The following is Module 2, Section C of a series called Coherence, introducing key strategies that will enable you to market your institution more coherently.

Overview and Objective

Knowing your own mission well and unpacking its meaning is essential to your success in achieving coherence. Living out your mission with coherence builds the trustworthiness your customers expect. Now let’s take that a step farther: by the end of this exercise, you’ll understand why competing institutions’ mission statements will help clarify your school’s market position.

Key Points

Every word of your mission statement matters in shaping the choices you’ll make along your coherence journey. Staying true to your mission—remembering why your institution is even on the planet—ensures that you are being “true to your school.”

Your mission lays the foundation for authenticity. Your mission serves as the measure by which you are judged—by customers and accrediting agencies! Living out your mission in coherent ways builds the trust you need from your customers—students, parents, prospective students, alumni, donors, neighbors and the myriad others you include among your constituents.

Get this: your success depends on how well you know, understand and believe your institution’s mission.

Likewise, having a grasp of the missions of competing institutions will help clarify your institution’s market position among them. What separates you from your peers and competitors? What about your mission and purpose is more attractive than other institutions? Why would new students or new faculty or donors choose you over others? At the heart of the answer to that last question is your mission. What’s your unique or, at least, distinctive reason for being here?

Activity with Worksheet 2C: Competitive Mission Comparison

We’ve created a worksheet to help you delve into deeper study about your mission in comparison or contrast to your competitors.

Begin this worksheet by identifying your top ten competitors from Worksheet 2B: Competitive Landscape. Which of the colleges and universities that you identified appear to be your greatest competition? Why did you select these ten?

At the top of the worksheet, write your mission statement. Now, for each of your top ten competitors, write their mission statements in the spaces provided.

Next, ask yourself—and your team—these questions:

1. What ideas or ideals do we share with competitors?
2. What specific words do we share with others?
3. What expressions in our mission statement stand apart from others?
4. How believable is our mission compared to others?
5. Which mission statements are most compelling? Is ours?

To what do we aspire—and what do we promise by our mission statement—that differentiates us from competitors? Rate the degree of differentiation of each from your mission statement. If your mission statement and the mission statement of the competitor are nearly identical, rate it 1. If your mission statement is highly differentiated from the competitor’s, rate it 5.

Look over your evaluation. How do you stand out among your competitors? What are you committed to that they are not? What are you doing now to emphasize that difference? What evidence are you providing your customers through your messaging and behaviors that prove that differentiation?

Next, continue to Module 2, Section D of the Coherence Series: Us vs Them.