How to create a shared Vision

At the core of every business, every project idea  lies a dream, a vision of where you want to be.

But the Vision is not the same as your Vision statement here is the difference:

1. The Vision: A vision is a vivid mental image of what you want in the future. Having a clear vision will give your teams a clear focus, and attract support. Where do we want to be in 3.5.10 years?
   
   
2. The Vision Statement :A vision statement describes future conditions in aspirational terms. communicates your ideal long-term business goals. In successful companies every employee can tell you that vision statement in a short sentence and knows where they are heading.

How to create the Vision and how not?

The big mistake I see companies make they hire some consultants to write a vision statement for them. Unbelievable but yes unfortunately it is true. And we all feel it and that makes the best clients and experts leave once there is a more magnetic vision.

Please do not make the mistake and write the path how to get there and which road to take.  -that is the strategy  and that may need to adapt based on where you are today and what are the circumstances.

The vision needs to be your vision and  the vision of your team.

We all know: whatever we want to create at first we have an image of what we create  in our mind. How clear is the image of the desired project outcome in your mind?

Today I will share from my 20 years personal experience consulting successful business leaders CEO 3 ways on how to create a shared vision to get amazing results.

If you are starting a new business, selling a big project , building a team, aspire to  accelerate growth or when change is needed you always want to ask yourself:

• How can you create a shared vision with your team, your stakeholders?
• How to create a shared vision for 
• your company?
• your product?
• your project ?
• your processes?
• your culture?

Here are three simple ways you can create a shared Vision and Vision statement in your meetings and  workshop that worked very well for our clients.

1.Talk about your vision

Present your vision vividly. As leaders we need to become better storytellers.  Go beyond just telling and encourage your team to explain how this vision could look in detail. Leaders need to become become better storytellers, Play with your team:

• A time travel game with your team and imagine a future  date on the timeline and describe a day of your future reality. 
• Your team does an  interview with yourself about your vision in 5 years
• Write a letter to yourself from the future you
• Ask your team to write an article about a day in the future
• Discuss the Vision message in a group with our proven messaging  group exercise.

This is why we should spend a lot of time on uplevel our communication skills.  In our program “Project Leader Business Class” we have included practice communication sessions and role play time for: Presentation skills,  Moderating meetings, Pitching skills, Persuasive Messaging, Facilitating team workshops and other perks that help  you to become more influential and grow your informal authority as a leader.

Finally write a Vision statement and agree on every single word as it will have a huge  impact on on your business.

2. Draw your vision

Imagine a flip chart for a large whiteboard, sometimes we use white paper and put it on the wall. This blank paper is to be filled with our shared vision. Depending on the client's  situation we practice different strategies to get there . The best results we achieve when we are inclusive in the process and even if you as the CEO have a clear picture in mind you encourage your team first to think on their own and to come up with their own version of the vision. This white Vision wall can be used as

• a team exercise to get clear on what you want
• Vision board to remind yourself what to focus on
• an inclusive team process to translate the vision into pictures that say more than thousand words

In our Visioning workshops we help overcome resistance to drawing and make this process fun and yet so powerful. I personally had the pleasure to consult startup companies from the idea  that was shared at the table in a restaurant, fast growing companies who were in the consolidation phase and we invited more than 30 key contributors to such workshops. This worked very well for  large international project teams. By empowering our clients to paint pictures of their future we help our clients to get access to their  subconscious mind and get more of what they want faster. 

How can we run this visioning exercise  in the digital world?

Today we do these exercises by using powerful digital tools like MIRO from the comfort of your home, office, hotel room, wherever you are on our beautiful planet and we include visioning workshops in our Project Leader Business Class program.

3. Build a Lego model

Can you build the future with Lego?  How can we Imagine the future with simple bricks? Let me show you how you can imagine the future by using simple Lego  bricks.

The Challenge

One of the biggest problems in Visioning is that we see what we know and what we saw on TV or what we saw others are doing. But what is right for us? How to learn to listen to our  subconscious mind and the voice inside? How to explain what we think to people who are thinking so differently and to make them understand?

How to align our peers and teammates with the leadership team to a shared vision?

The Solution

By using our hands  we can access parts of our subconscious in a magic way. They build something we couldn´t even describe before. But we can interpret our model in a story after.

By Working with our hands we trigger new neural pathways.

Lego seriously methodology  helps us to see things that we hold in our subconscious and become more  aware of what we really want. The lego serious play method helps us To share our ideas more clearly to team members, clients and shareholders in a playful way.

My clients and my children and their friends know: I love playing with Lego. At home you could see the floor covered with lego city, a police station, electric trains running, townhouses, ranches, castles a hospital, fantasy islands, cars, boat, airplanes and our own dream houses  So no wonder when Lego announced a Boot camp to share their process they developed  with to Lego Strategy of using My Lego serious play I was on board and became a certified faciillitation for Lego serious play.  

The Power is that we use our hands that express the subconscious  and the model so  describe help us to trigger words and picture that are inside of us.

The model helps to reveal your desires and imaginations.

Still today we sent our client soft coaching a set of lego bricks from lego serious play and used it to create the future literally with our hands.

We have a proven process that we use  so that our clients who have never played lego before  can enjoy doing lego serious play exercises and get  amazing results for themselves, their clients and for their children.

Here are some workshops we run successfully all over the world.

Build a shared vision

• for your company
• for your business process
• for your stakeholder and their relations
• for your product 
• get to know your team 
• of your self
• of your culture

Takeaway 

Imagination is a sacred resource and to use the power of the team's imagination is unmatched.

You as the business owner want to make sure that your team sees the same picture in their mind so that you all work together on one direction.completing the missing puzzle piece to build this image and make it a reality,

If you save time and skip these visioning exercises you run the risk that every team runs into his own direction and creates a different new reality. different for what you have had in mind.

Resources:

How to Run a Vision Mission Value Workshop

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