Sometimes being great is not good enough. The city of Lawrence is about to begin an exercise where that is the case.

City commissioners on Friday and Saturday start on creating a new strategic plan for Lawrence. They will participate in a two-day planning session at the BTBC incubator facility on KU’s west campus. The goal is to create a vision statement that can be disseminated to the community for review and comment.

The strategic planning process is an example of where being great isn’t good enough. Too often governments create these plans, and the vision comes off something like: We want to be a great place to live. We want to be a great place to do business.

Such plans are destined to become high-priced paperweights and efficient dust collectors. No community, after all, is going to write a plan with a vision of being mediocre.

Lawrence’s strategic planning process, however, does not have to be a waste of energy. City Manager Tom Markus is spot on in his analysis that city commissioners spend a lot of time in the weeds on details, but don’t do well in seeing the big picture.

A well-crafted strategic plan — a vision statement is just one part of it — could be helpful to the city. A failing of Lawrence is that the community struggles to unite behind a common goal.

This planning process is an opportunity for the community to agree on how Lawrence can become a standout; on how Lawrence can give itself a competitive advantage over other communities. We really are in a daily competition with other cities. There is only so much prosperity to go around, and we have to figure out how Lawrence can get its fair share.

Realistically, what can Lawrence be the best in? An obvious vision statement for Lawrence is: We are going to be the best university community in Middle America. We will measure our success with metrics like enrollment growth, graduation rates, endowed professorships, Rhodes Scholars, research funding, startup companies that spin off of university research, a reduction in the brain drain, and a host of other data. If Lawrence can become an elite level university community, so much else will take care of itself: People will want to live here, businesses will want to locate next to the university’s talent, and research dollars will be easier to come by.

The value of creating that vision statement is that city leaders can refer back to it when they struggle with determining priorities. The city has limited financial resources. It will have to say yes to some projects and no to others. When deciding what answer to give, commissioners could ask themselves: How does this help us be the best university community in Middle America?

But maybe Lawrence is looking for a bit different vision. Perhaps it wants to be something like the Creative Capital of the Great Plains, or to be the state’s leader in tourism, or the region’s leader in green energy or perhaps something else.

The task of city commissioners is to settle on something tangible and significant. Please, don’t deliver us an overly broad vision that bases our success on “providing a great quality of life.” That’s become like the beauty pageant contestant saying she supports world peace — an unhelpful cliche.

Lawrence is in an enviable position. In many Kansas communities this strategic planning process would be a more dour conversation. Lawrence has many possibilities. Lawrence’s challenge is settling on one. Agreement has not been Lawrence’s strong suit, but we can do it, if we work hard at it.