Chapter 11

APPROACHES TO VISIONING AND PLANNING

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve come to prefer specific types of visioning or planning processes that are dynamic and appropriate for smaller vision-driven organizations, whether they’re just starting up or needing transformation or an inspiration boost. As a result, I’ve refined a “vision-to-action” model that I’ve found helpful in yielding a creative, energizing visioning experience as well as a more practical bridge to planning and action.

Most other visioning and planning approaches I’ve seen too often segregate visioning from planning, with the only link being the appearance of a vision and mission statement at the beginning of a more detailed quantitative plan. Many also lack a mixture of appropriate visual, kinesthetic, and auditory exercises that help make the experience more creative and motivating. Such approaches may be applicable to certain situations or organizations, but they weren’t appropriate for ours, Ivy Sea, Inc., nor were they for many of the groups with whom we’ve worked to identify that core of vision and clarity from which all planning should spring.

Because each organization is unique at any given time, depending on the owner’s vision and the organization’s stage of evolution, a visioning approach needs to be tailored to the organization. The staples of a worthwhile process include reflection, dialogue, brainstorming, assessment, and bridging and can pretty easily be made part of the organization’s discussion and implementation norms. Big-vision small businesses want to generate the energy from the vision, passion, and talent within the group that will take their shared vision into the world. Let’s take a closer look at the building blocks that can lead you deeper into clear vision and from there into big-vision small-business action.

REFLECTION

Western culture in particular encourages action over reflection, yet the most informed decision making, particularly in a big-vision small business with strong participation by its founder, is that which includes a balance between what St. Teresa of Avila called the activa and the contemplativa. To rise above mediocrity and capitalize on the strengths of small scale, the big-vision small business relies on both.

Visioning programs that don’t include time for personal reflection, for connecting with sources of inspiration and intuition, and that don’t integrate organizational and individual vision work risk failure by ignoring the strong link between personal motivation and organizational outcomes. Numerous surveys underscore the effect of individual attitudes on such organizational success factors as sales, productivity, and morale. By incorporating reflection exercises into a visioning program, participants have time to identify their own attitudes and motivations and create the space in which intuitive insights and personal connections to the organization’s vision, mission, and values might arise. For a visioning program, reflection components might include time for contemplation, nature walks, sitting with thought-provoking questions, journaling, or one-on-one conversations between the facilitator and participant followed by time alone.

DIALOGUE

Dialogue might be defined as a conversation or exchange of ideas between two or more people. Surely anyone who works with others knows that dialogue is an essential part of our daily drama, whether at home, at the office, or in the community. What’s more, we know that the more effective our dialogue, the more effective and rewarding are our days, including any work we do on personal and organizational visioning.

Most people assume they know what dialogue is: the opposite of a monologue, where one does all the talking. Unfortunately, most individuals don’t listen very well, so even in what seems to them to be a dialogue, they do a lot of talking and very little listening. Thus we suggest Dialogue, a more formal communication process that is employed to work through misunderstandings, enhance understanding and community, engage more effective listening, and reveal new (and healthier) ways of working. Dialogue stems from the wisdom of many cultures and a variety of practitioners, including physicist David Bohm. Working from the observations of anthropologists working with indigenous cultures, Bohm identified a process by which conversation happens, assumptions and judgments are exposed, perceptual filters are revealed, real listening occurs, and true communication is finally able to emerge.¹⁰

Dialogue is a particularly appropriate tool at the beginning of a visioning program, when it’s important to unearth personal motivations, attitudes, barriers, and perceptions. Dialogue can also be a wonderful way for the group to reflect upon and share perceptions regarding organizational strengths, defining moments, and opportunities for refinement—information that can be taken into brainstorming sessions, assessments, and vision-to-action plans.

BRAINSTORMING

Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling allegedly said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” The purpose of a brainstorm session is to generate a whole roster of ideas and possibilities from which to choose. Like Dialogue, a skillfully facilitated brainstorm session differs greatly from the impromptu, garden-variety sessions common in many workplaces. In a more carefully planned brainstorm session, the facilitators can craft an agenda varied enough to get the creativity flowing (or brains storming). They’ll also moderate the discussion in a way that engages everyone—not just the more dominant, extroverted participants—and culls information that might not be visible in a more low-key discussion. There are a variety of exercises and facilitative tools for effective brainstorming, and any agenda should be tailored to the needs and personalities of particular groups, as well as the different ways of learning and digesting information. Brainstorming is appropriate when you want to open the discussion to generate ideas and unearth potentialities.

ASSESSMENT

It’s surprising how often in my own client work I ask someone, after listening to him wonder what someone else might think or whether an assumption is correct, “Have you asked them?” the answer is “No.” A big-vision small-business relies upon input from stakeholders in order to identify opportunities for refinement and continued progress in the rise above mediocrity.

For a rich visioning program, gather perspectives from key constituencies so you can assess what perceptions, attitudes, and motivations those individuals or groups really have regarding your organization. Assessments can be formal or informal—surveys, interviews, or conversational pulse checks. You can gather input yourself with members of your group or hire a third party to gather information for you. Regardless of the method you choose, get feedback so your visioning rests on a solid foundation versus a flimsy, assumption-based house of cards.

