What have you been dreaming lately? How are you thinking? Are you allowing the possibility of your highest potential to emerge?
And as you work with others: how do you go about eliciting big dreams in diverse groups? Once you discover a shared vision, do you look for ways to expand it with more perspectives?
Most of what gets created in our world exists in large part because of vision. There are unlimited ways to tap the well. The main thing is to allow ourselves to dream, share our dreams with others, and flesh out what "success" looks like. Then describe it over and over and infect more people with our excitement.
You know how this works, right? The more people help shape the vision, the more they take ownership to bring it life.
Each person has to “be” the vision. As we embody the assumption that our vision has been realized (carry the knowing at a spiritual level and feel it achieved), there is no question about whether the vision is possible. Our only question is: How can we hasten its realization?
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 way to stretch our sense of possibilities:
Convene a small 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 and short phrases that capture the good/bad, opportunities/limits that currently exist.
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.
ENLIVEN: Now step back; take in the fullness of both posters. What is good already? Invite the team to reflect: What are our strengths? What do we do well, like nobody else? If we did not exist, what needs would persist that nobody else could meet? How might we enliven our work with more of what we already do best?
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 creating together?
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?
DISCOVER: We are already glimpsing our vision made real. In fact, we are modeling possibilities in the way we have worked together to develop our vision. Are we not?
This is a good time to pause and let things percolate. (Later, we’ll create a plan and establish a structure to ensure ongoing creative teamwork and accountability through implementation.)
For now, is there one action item each participant can take from this visioning session, and report back at our next meeting?
Maybe there are ways each of us can modify our home or work environment to keep the vision visible? For example, could a mobile phone alert be set to continually stir good feelings about what is possible?
It will be powerful for each person to establish habits of staying in touch with the feeling of the shared vision already existing in all of its glory. For as many have said, our “change of feeling is a change of destiny.”
To close, invite each to share “one word” about our new potential.
Promising, yes?
We’d love to hear how this works for you: