Making the Vision suitable for use by W3C Inc.

[mnot]

[ this issue is raised just by me personally, not on behalf of the Board. We'll be discussing these matters in the next few months, so I wanted to give a heads up / head start on how we are likely to be thinking about it. ]

For W3C Inc. to do strategic planning, the Board will need to document our corporate Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values. Ideally, this document should form the basis, but I suspect it needs some massaging to get into that state. This issue tries to highlight what that might require.

Purpose

Our purpose is defined in our Certificate of Incorporation:

The specific and primary purpose of the Corporation is to engage in charitable, educational and scientific activities within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986...

Hardly inspiring stuff, but I suspect it was drafted that broadly intentionally, to give us wiggle room (since modifying our purpose requires modifying the Certificate of Incorporation).

It would be nice if this document clearly referred to that, just for completeness; that's just a nice-to-have, though.

Vision Statement

Our vision is why we do what we do. This should not be a marketing slogan -- it's to help the Team (and the Members?) understand how they fit in. It should answer the question: What does the world look like if we're successful? It should clarify the answers to questions when we make decisions.

A good vision is something like a handful of words; anything longer is a statement of activities.

Section 4 serves pretty well. It would be good, however, if it were a sentence, rather than bullet points, because that would make it more useable in other contexts. For example:

Creating one Web of information that serves humanity.

Mission Statement

A mission describes what we do to achieve the vision - it's the 'how'. It's still very high-level, so it's not a strategic plan, but it's focused on what we do, not why we do it. It should be able to connect to specific goals that lead to KPIs so that we can create that strategic plan.

What's in the document does pretty well, but it only talks about "standards and guidelines", omitting our other work around outreach and education. Also, it repeats part of the vision ("to empower an equitable, informed, and interconnected society"). I'd suggest something like:

Fostering an interoperable, user-centred Web through technical standards, outreach and education."

Values

"Operational Principles for W3C" are really our values -- they help guide the decisions that we make. Can we call them that?

Document Organisation

In general, the title and organisation of the document are confusing -- it's a "Vision for W3C" that contains a "vision" for both the Web and the Consortium, along with a "mission", along with "operational principles".

I suspect it would be better titled something like "About the W3C" or "The W3C's Vision, Mission, and Values", and organised something like:

1. Introduction (perhaps including a reference to the purpose)
2. Vision Statement (current section 4)
3. Mission Statement (current section 2)
4. Values (current section 6)

I'm not sure what section 5 is doing; I'd suggest dropping it or incorporating it into 'values'.

Document Process

Because this material is both reflecting community discussion (and hopefully consensus) and at the same times forms part of our corporate materials, the AB and Board should liaise about how to publish the document.

[dwsinger]

I think we may have a terminology question here. We have been using Mission statement: A one-liner, one-sentence, that describes us "lead the web to its full potential" Vision statement: a short document that lays out our vision for the future, what we see ourselves doing, how we guide ourselves

You seem to be suggesting flipping these over. Not sure I agree, or that such a change of terminology would be helpful.

[cwilso]

Thanks for filing this. We are at a bit of an inflection point with the Vision TF and AB's Vision priority, so this is a good time to assess.

At this point, what would be most useful would be if this direction WERE on behalf of the Board, actually. We (Tzviya and I, but the AB and TF participants as well, really) have been intuiting what the Vision might be useful for and what the Board wants, based on some small interaction; but we really need crisp, clear direction on how it's intended to be used, because for every piece of guidance from one person that "this would be better as a bullet list" or "this should stand alone from the EWP", there is guidance from another person or persons pointing in the opposite direction. It is not clear how to resolve these sorts of directions any more. We've been through most of these points before (e.g. calling them values vs operational principles), and aside from relying on a recency bias (which is generally a bad idea), I'm not sure how to reach "better" consensus.

If the Board plans to separately document the Vision, Mission and Values of the organization, rather than simply refer to this work - which is certainly within its wheelhouse to do! - I think it might be best to call this work done, and let the Board run with their work. If the Board wants this work to simply turn in to their documentation (also a fine answer), I think we need to put our collective (AB+Board) heads together to come up with clear direction on what needs to be done, and how it should be run. Trying to run this as a pure consensus document is becoming a morass. Happy to have whatever communications with the Board would be helpful.

[chaals]

Some bits I align with @mnot's initial comment on:

A Vision is "A thing we see (at least in our imaginations)", and generally a thing we want to make real.

A Mission is a thing we are aiming to do.

Operational principles are values if they are constraints on our behaviour or choices that we use to make decisions when we are trying to complete (or further, in our case) our mission. There are also operational methods - the way we go about achieving things we've decided will get us closer to our objective.

