that the wood was there.

The mission was planting the acorns.

The acorns did in time grow into oak trees, which were in time used to replace the wood needed to save the church.

All that sounds kind of easy.

I don't want to give too much of the course away.

So I'll go back to my apple pie.

The Vision is to have a great tasting dessert for the Ship that everyone will enjoy.

The Mission is to make the pie.

Before you start you need to know what you want.

Is the apple pie what people want?

Maybe some other pie might be better?

Maybe pies are wrong and brownies are what everyone wants?

It seems a little silly putting all the time effort and money into making a pie that no one will eat.

Even by changing the pie to brownies the vision of a great tasting dessert for the Ship that everyone will enjoy remains.

When you think about making an apple pie, there are lots of different ways of doing it.

You can buy a frozen pie and bake it.

Use canned apple pie filling and frozen pastry.

Do everything from scratch.

All these different ways will end up with some sort of an apple pie.

This is where the goals come in.

The goals will change depending on how you are going to make the pie.

Making it from scratch has a lot more steps that need to be done in a particular order than just baking a frozen apple pie, but even the frozen pie needs to have things done before it can be baked.

No matter which way you decide to go about making the pie some steps will be the same.

At some stage someone will have to come up with the ingredients needed for the pie.

This will mean that someone will have to go to the store and pay for the ingredients that are needed.

Some equipment will be needed to cook and prepare the pie. Some will be big things like the oven, some will be small like a knife to peel the apples or a can opener, an oven cloth to remove the pie from the oven.

When we first bake a pie we will forget something!! We learn from this.

As we get better at baking pies we might try and make our pies better. We might egg wash the pie, of course that means we will need more ingredients and some more tools.

Trying to "Sell" the idea of a great tasting dessert for the Ship that everyone will enjoy.Is a leadership skill.

You might have a long term vision for the ship. But maybe right now the vision that the Scouts have needs to be short term. More of a goal.

When we started we had a membership goal, which we reached, a financial goal that wasn't big enough!! And the goal of sending someone to SEAL. The Scout who was selected dropped out a month before she was to go!!

We have our goals on paper and look at them every-time the QD meets.

Some months it looks like we are moving ahead and we take great joy in that, other months it seems that we are moving backward.

I'm sure that not all the acorns that were planted grew into mighty oak trees! Some didn't make it more than a month till a squirrel got them, some got trampled on. Some may have been collected and never planted?

I'm sure for a while the guys who planted them kept an eye on them, but after they were no longer around I wonder who took care of the Little oak trees?

Right now the Ship is the acorns that have just been planted. Some will grow, some the squirrels are going to get.

My big vision is making sure that someone will take care of the small trees after I'm gone and I'm eating apple pies with the Great Skipper in the sky!

Eamonn