http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm

Mission Statements and Vision Statements

Unleashing purpose

The article served as a great tool by offering ideas to guide me in writing my mission statement and vision statement.

Mission:

Assessment Solutions’ mission is for educators to have on demand response driven data to differentiate instruction at all learners’ ability levels at all times.

Vision

Assessment Solutions' vision is for educators to be able to reach all learners with relevant thought provoking tasks at their ability level with real-time assessment results and real-time standard based differentiated instructional tasks/materials.  Thus, eliminating teachers’ having to spending grueling hours grading papers, pouring over reports, and then searching for materials to meet all learners’ needs.    

My article this week comes from Mind Tools essential tools for an excellent career 

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm

This site helped me write a mission statement and vision statement that truly defines the direction I am going in.  The article provides a rational specific to a mission statement and a vision statement helping me to understand the difference.  I found it easy to follow and inspiring.  

I found it easier to write my vision statement after I wrote a mission statement because of how I think.  The site says;  "A Mission Statement defines the organization's purpose and primary objectives."  To me, this is concrete and specific.  Contrastingly, a vision statement does state a purpose but in terms of the organizations values.  With that, a mission statement is geared toward owners or stockholders to measure success.  Where a vision statement is geared toward employees to motivate and inspire.  

Once I understood my audience and focus, the steps they provided to help create a mission and vision statements guided me to write a clear mission statement and express my values in my vision statement.  

Further more, this site appears to offer many tools to help in career management from many view points ranging from leadership skills, team management, stress management, and many others. I plan to read further articles from this site.