As a part of the initial phase of a strategic planning effort for the development of Florida's 1988 through 1991 long-range cooperative extension program, an effort was initiated to achieve common expectations for overall organizational mission and purpose among diverse cooperative extension faculty. The unification effort included the following five phases: a state conference focusing on environmental scanning and the extension's organizational mission and capabilities, program area conferences focusing on state and national trends and issues related to the program area, district conferences with all county faculty reviewing county situational analysis and problems identified, regional work sessions to design programs and develop plans of work through agent/specialist design teams, and development of promotional strategies for county and state programs. The 510 persons who attended the statewide conference were organized into 20 different working groups of about 25 persons per group. A followup questionnaire mailed out about a month after the conference indicated that the majority of both the county and state extension faculty who attended had approached the task with diverse and often conflicting interests. After working through the group process, however, they began to reach a common understanding of the extension service's mission and purpose. All four of Kotler's predicted organizational responses to change (denial, opposition, modification, and relocation) could be seen as the groups worked through the tasks assigned them. Feedback obtained after the conference indicated that the majority of participants left it with a renewed sense of purpose and with a desire to move to the subsequent phases of the state planning effort. (MN)