Vision for W3C to reach durable and sustainable success

Some of you may know that I host the “Principle Driven Leadership” Podcast, so in a sense, I am in my element in this blog post because the essence of the podcast is how to lead through principles and the importance of providing vision in order to grow, resolve problems effectively and create durable results.

With that in mind, I am excited that the W3C Advisory Board has published as a W3C Statement the document Vision for W3C, which articulates W3C’s core vision for the web. W3C Statements provide a stable reference for documents that W3C Members formally endorse after review. “Vision for W3C” defines the values of W3C’s mission as well as the shared principles that guide our decisions for the web, as new technologies enable new possibilities. I can not emphasize enough the importance of vision. Vision matters. It is my first core principle of leadership (the second and third being “leaders resolve problems” and “leaders create more leaders”), because vision drives impact.

Vision, paired with robust guiding principles, enables organizational alignment and begets positive outcomes. These key words describe a virtuous positive cycle: Clear vision and stated common outcomes (the “why”), and refined principles that drive forward motion (the “how”), create the alignment required for an organization to reach durable and sustainable success.

W3C’s vision provides our community that clarity: it is that the web is for all humanity, it is designed for the good of all people, it must be safe to use, and there is one interoperable world-wide web.

Our operational principles encompass user-first, multi-stakeholder, diversity, thorough review, consensus, royalty-free and voluntary implementation, open participation, transparency, interoperability, incubation, decentralization, and collaboration. These principles stake out the path towards the sustainable success of W3C.

Furthermore, the core sections on vision in “Vision for W3C” and the aforementioned operational principles for W3C, are the drivers behind the Strategic Objectives and Initiatives that we developed and made public last month. Vision enables purposeful change, and “Vision for W3C” is what underpins W3C’s mission. In all of our four strategic objectives, we will be centering our guiding star on the impact W3C has. That will ensure that we navigate challenges and opportunities in a way that fulfills our mission of making the web work, for everyone, by bringing together global stakeholders to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web which connects and empowers humanity.

I want to thank and acknowledge the individuals and our collective community for bringing this foundational document to life. I see this as a key component of leading the World Wide Web Consortium.