The Visioning Exercise

“So, if I’m facilitating an executive team in strategic planning, how do I get them to define broad goals? All too often the executives I work with focus their plans too much on the day-to-day and their goals seem very tactical. But I’ve seen a few strategic plans you facilitated and the goals are always very broad and expansive. What’s your secret?”

In our course, The Secrets to Facilitating Strategy, we provide facilitators “the secrets” we’ve learned for preparing, developing, implementing, and monitoring a comprehensive strategic planning process which we call The Drivers Model. One of the key secrets is using a visioning exercise to help a group discover its broad goals.

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Definitions

In the Drivers Model, we make the following distinction between goals and objectives.

• Goals are broad, long-term aims that define accomplishment of the mission.
• Objectives are specific, quantifiable, realistic targets that measure the accomplishment of a goal over a specific period.

Let’s take a look at a simple example of the relationship between goals and objectives from our work with a non-profit membership association.

Of course you might use different terminology. What we call goals versus objectives, you might reverse the terms and call them objectives versus goals, or call them key performance areas versus key performance indicators, or strategic intent versus strategic outcomes. For the sake of this article, let’s assume we are trying to get to the thing considered “broad, long-term outcomes,” and let’s call them goals for now.

Related: Video: 5 Reasons to do Planning

Sample Visioning Exercise

To help participants determine their goals, we use a visioning exercise. The visioning exercise guides participants through a scenario ten or more years into the future. So, the key is to help the participants visualize the various areas of success (e.g., customers, products, image, etc.) without specifically citing what the success was. Note how pauses are used in the example below.

• Now that we have looked at where we are currently, let’s turn our minds to where we are going. This step will serve as the launching point for establishing our goals and objectives. I would like for us to do a brief visualization exercise. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine yourself looking at a desk calendar with the current date being shown. Watch the pages flip from today, to tomorrow, to the next day, then to the next month, and the next, and then to the next year, and the next, until we arrive at ____ date (ten years from now).
• Imagine that you look up from your desk and you find yourself in an auditorium in which someone is speaking and announcing an award. You realize that the person speaking is _____________ and the award is the _______________ which goes to the organization which has __________________. The presenter says, ‘At no time in the history of the award until now has the judges been in unanimous agreement of the organization most deserving of this award. And this year the award goes to (this organization).’ There is a standing ovation, as people get out of their chairs to applaud. When the applause dies down, the presenter goes on to list all the accomplishments that made this organization deserving. Listen to what the presenter is saying (brief silence) Fill it in…what was it that the organization accomplished? (brief silence).
• A video starts. There is a group of the organization’s customers in a focus group, and one customer says, ‘The thing that is great about this organization is…’(brief silence) Fill it in…what did that customer say? Another jumps in, ‘That’s all fine and wonderful, but the thing that really makes this organization stand out is…’ (brief silence).
• The President gets up to accept the award and explains that ten years before a group came together to develop a plan that has resulted in this award. The President explains a number of things that were done. Listen to what the President says…What was it that the organization did? (brief silence)
• As you are leaving you overhear a group of employees talking. They are saying that they didn’t believe the organization would actually change, but that it did. They begin talking about what it feels like to work there, how these changes have improved their lives. Listen to what they are saying. How does it feel to work there? (brief silence)
• As you go back to your desk, you sit down and want to record some of the things you heard. What was it that the presenter said? Why did the Organization deserve the award? What was it that the President said was done to bring about these changes? What did the employees say about working there? Whenever you are ready, take a minute to jot down a note or two about what you heard.

Related: Register for our next webinar on Strategy

Key Components of the Visioning Exercise

The visioning exercise presents the participants with a scenario in which they can visualize the organization as successful, but without the facilitator dictating what the success looks like. Therefore, the visualization must present the “outline” but each participant colors in the outline with his/her particular view.

Accordingly it is important to describe several different views.

• Customers – Have the participants visualize and hear what customers are saying about the organization.
• Employees – Have the participants visualize and hear what employees are saying about the organization.
• Competitors/Other Stakeholders – Have the participants visualize and hear what competitors or other stakeholders are saying about the organization.
• Actions – Have the participants visualize what actions were taken to achieve success.
• Results – Have the participants visualize the results that were achieved.

The order you do these things may vary based on the visualization.

Goal Areas

After the visualization exercise, have each individual participant write out what they saw. Then, use breakout teams to have the participants create on post-its a consolidated set of vision elements that appeared in team members’ visions. Next, have the breakout teams review their vision element list with the entire team, and then group these into logical categories.

The categories represent the broad areas in which success is necessary. These areas become the definition of goals: broad aims that define success! Organizations are often surprised when they discover that this technique results in them identifying their key areas of success. But of course, the exercise is designed to have them visualize whatever success means to them.