“It is not good enough for things to be planned—… they still have to be done; for the intention to become a reality, energy has to be launched into operation.”

PIR VILAYAT KHAN

Why is it important to include such an assessment with visioning? Because some of your visioning work addresses how you’d like the organization to be experienced and perceived by others, such as customers or employees, including a comparison of any gaps between current reality and the envisioned scenario. Feedback can be tapped prior to the visioning program as well as during the visioning program to test specific options you might be considering or to create understanding or invite participation of key groups who weren’t represented in the initial stages.

BRIDGING

Even the most wonderful vision isn’t worth much if there’s no bridge between it and your business’s day-to-day activities. And fusing an organization’s action with an inspiring vision and sense of mission is what helps to distinguish big-vision small-businesses from other enterprises.

Many visioning approaches don’t bridge effectively enough so that the resulting actions of the organization are tempered by the vision. In that case, the visioning process is just an exercise, albeit perhaps an enjoyable one, and the vision is little more than a bunch of nice-sounding words on the company brochure, employee handbook, and Web site.

In our own work at Ivy Sea and in our work with clients we have always emphasized the importance of ending visioning sessions with an action plan. In our bridging portion of the visioning work, the more creative, inspirational content gets chiseled down into a selection of operational examples or action items that help to make sure that the visioning work won’t end when the visioning program wraps. While the program may not yield a detailed strategic plan, it should yield an action list that speaks to how the vision can be translated into the organization’s daily activities, starting immediately. Bridging exercises are tailored to begin narrowing the discussion, organizing options and priorities, and capturing the information into some actionable format, like a chart or matrix.

FOLLOW-UP

At the end of your visioning session, make sure your action plan includes check points scheduled during the subsequent months to assess which action items have been completed, which have been modified, and what vision-supportive activities are high priorities for the coming quarter. Neglect follow-up, and you increase the likelihood that all of the wonderful energy and terrific opportunities generated during your visioning session will fizzle and fall flat. Creating a vision and integrating that vision into the daily operations of the business is an organic, not a static, process.

Consider the vision a garden, with the visioning process serving as the space-clearing, garden-designing, and soil-tilling phase. The action plan and subsequent status check-ins comprise the planting, watering, fertilizing, and weeding that the garden requires if it is to support an eventual harvest. In other words, the follow-up phase is where the heart and soul of gardening takes place and, as gardeners know, often produces much joy and satisfaction in and of itself. If the tools used and the products produced from your visioning program are specific and actionable, they’ll provide all the reference material you need for the first check-in session. After that, you can incorporate vision follow-up activities into your organizational communications, from your staff meetings to your project plans, and into your annual retreats and celebrations.

These vision building blocks form the foundation of an effective visioning process and expand the process and the vision itself—so that it has a life beyond the visioning sessions. For many organizations or teams, the visioning process is simply an activity to be completed, yielding a statement that appears in subsequent documents referring to the business or project; once the statement is crafted, the participants assume the visioning work is done. It’s not. The visioning process is a beginning, and while the visioning processes we at Ivy Sea have refined take this into account and include check-in points throughout the year, the responsibility remains with the big-vision small-business owner and her company to safeguard and shepherd the vision they’ve created and look for practical ways that their vision can be manifested in action.

Exercise: Putting It All Together

The following questions, which are among the resources we share on Ivy Sea Online, may serve as good reflection-and-dialogue starters for you and your group.¹¹ These discussion points guide you through your present scenario, fears, strengths, and possibilities and help you unearth and make the most of your big-vision assets and opportunities.

• Take stock of your situation. There is nothing to fear but fear itself, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said. Grab a notepad, flipchart, or whiteboard, pens, and several of your colleagues, if appropriate, and do a thorough check-in on circumstances, resources, and possibilities. Free-floating anxiety or a lack of clarity are dangerous because you can’t work well from those states for an extended period of time. By untangling the current state of affairs (in this case, regarding your business or livelihood) and reacquainting yourself with the points around which you can gain clarity, you can better know what you’re working with and take action. Use the following list to guide your vision-to-action check-in.

• Assess your strengths. Taking inspiration from approaches such as “appreciative inquiry,”¹² identify all of the things that work well in and for your enterprise. For example, your previous experience in creating opportunities and overcoming challenges or anxiety-provoking circumstances is a strength. Other strengths may be revealed by positive things others have said about you, reasons people have enjoyed working with you, or even those things that you love to do even if you do them for free or as “value added” in your work. For this part of the exercise, you’ll want to unabashedly accentuate the positive and sing your own or your group’s praises.

• Articulate your worst-case scenarios or fears. Perhaps you fear that the economy won’t recover or that a new strategic direction may risk your organization’s survival. Maybe you fear that you’ll lose your financial standing or the material assets upon which you base your perceptions of success. Or you may fear that you’ll go bankrupt, that your traditional customer base will no longer support your business, that you’ll have to reduce your payroll and lay off valued employees, or that you’ll no longer enjoy or feel challenged by your work. These scenarios may shake your confidence, give you an upset stomach, or have you waking in the middle of the night with anxious thoughts of failure. As frightful as these scenarios can be, we often overestimate them, or at least underestimate our ability to deal with them despite their unpleasantness. One of the best ways to decrease our fears of the ghosts in the closet is to open the closet door and turn on the light. This exercise can be done proactively as well as when you’re in the midst of a specific period of challenging circumstances.

• List assets and contingencies. Now that you’ve unmasked your worst-case scenarios, make a list of anything you consider to be one of your assets or resources. Include everyone and everything rather than simply limiting your list to professional, financial, and material assets. What might you still have or do if faced with these worst-case options? When in the past do you remember overcoming difficult circumstances and prevailing in the face of challenges that might have seemed insurmountable at the time? On whom could you count for assistance or support if you were to face any one of the things on your “fearsome scenarios” list? What stories, whether from your own family tree or more general history, bolster your sense of grit and resourcefulness? What and whom matters more to you than professional status and financial or material assets? These are all good things to include on your assets roster.

• Note where you can be of service. Mother Theresa offered very practical advice when she said, “If you want to know how to change the world, pick up a broom.” Some wisdom traditions emphasize that “you find yourself when you lose yourself” in service to others, but you don’t have to practice any particular wisdom tradition to know that being of service to others feels good and takes your focus off of your own shortcomings. That’s a great start. This exercise isn’t about what’s profitable (though it might come back to you ultimately in that way) nor what charitable contributions you can make, but rather how you might help meet community needs through your organization.

For example, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, local bookstores found themselves to be important information sources and gathering spaces for neighbors in search of information or just comfort. While large-scale tragedies magnify such needs for community and mutual support, the needs—and opportunities for service—always exist. Ask yourself how you or your business can be of greater service or help create a more enriched, positive, supportive community. This list should include and go beyond your current professional product and service offerings.

• Imagine the possibilities. Put your cynicism, criticism, and negativity on the shelf for this part of the program. Taking a look over the things you’ve listed based on the exercises above, imagine how you can reinvigorate or revitalize current products or services. Who else might benefit from the strengths and assets you’ve listed? Are there potential customers that you just haven’t considered before only because flush times didn’t require that degree of creative thinking? Are there other ways that you could organize skills, assets, and strengths to create new products or services that fit current and future marketplace needs? Have you acquired new knowledge or experience that could benefit others? What accomplishments would you like to celebrate as you wrap the coming year? Without mentioning your industry, products, or services, what would you like people to be able to say about your contributions to the marketplace, your community, and the world?

• Brainstorm opportunities. Having identified assets, resources, areas of service, and a multitude of possibilities, consider what opportunities might exist for bringing those ideals or concepts into your daily, weekly, monthly, and annual activities. What resources and revenues will you need to meet your desired quality of life and sustain-ability (individual or organizational)? What organizations exist that could benefit from the services or products you provide? How can potential avenues of service be integrated into your way of doing business (or doing your job)? With whom can you create mutually beneficial partnerships to provide your products or services in a way that meets a need while ensuring a fair revenue in return? With whom can you partner and collaborate to identify or pursue opportunities? To whom can you turn for trusted advice and a helpful perspective to put the needed resources into place and create opportunities? How can you apply the four big-vision keys to raise your level of work to master craftsmanship?

• Align your vision with action. Continuing your dialogue started in the exercises above, what action can you take today to begin creating resources and opportunities and fulfilling this vision of what’s possible? What can you do this week? This month? In the coming quarter? What do your insights and observations from the above exercises mean for how you conduct your business, create and maintain your relationships, market your products or services, and interact within your company?

While you can add other categories and exercises to your list, the ones above offer a place to start as you launch a journey to a new level of excellence and meaning. By reflecting on these questions and engaging your group in dialogue you will have an anchor and resource as you check in each month and quarter to assess your progress, identify new resources and opportunities, or upgrade your goals for the year. For more ideas and dialogue-starter questions, visit our public-service Web site, Ivy Sea Online (www.ivysea.com).

Working from Your Own Standards

In any organizational visioning and planning work, it’s important to include the more contemplative activities, not just to create fertile ground for brilliant insights but also to feel confident that the standards you’ve selected as success measures are your own. All too often, a small-business owner works for years and invests much in the way of time, energy, money, and personal sacrifices to achieve standards that, in hindsight, weren’t important to her at all. She had worked according to standards regarded as important by someone else: a parent, a culture, an academic, a management guru, a business journal, a former group of friends or fellow graduates, even her lawyer or accountant. While gathering perspectives from any or all such people is worthwhile, the decision regarding the type of organization you build, its unique way of working, and the nature of its products, services, and goals remains a highly personal one.

One area where big-vision small-enterprise owners often choose to operate from mastery-level standards—and truly shine as a result—is in developing an interpersonal skillfulness for relationships that go beyond “delighting your customer” or “winning the war for talent.” The next section offers an in-depth perspective on the concept of right relationship and the practical ways a big-vision enterprise can tap into this power source as an area of excellence and development—all opportunities for qualitative growth.