So our vision is that an information/application platform that there is one of and that nobody owns and that minimisees gatekeeping can serve humanity. We think the right one is some agglomeration of what people call "the Web". And our mission is to make it better. And our operational methods are to work out what is not as good as it could be, by inviting anyone to explain some factor of that, and then get everyone we can together to try and improve that factor without breaking anything else that we value. And our Values (or operational principles) include that we aren't prepared to appoint a gatekeeper who controls who can implement things, and that what we decide has to work for the world's languages, and for people with disabilities, and support people's right to privacy.

And now what we want is a document that resolves arguments when there is a conflict. I think that might be a bridge too far.

We might be able to agree on what the values are we try to reconcile, but as far as I can tell we actually make decisions based on convincing others, which is a mix of market power and principled speeches and data that makes it look like someone is right and a very large dose of just going with what's actually happening anyway (i.e. people using market power to create facts on the ground or vice versa).

I think it would be good to have a document that sets out our vision, and mission, and to the extent possible our shared values and a very high level version of our operating methods (e.g. we talk things through to consensus rather than having a vote and shutting down the discussion, as a general rule. But we roll over in the face of people who change the market realities and re-base our work on new realities when they appear).

This won't make the hard discussions a lot easier - indeed, it is itself a hard discussion. But then, having those hard discussions is why we are at W3C - it is at least a place where we have a way of engaging in them and sometimes producing an answer that makes us less unhappy or more happy about the outcome. That's a valuable thing.

[mnot]

Regarding terminology -- these definitions are widely recognised; if we use other meanings, we're going to have problems when we interact with outside folks (including, notably, potential donors).

Some references I found with a quick search (there are many more):

• https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-66252-3_2603
• https://www.bain.com/insights/management-tools-mission-and-vision-statements/
• https://www.effectivegovernance.com.au/page/knowledge-centre/news-articles/vision-mission-and-purpose-statements-–-what-is-the-difference
• https://www.stacykessler.me/blog/mission-purpose-vision-values
• https://hbr.org/sponsored/2016/02/the-difference-between-purpose-and-mission
• https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/chapter/4-3-the-roles-of-mission-vision-and-values/

Chris, I'd very much like to leverage the AB document if we can. I think that the path out of the conflicting positions/advice we're receiving might be to:

1. Understand how this information is to be used. From my perspective, the concrete use case is informing / guiding W3C Inc's strategy work. Adding use cases like resolving conflicts (per Chaals) may indeed be too much to ask of it.
2. Leverage common understanding and resources of these concepts -- e.g., see the links above, along with many other available.
3. If necessary, get external help.

[dwsinger]

I think people use the mission statement and vision statement to mean short statements (with different purposes); we might need a different name for what's currently called the vision statement, indeed, as some expect such a thing also to be short. But mission statements are also expected to be short...so that's not it.

[michaelchampion]

@cwilso wrote:

Trying to run this as a pure consensus document is becoming a morass. Happy to have whatever communications with the Board would be helpful.

Exactly right. This exercise has made me realize there simply is no consensus in the W3C community on how to address the big problems the early drafts of the Vision identified. It started as a highly aspirational statement of what W3C COULD do, and has evolved into a neutral description of what W3C currently does. It's too abstract to provide either high level strategic guidance or guiding principles to resolve specific conflicts. Yet wordsmithing is STILL is a hard slog through a morass, with consensus elusive.

The question now is whether to declare victory on the current draft (which is, after all a more complete and compelling statement than "leading the web to its full potential") .... or admit defeat and have some group that can make binding decisions in the face of significant dissent take over. Or accept that the web environment is so fluid that it is better to select people with good (implicit) values and judgment deal with strategic or operational issues as they come up, without trying to justify them in terms of abstract statements about principles, vision, or mission.

[mnot]

@michaelchampion I'm not sure that "victory/defeat" framing is very helpful.

AFAICT there are several potential paths forward for this document:

1. Publish it as a AB document, similar to a TAG Finding.
2. Publish it as a Board resolution.
3. Have the Team publish it on the Web site as part of the consortium's material.
4. Do AC review and publish it as a Statement.

Or it could be some combination of the above; e.g., a joint AB/Board publication, or having the Board resolve on the main points, and then have the Team use that to publish a fuller document on the Web site.

The use case that I anticipate is that the Board will need purpose+vision+mission+values documented in order to assist management with strategic planning. We're going to need that fairly soon. While the Board in theory could publish something unilaterally, it would be strongly preferable to leverage this work, and to have it grounded in some sense of community agreement (if not consensus).

Are there other use cases?

I've heard that some want to use this document to drive technical decision-making. That's been contentious for a number of reasons, so I don't think it's ready for that just yet.

I'd suggest that the best path forward is to strip this down to the basics necessary to meet the use case I list above, and to publish it somehow.

