3 Easy Steps to help You Realize Your Vision
In a recent blog, I talked about how important having a vision is, and how it can take you from managing to leading. Based on research on appreciative inquiry, there are four stages to building and implementing an inspiring vision. The four stages are aligned to the Four Ds: Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver. I will focus on the first three. Whether you are seeking to make a personal life-altering decision or leading a team seeking a better way to achieve a goal, these steps are proved to work every time!
Discover
This is a fun stage because you are exploring and analyzing past successes and accomplishments—your own or the team’s. The point is to focus your creative energy on the positive, rather than being caught in what didn’t work. Tapping into positive energy from past accomplishments will help you feed a creative mindset. This contributes to an ambitious vision.
When I was helping my team become more high performing, we explored what worked successfully with other teams. We individually tapped into what helped us feel connected to the goals, each other, and our decisions. This also helped us build the confidence that we had knowledge and skills to reach an ambitious vision.
Dream
In this second phase, the goal is to tap into your creativity, as well as the team's. Brainstorm questions to ask and answer them to arrive at ideas. What is an ideal picture for the future? No idea is too crazy, stupid, or unrealistic during this step. Go for diverse ideas and experiences. Groups with diverse thinking styles come up with better solutions than groups of experts on a single subject.
Be careful of getting stuck in negativity: We can’t pay for that. We don’t have enough time. We tried that before and it didn’t work. Instead, think about what the ideal future would look like if you had millions of dollars or six more months. Turn negative thinking into creative thinking.
When my team was coming up with our vision, we brainstormed questions to ask ourselves such as, if we had all the resources possible and no limitations, what would we love to see in 5 years? When we found ourselves getting negative, we turned it into a “how to” question such as, “How to pay for this?”
Design
In the Dream phase, you came up with options, ignored roadblocks, and tapped into potential visions of a better future. When you have a list of a few ideas that excite you or your team, you’ve arrived at the third step—the Design stage. You can begin to decide what the future should look like. Prioritize ideas from the Dream stage into which is most important, or which options best suit the needs of your stakeholders. During the Design phase, you begin to create an action plan.
My team met regularly to work through our ideas. We took each stakeholder and asked ourselves, what would would satisfy or delight them? We began to work out designs for what would support those factors. As we analyzed each word of our vision, such as “sustainable growth,” we discussed what “sustainable” meant to us, and what “growth” really looked like. The vision became more meaningful and “real.” We became inspired.
This is where your hard work pays off. As you begin to roll out the vision and take steps towards reaching it, you or your team can benefit from a constant reminder of past accomplishments, current skills and abilities, and the desired future (vision). As you meet roadblocks during the implementation, re-framing your perspective of “roadblock” to “opportunity” will help you maintain a positive outlook.
-Andrea Zintz, Career Coach, President, Strategic Leadership Resources
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