'Vision'? 'Slogan'? 'Motto'? What's the story, Morning Glory...?

(For the record, I'm no fan of the band. LOL)

'To be the best city in Canada to raise a child, promote innovation, engage citizens and provide diverse economic opportunities.'

Currently, the topic-de-rigeur at The Hamiltonian...and as referenced at both The Spec and CBC Hamilton online...is the whole question of Hamilton's 'vision'

Or slogan. (As labelled by Mayor Bratina.)

Or motto.

And what's been fascinating to me, beyond the dearth of responses from Council to the ''Perspectives Virtual Panel: The Best Place to Raise a Child' article, is that even putting aside the possibility that the discussion has inadvertently taken a wonky turn (the words 'to be' seemingly MIA in all the discussion, as well as the reference being 'city', not 'place'; God is in the details, believe-you-me...), is the apparent disconnect and misinterpretation over what the intent of the City's vision/slogan/motto is.

It might help to differentiate between the three terms. To me, a motto and a slogan are closely related, with the latter often being a little more 'casual' than the former. Cities have them. So do states and provinces. For example, The Commonwealth of Virginia, where I currently am, has a motto of 'Sic semper tyrannis', which means 'Thus always to tyrants'. Its slogan is 'Virginia is for lovers.' (To be precise," 'Virginia is for lovers' is the brand, and 'Live passionately' is the call to action," the Tourism board has said. "They go hand-in-hand.")

Hamilton's motto is 'Together Aspire - Together Achieve'. Its slogan? Not sure. (But I've always liked Dofasco's: 'Our product is steel. Our strength is people.')

But a vision statement is something else entirely. It's not supposed to be pithy. It's no supposed to be a catchphrase, though I'm sure that for some places, for some companies, what they envision for themselves down the road (it is, after all, how you see things becoming, otherwise it wouldn't be called a 'vision'. It would be called 'The State of Our Affairs', or 'An Update'.) could be summed up in something snappy.

Graham Crawford of 'Dissidents' (Hamilton Chapter) was part of The Hamiltonian's 'Panel' effort. And as Graham and I had spoken about this very subject last autumn, I found his response –within the context of what I'm referring to here, starting at the beginning and addressing the concept of a 'vision', not focusing on the specifics as some of the other contributors did quite brilliantly– to be superb. (As I expressed to Mahesh, "It's an expanded, cohesive expression of what I'd contributed; hats-off to him.")

So in the spirit of 'rendering unto Caesar', here's Graham's take (minor editing and emphases are mine):

"First off, I have to disagree with the premise. 'The Best Place in Canada to Raise a Child' is not the City of Hamilton’s vision, although there seems to be a campaign by councillors for it to be thought of as such. The City’s Vision is: 'To be the best place in Canada to raise a child, promote innovation, engage citizens, and to provide diverse economic opportunities.’

We have a four-part vision. We only ever seem to mention the first part. It has been truncated and turned into a slogan. Slogans are great for advertising, but poor as visions. I suggest we CONTINUE with the vision we have and that it be integrated into the City’s Strategic Plan, which it is not currently. That’s because the City Manager and most of the Senior Management Team don’t know how to do that. They have no experience with operationalizing a vision. They are project managers, not strategic leaders, perhaps with a single exception.

Stop Doing
I recommend that we STOP abusing and avoiding the stated vision. That we stop turning it into a Hallmark greeting card that provides little or no direction to Council, staff, or citizens. I recommend that we stop kidding ourselves that we are vision-focused and vision-driven as a city. We are not. Not even nearly. Our vision is being treated as if it were a coffee-cup label instead of a strategic vision that drives our planning, budgeting, actions, progress reviews, and achievements.

Start doing
I recommend we START by defining what we mean when we say: 'To be the best place in Canada to raise a child, promote innovation, engage citizens, and to provide diverse economic opportunities.' Each word. Each strategic element. What's 'Best'? #1? Top 10? By population? Etc. I recommend we put measurements/metrics against each of the strategic elements so that we will know not only what we are shooting for, but also how to assess our progress toward each element, and know when we’ve achieved our goals. These measurements are macro at the SMT level, and micro and personal at the front line level. This translation of macro to personal is essential if there is to be a clear line of sight between what I do as a front line worker or supervisor, and what the entire organization is chasing. We need to build measurable goals and related plans so that we are in a position to allocate appropriate resources.

I recommend that these elements be the driving force of every single Department, Division, and Team work plan. And that these elements form the primary strategic basis of the City’s performance planning, review, and evaluation system. This is not the case at the moment. Add the fact we still have only about 50% of employees at the City of Hamilton who even have a completed performance evaluation and you can see we are woefully negligent in our efforts to be a vision-driven organization. Add the fact that 40% of our managers qualify for retirement within the next 5 years and we have a disaster in the waiting, one that will impact the future success of this city for another generation. How can we be sure we promote the best people into new positions of greater authority and responsibility when we don't even measure, provide feedback, or reward them based on the contribution their performance makes to the successful achievement of our stated vision. No wonder we're slow to change. We need to start acting like professionals and not like short sighted, ass-covering, job-protecting clerks. I for one am tired of the sloppy, naive, and incompetent approach we take to strategic planning and to integrating that strategic plan into personal work plans. Our Human Resources practices are so far behind the times it makes me wonder how we don't have even higher absenteeism rates than we have now, which are shockingly high. I'm a big believer in the power of vision. Having said that, for a vision to be powerful, it has to be defined, known, understood, believed, and acted upon. We have a long way to go."

I hate to be repetitively pedantic, but it's clear to me that this is one of those times when a town hall would be the best way to not just gain more clarity, but also re-establish lines of communication, and at least begin forging a new standard of dialogue between residents and councillors. Graham's final sentiment says it all.

M Adrian Brassington

M Adrian Brassington