Creating a Vision

Creating a vision isn’t always an easy thing — but it can be rewarding to see one grow.

Disclaimer: There’s no “perfect” vision, and there isn’t a perfect method to share that vision with a team.

A technique I picked up from my good friend Ralph Bou Mechrek is to always be running experiments (in this context, an experiment is simply the testing of a theory in a real-life scenario). I can tell you from first hand experience it’s the fastest way to get feedback!

So with all that out of the way I want to share with you the experiment of running a vision workshop with your team…

A Wild Vision Appears

A vision can help guide your team’s decision making and help them hone in on what matters. Once you have a shared understanding of your vision you can more easily create roadmap and plan within your teams. Your vision should also motivate your team and provide clarity and focus while describing the future/target state. For this reason, explaining the “why” behind your vision is crucial.

If you already have a strong vision you‘re going to have plans you want to share with your team. As a technical leader in consulting I draw from my previous experience and deep understanding of the power of Business Value to form a strong vision I can share with my team.

It can take weeks, or months to formulate a vision and in this time you might be talking to likeminded people, exploring what matters most, where to focus efforts, what problem you’re trying to solve (and why). Usually you end up with one or more diagrams to help explain your vision — or something you can draw on a whiteboard.

The other thing you’ll need is passion. You need to believe in your vision before you can share it with others.

At the end of the day, you’re telling a story and you’re asking others to join you on a journey.

Workshop Part 1 — Seeding a Vision

So let’s assume you have a vision and you’re ready to share it with your team. The first part of your workshop should focus on sharing your vision with the team and gauging their response/interest while answering their questions.

Here are the sorts of things you might include in your diagrams, whiteboard or your passionate speech to the team:

• What will the organization/team look like in 6 months
• Teams and streams of work (What they’ll do, Success when…)
• How teams will work together
• What it looks like when we’re done (artifacts, technicals, logical diagrams)
• What else is important? (Training, Metrics, Comms back to the business)

The key here is to keep things high-level while leaving the slide-ware at home. After sharing what you have your team should be able to articulate which parts resonate with them, and where they have questions, concerns or just other ideas!

Depending on how familiar your team is with the vision and how involved they’ve been thus fair — there may be lots of “why” questions. Why is this vision necessary? Why is there a big focus on X? Why are teams changing? It’s important to make sure the “why” has been effectively communicated, and that you’ve explored this with the team.

Assuming things have gone well, and it sounds like the team is on-board (think lots of head nodding and hearing the same things from multiple people) we can move onto the playback.

Tip 1: If your team isn’t on-board or there’s more confusion than there is support, now’s the perfect time to either continue that conversation and take notes of the feedback — or break so that the team has time to consume the information and re-group with more of a plan. Don’t be disheartened at this stage — you’ve just got some honest feedback and that’s great!

Tip 2: If you haven’t got any feedback or engagement from your team at this stage (silent room, or one word responses) either your vision isn’t very exciting, you caught them at the end of a long day, or your team isn’t ready to contribute to your vision. It’s important to make sure you team understands what you expect from them at the start of the workshop to avoid this situation. Again if you need to regroup — now is a good time.

Part 2 — Vision Playback

Okay so let’s assume you’ve shared your vision. You have an energized team that are engaged and contributing to the discussion. What’s next?

Here’s where the fun happens. What we want to do next is have each team member “play back” the vision in their own words. It’s critical that this part happens so each person in the team demonstrates buy-in, so that they have a voice, and so that you (as a leader) can understand where each of your team members is at in terms of how much they believe-in and buy-into the shared vision.

One simple way to do this playback is by way of a group role play session. Have one person in the group stand up facing the rest of the team (they’re going to play themselves).

Tip: For your first person pick someone who gets the vision and is confident — to show the rest of the team that this is a safe-place and this exercise is more fun than it is scary

Now have someone else in the group ask them a question (as if they’re the someone outside the group that’s just heard about this new “initiative”). Let’s work through an example.

Drew:

Ralph: (playing the role of outsider)

• Hi I heard you’re part of this new initiative, can you tell me more?
• I heard you don’t like puns, is that true? (in-joke / icebreaker question)
• What is your role in all of this?
• What’s the most important part of the initiative to you?
• What will we have at the end of it?
• How will this change our company?
• Will my team have to use it? What if we don’t want to?
• I’ve heard your using k8s — isn’t that more trouble than it’s worth?
• What makes you think your group will succeed where others have failed?
• Will it be hard for me to use your new product?
• What do I do if I want to join your initiative?
• I heard this won’t last very long as nobody wants it?

Those were just sample questions, the key here is to prepare the team for the sorts of questions others might ask, or the questions they may be asking each other. During this session you’re not focusing on right vs wrong questions but you might want to comment on what you observed after each person is done (in particular something you’d like to praise or see more of). Did one of their answers teach us something new? Are we seeing a theme with the answers? Are there some gaps in our vision?

If you heard some things have could have been answered better — consider holding onto that feedback to see how the next person tackles it. If you hear something that’s way off base you might want to suggest a different response they could have used to set expectations with the team (ie focus less on the negative and make sure you’re providing a solution/alternative response they could use).

Tip: Try not to prepare the questions ahead of time, you should be able to seed the whole activity with just two confident team members who are already bought-in. Let your team have a bit of fun with it by encouraging a few jokes. This should lead to a more natural conversation which will help your team think on their feet.

Wrap Up — A Vision is Born

There are a few key things that go into forming a high-performing team — and sharing your vision is one of them!

Once your team has a shared vision or goals you’ll notice all sorts of wonderful things:

• People are happier
• Planning work is easier
• Your team communicate with each more
• The messaging outside of your initiative is more cohesive
• You’ll create a buzz around your initiative — and others will want to join

Oh and I guess I forgot to mention…

You’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals and making your vision a reality.