ABSTRACT
Having established planning assumptions and envisaged what the information service of the future will look like in fairly general terms, the next stage is to develop (or confirm) your strategic focus and clarify a path towards the desired future state. Essential to this process is a clear statement of the service’s purpose and objectives, which may be expressed in various ways but most frequently now takes the form of a written mission and/or vision statement, supported by objectives/goals at successive levels of specificity. This process of strategic profiling involves discussing and agreeing fundamental issues, such as the purpose and function of your unit, its guiding principles, your view of the future and the direction in which you want to go, and then articulating the outcomes in a series of succinct statements.
