SEED TIP OF THE MONTH | JANUARY
Visioning: We'll See It When We Believe It
Stretch
Enliven
Ennoble
Discover
What have you been dreaming lately?
Once you discover a shared vision, do you look for ways to expand it with more perspectives?
How are you thinking?
How do you go about eliciting big dreams in diverse groups?
Are you allowing the possibility of your highest potential to emerge?
Most of what gets created in our world exists in large part because of vision. There are unlimited ways to tap the well. It doesn’t matter how. The main thing is to allow ourselves to dream, talk about our dreams, team up with others to flesh out possibilities. Then we need to find words to describe what success looks like, describe it over and over, infect people with our excitement, get them talking about our vision and owning it, too.
You can see how this evolves, right? Already as we embody the assumption that our vision has been realized (know it within, at a spiritual level -- feel it achieved), there is no question of whether the vision is possible. It is now a matter of when, and what we might do to hasten it.
As Dee Hock is known for saying:
“It is no failure to fall short of realizing all
that we might dream. The failure is to fall
short of dreaming all that we might realize.”
STRETCH: Here’s one of many ways to stretch our sense of possibilities:
Convene the team around two sheets of poster paper, and imagine that we’re standing in an art museum, looking at two paintings.
One is a painting of “what is,” now. To create this picture, draw or paste images that capture the good/bad, opportunities/limits that currently exist. Feel free to include short phrases.
The other painting is “what can be.” On this poster draw or paste images and phrases of what the world will look like when we have been wildly successful, say in five years. Be sure to make visible everything we are for, our values and our big dreams.
STRETCH
What is now?
What can be?
Feel free to use this online sketch pad to draw out your plans.
https://sketch.io/sketchpad/
ENLIVEN: Now step back; take in the fullness of both posters.
What is good right now?
Invite the team to reflect:
• What are our strengths?
• What do we do well, like nobody else?
• If we did not exist, what hole would remain that nobody else could fill?
• How might we enliven our work with more of what we already do best, as we make our vision operational?
ENLIVEN
ENNOBLE: Focusing on the poster of our five-year dream, let’s take a moment to hear from each person, in turn: What excites me most about what we are saying that we want to create together?
Then discuss who is involved. Take a moment to imagine way beyond current collaborators: Who else might share our excitement and contribute to an even more expansive vision? How can we entice them to dream with us?
ENNOBLE
DISCOVER
DISCOVER: We are already glimpsing our vision made real. In fact, we are modeling the possibilities in the way we have discovered it as a team. Are we not?
In next month’s tip we will offer suggestions to ground this vision even more.
This is a good time to pause and let things percolate.
Is there an action item each person in the room can take from this visioning session, and report back on in our next meeting?
Maybe there are ways you can modify your home or work environment, or electronic triggers you can set up to keep the vision visible and the good feelings about it stirred on a continuous basis.
The key is to establish habits of staying in touch with the feeling of your vision already existing in all its glory. For as many have said, your “change of feeling is a change of destiny.”
To close, invite each to share “one word” about our new potential.
We’d love to hear how this works for you: tips@seedimpact.org.
What can be?
