The assignment for last week in my management class was on the Associations with Decision Making Process. Our topic: Panera Bread. I did some research and was able to put my thoughts together by Wednesday afternoon. It is the earliest I have ever turned in an assignment for that class. It was graded right away and I had received full credit. Nice.
This week we don't have a written assignment. Our discussion post is on Strategic Planning: Mission, Vision, and Goal Statements. It needs to be 250 words and of course references. The topic: the public library. Are you kidding me? That just happens to be where my passion lies right now. Words and thoughts poured out of me. Initially, there were over 600 words. I kept cutting it down. This morning my post looked something like this (grey words were not posted to my discussion but kept for this blog)
"This has been a really hard class for me as I don't have much passion for business. I moved from a small metropolis of over a million people in 110.4 square miles to a rural area of about 107,00 people living in a stretched out area of over 5,100 miles. Our city has a volunteer fire department, volunteer mayor, volunteer board members, and volunteers who run a second-hand store (where there is no employment). There are not a lot of job opportunities here and I'm fine with it. I have never had the desire to work for a prestigious company or become the CEO of anything. I have worked for chain employment companies, but have just felt lost in the system and don't care for it.
"In order to get the most benefit from this class, I've had to view our education from a different angle; to find the values that apply to my own personal life and to the community in which I am currently living and trying to serve. I know SWOT and decision making are already applied within the democracy of our existence. We have some great leaders in this community, but the communication between cities and span of control seems to lack among all the cities as a whole with certain issues. They seemed to do well as a county library system, but evidently, that was not always the case.
"When my family first moved to Douglas County, it seemed a hard adjustment for us to go from libraries being open from 40-56 hours a week to just 12-24. From my understanding, the libraries in the county (where I currently reside) had all run independently at one time, but now they function in one system similar to the one that we left whereas we can place a hold on an item in another city and have it delivered to us rather than having to drive to each library to find it. However, with each passing year, hours have been cut because the system has been threatened with a lack of funding.
"There are ten libraries in our county and all are in jeopardy of closing. The mission statement is to promote library awareness and save our libraries by increasing taxes. This would cost taxpayers roughly 44 cents a day, or 5.50 a month or 66 dollars a year. Just recently, I agreed to be on the board of our local library. We don't know what the outcome will be on November 8th. If the bill doesn't pass, the libraries will close and so our vision statement has been based on speculation about what will happen if the library does close or what improvements can be made if the bill does pass. I know that by using statements for Vision, Mission and Values, we can organize the future of our community (Gottlieb, 2007)"
*I found the initial reference in my binder of information for board members; original site (from where it was printed) no longer exists but have since come across the website The Literary Pursuit.
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