When you think of Amarillo, what do you see? What does the future of the community, its residents, its educational opportunities and businesses look like?
The Amarillo EDC is creating a vision statement for our city, but we need your input to make that vision a reality.
What Is A Vision Statement?
A strategically designed vision statement is the core of every successful business. This statement clearly and concisely communicates the business’s overall goals, and can serve as a motivational force for strategic decision-making across the company.
Take Amazon for example. The retail powerhouse proclaims their vision as “to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they may want to buy online.”
As you eat your cereal in the morning, consider Kellogg’s vision statement “to enrich and delight the world through foods and brands that matter”.
These corporate rallying cries shape product and innovation as well as personnel development and customer service. But these mantras aren’t exclusive to the corporate world; the power of a clear vision statement is just as crucial for communities.
A community vision is a picture of what the city strives to look like in 10 or 20 years, a generation or more, into the future. The community vision comes from a fair and representative process that everyone can stand behind as the city grows. It comes from many groups of people from all parts of town. It is not one person’s view or one group’s view.
The process used to create the vision should be community-wide, easy to understand, and should motivate people to take action together.
Traditionally, a community vision statement is designed during the development of a city’s compressive plan, but we have the opportunity to design our vision within the current economic development strategic planning process.
Community visioning is based upon principles that maximize community participation in a creative problem-solving process.
The process itself is structured to solicit and use the full range of interests and expertise within a given community to develop an implementation plan that specifically addresses the needs of the community and that fosters change with real benefits for residents. It’s also used to establish the priorities with community leadership and elected officials.
It’s important to remember that Amarillo’s vision should be inspirational, clear, memorable, and concise. It should say who we are and what we will be.
So you ask yourself, “What does one look like?”
As a relative newcomer to the Texas Panhandle, it’s hard for me to clearly say what this city’s vision should be.
However, after meeting so many area residents, community figures and business leaders over the past two months, here is my take: Amarillo, Texas is a globally acknowledged city known for its friendly and diversified citizens that support a vibrant, safe and sustainable city.
Amarillo is a city of attractive neighborhoods and urban centers, and a technology-based economy that forages the highest-rated education systems in the country.
The Amarillo EDC is asking our residents to take advantage of this opportunity to provide your creative thought of we as Amarillo could be… and will be.
We invite you to attend a public forum this Thursday, March 30 at 6 p.m. at the Amarillo Civic Center.
Learn more about the event, here.
We also encourage you to take this quick survey so the Amarillo EDC can better serve our community. We want to hear your voice! Tell us what you think about Amarillo’s workforce, education and business development.
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*The survey will be open until April 15, 2017. Your comments will remain confidential. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes.