The following are some practical action-steps for developing your vision and preparing to move with it into the future.
1. Think First about Your Past
Leaders with the longest time horizons are those who understand their past. Before you attempt to write your vision statement, write down significant past events of your life. A useful "lifeline" exercise was developed by Herb Shepard and Jack Hawley, authors of Life Planning: Personal and Organizational (National Training and Development Service Press, 1974). Here's an abbreviated version:
- Draw your lifeline as a graph with the peaks representing the highs in your life and the valleys representing the lows. Start as far back as you can remember and stop at the present time.
- Next to each peak, write a word or two identifying the peak experience. Do the same for the valleys.
- Now go back and think about each peak, making a few notes on why each was a high point for you.
- Analyze your notes. What themes and patterns do the peaks of your life reveal? What important personal strengths are revealed? What do these themes and patterns tell you about what you're likely to find personally compelling in the future?
You can also apply the process to your organization. By looking over the history of your organization, you begin to see its strengths and weaknesses. You can then become better informed about the foundation on which you're building the organizational future.
2. Determine What You Want
Are you in your job to do some thing, or are you in your job for something to do? If your answer is "to do some thing," take out a sheet of paper and at the top write, "What I want to accomplish." Now make a list of all the things that you want to achieve on the job. For each item, ask yourself, "Why do I want this?" Keep on asking why until you run out of reasons. By doing this exercise, you're likely to discover those few higher-order values that are the idealized ends for which you strive. Now ask:
- How would I like to change the world for my organization & myself?
- If I could invent the future, what future would I invent for my organization & myself?
- What mission in life absolutely obsesses me?
- What's my dream about my work?
- What's the distinctive role or skill of my organization (district, school, classroom, department, plant, project, company, agency, congregation, community)?
- What's my burning passion?
- What work do I find absorbing, involving, and enthralling?
- What will happen in 10 years if I remain absorbed, involved, & enthralled in that work?
- What does my ideal organization look like?
- What's my personal agenda? What do I want to prove?
3. Write an Article About How You Have Made a Difference
Your responses to the questions just posed should give you some clues to what you would like to accomplish in your life (and why). Now take it a step further.
Imagine that it's the year 2022 and you've been selected to receive an award as one of the 50 people who have made a difference in this century. Imagine that a national magazine has put together an article about the difference that you've made to your organization, family, or community. Now, write that article.
Don't censor yourself. Allow yourself this opportunity to record your hopes and dreams even if you find the process somewhat embarrassing. The more comfortable you are in discussing your innermost wishes, the easier it will become to communicate a vision to others. In writing your article, ask yourself the following questions:
1. What am I most proud of?
2. What's my greatest contribution to my community or organization's growth?
Then, once you've answered these and similar questions, project your answers into the future. Writing such an article—and then reading it to your colleagues—is a very powerful way to clarify what's truly important to you. By looking back over your life and its potential, you come face to face with the legacy you want to leave. Your article should bring that legacy into clearer focus
4. Write a Short Vision Statement
Take all the information you've just gathered and write your ideal and unique image of the future for yourself and for your organization. This statement should be short—you ought to be able to tell it to others in about five to seven minutes. Any longer than that, and people are likely to lose interest.
Once you've written it, try drawing it, finding a picture that resembles it, or creating a symbol that represents it. Finally, create a short slogan of five to nine words that captures the essence of your vision. Edward Goeppner's "We don't sell flowers, we sell beauty" is a good example. A brief slogan is very useful in communication. It's not a substitute for a complete statement, but it does help others to remember the essential reason for the organization's existence.
5. Act On Your Intuition
Visions often take a while to take shape in the mind. We need even longer before we can formulate them into articulate statements. Instead of struggling with words on paper, do something to act on your intuition. Do as Don Bennett did when he acted immediately on his inspiration to start the Amputee Soccer League. If you're inspired to do something, go try it. Go kick the ball around. Then you'll see whether you really believe that you're on the right track.
You'll also see whether others are as enthusiastic about the idea as you are. Visions, like objects in the distance, get clearer and clearer as we move toward them. Talk to people. Share your thoughts with others.
6. Test Your Assumptions
Our assumptions are mental screens that expand or constrain what's possible. To determine their validity in regard to your vision, take the following steps:
- Make a list of the assumptions underlying your vision.
- Flesh out each assumption: Ask yourself what you assume to be true or untrue about your constituents and your organization, about science and technology, about economics and politics, and about the future itself.
- Ask a few close advisers to react to your assumptions. Do they agree or disagree with you? Why or why not?
- Ask people who you think might have different assumptions to respond to yours.
- Test your assumptions by trying an experiment or two. Don Bennett assumed that amputees could do more than they might think—like play soccer—so he tested his assumption by kicking a ball around one day. Now there's a world cup of amputee soccer each year.
7. Become a Futurist
Ask yourself what's driving your organization's agenda (or that of your congregation, community, department, or agency). Is it your own view of the future or someone else's perspective, such as the competition's? Does the organization have a clear and shared understanding of how the field or industry will be different 10 years from now? Set up a futures-research committee in your organization to study developing issues and potential changes in areas affecting your business.
A few years ago, the American Life Insurance Council established the Trend Analysis Program. A team of more than 100 people began continually tracking more than 60 publications that represent new thoughts on trends in American society, then abstracting the articles. A smaller team then pulled the abstracts into reports for use in planning and decision-making.
You could adapt this methodology, or a similar one, to your setting. Have all the people in your organization regularly clip articles from the newspapers and magazines they subscribe to. Surf the Internet. Circulate the ideas generated by this tracking and discuss trends and impacts on your product, service, technology, department, agency, company, and/or community. Use these discussions to help you and your organization develop the ability to think long-term.
8. Rehearse Your Vision
Once you've clarified your vision, one of the most effective things you can do to help you realize it is mental rehearsal—the act of mentally practicing a skill, sequence of skills, or attitude using visual imagery or kinesthetic feelings.
Mental rehearsal is used extensively in sports training to improve athletic performance. By visualizing yourself doing a move perfectly or reaching a desired goal, you increase your chances of making imagination become reality. Don Bennett told us that he imagined himself on the top of Mount Rainier a thousand times a day before his climb. Adapt this technique to your situation: Imagine what it will be like when you and your organization attain your vision. Rehearse this scenario over and over again.
Another practical technique is affirmation—a positive assertion that something is already so. It's a way of making firm that which you imagine for the future. An affirmation, sometimes called positive self-talk, can be made in writing, made silently, or spoken aloud. Whatever the mode, it's most effective in the present tense, as if the desired state already exists. Write several affirmations about the ideal and unique image of your organization. Phrase your affirmation positively in terms of what you want. Make it short, and repeat it over and over to yourself.