A statement would be ideal if we can get it into a place where it's likely to succeed -- I suspect that the most problematic language is in the introduction. If that fails, or takes too long, the Board can make a resolution as a stopgap measure while we figure things out.

Does that make sense? I'm open to other potential paths forward, of course, this is just what makes sense from my perspective. Would it help if I created a PR that illustrated what I was thinking of?

[michaelchampion]

@mnot wrote: "the Board will need purpose+vision+mission+values documented in order to assist management with strategic planning."

For that use case, the interesting bits of the Vision would be where there is a significant gap between aspiration and reality. I suspect the biggest gaps concern these "operational principles" (quoting from the 26 October Vision draft)

User-first: We put the needs of users first: above authors, publishers, implementers, paying W3C Members, or theoretical purity.

Multi-stakeholder: We intentionally involve stakeholders from end to end in building the Web: developers, content creators, and end users. Our work will not be dominated by any person, company, or interest group._

Helping the Team (and WGs) figure out how to really employ the user-first principle and get a broader set of stakeholders (especially users) would be VERY useful (but very hard, "users" are rare in W3C)

Interoperability: We believe proven interoperable implementation is a requirement for broad adoption of standards. To ensure reliable interoperability, we require multiple implementations and open test suites for our standards.

Incubation: The Web will continue to expand in user base, global reach, and technical breadth. We are committed to encouraging incubation in new areas, collaborating on innovations across our community.

W3C has done a better job on them in the last 10 years or so than earlier in his history. These have been AB priorities for a couple years, but not much (externally visible) to show for it. I'm not sure what the Board can do "strategically" about these until the Process issues which the AB clearly owns are sorted out.

Avoid Centralization: We aim to reduce centralization in Web architecture, minimizing single points of failure and single points of control.

This is presumably in the TAG's domain to clarify before the Board and Team could strategize much, I suspect

Collaboration: We are committed to establishing and improving collaborative relationships with other Internet and Web standards organizations, and building and maintaining respected relationships with governments and businesses for providing credible advice.

This one seems very much in the Board's "wheelhouse"; figuring out appropriate divisions of labor / rules of engagement with WHATWG, TC39, IETF, et. has been an issue over the years, and the Board could definitely help. Likewise it's clear that many of the problems noted in the Introduction are way outside W3C's ability to address without help from governments and regulators.

My "declare victory / admit defeat" point was mostly about consensus. I suppose the Vision TF/AB could keep iterating to try to get consensus language, but I'm skeptical given the real technical / business / philosophical differences within W3C about things like the role of users vs implementers, and whether Centralization is a technical matter W3C could influence or an economic / legal matter governments need to drive. I'd suggest the Board take what it finds useful for its use case from the existing text, focusing on the Users First / Multistakeholder and Collaboration principles that could really inform strategic planning for how W3C could better pursue its mission.

[cwilso]

@mnot on your 4 paths forward:

1. Publish it as a AB document, similar to a TAG Finding.
2. Publish it as a Board resolution.
3. Have the Team publish it on the Web site as part of the consortium's material.
4. Do AC review and publish it as a Statement.

1 would be to publish it as a Note (rather than just Draft Note). I think this is possible. 2 is up to the Board, really, though I doubt the Board would simply rubber-stamp it; so this would likely cause a lot of work in the Board. 3 has already happened to a degree - https://www.w3.org/mission/ already includes snippets of text from the Vision, and I would expect the Team to continue to refine that. 4 is something I'm beginning to think is highly unlikely to ever reach consensus.

You noted that the Board will need purpose+vision+mission+values documented in order to assist management with strategic planning, and that would be necessary fairly soon. FWIW, I agree that this document is not to the point of directly driving technical decision-making; the operating principles would need a lot of refinement.

However: I don't think it's possible to simply "strip this down to the basics necessary to meet [the Board's need above]", because every person involved in this effort seems to have a different perspective on what the "basis" is. I would not recommend filing a PR, because I think you would end up slashing out sections that others think are critically important (e.g. the problematic introduction :) ), and we'd just end up power-cycling again. I think we really need to understand the purpose /method of how this is intended to assist with strategic planning.

The AB has some time on its agenda this week to discuss this, as we really need to revisit exactly what the purpose of this work is. If the Board has a specific purpose collectively in mind - or if the Team does - it would be really helpful to have that expounded on.

[mnot]

So perhaps a reasonable path forward would be a hybrid, whereby:

1. The Board creates something for its purposes, based upon and harmonious with this document, following some process TBD
2. The AB continues to work on this document
3. The Team continues to select material that's appropriate for the Web site from various sources

It may be that (2) leads us to a place that obviates the need for (1).

Thoughts?

[cwilso]

As I understand it, the Board has concluded they will document the Corporation Purpose for W3C Inc needs, but this document should continue to drive the Vision and Mission for W3C.

[mnot]

That's our current thinking -- stay tuned.