Working with vision

I was working with an Aboriginal group the other day developing a vision and mission statement. Lately I have been looking at how we actually create these things in a way that is authentic and appreciative instead of top-down and prescriptive.

I’ve never been a big fan of the “Vision Statement,” being the kind of guy that eschews fixed statements of fact in favour for evolution and emergence of meaning. However, I do feel it is important to have something bigger to move towards, a vision of the world that one co-creates with others. This vision can change over time as we engage with the world around us, but its good to have an idea of something bigger to invite us into the future we want.

To that end, I am fond of finding vision in the messy, changing and challenging world of relationships. In an Open Space meeting for example, the vision of the group emerges from the agenda wall: it is inclusive and dynamic and bigger than any one actor in the system. It invites us into the unknown and spurs us to action. Likewise, personal visions arise from seeing ourselves in relation to the worlds around us including the social world, the natural realm and perhaps the spiritual realm too.

In Ojibway teachings, vision is cultivated as a means towards self-expression and self-fulfillment and the identification of a purpose for one’s life. It is a capacity we develop over our whole lives, not just on spiritual retreats and fasts. These days I am applying this thinking in working both with Aboriginal groups and others.

In the most recent example I worked with a group designing a vision for an organization that is in its start-up phase. This is a group that has attracted the interest of its stakeholders and a board of directors has stepped forward to help birth the structure. We convened on a morning last week to discuss what the vision and the mission might be.

Because the process we were using was both appreciative and emergent, I began with a question to the people themselves. We asked “what attracted you to this organization? What spoke to you about what it could be and what part of you resonated with that invitation?” People took five minutes to reflect and write their response to this question and then we heard back from each of the seven or so people in the room. Just that exercise alone brought us to a collective sense of what the organization could be, and it certainly described the work of the organization in a way that kept the board members engaged. It reached into what Marshall Rosenberg calls that which is “alive in us.”

Following the reflection and storytelling which took a little over an hour, we began to notice bigger patterns, asking “what kind of world could we create with an organization rooted in these stories?” This linked the personal visions of the Board members to the work of the organization. New worlds arise out of leadership and vision, and the organization can serve the emergence of the new world if it is tied to the leadership investment of those people who have stepped up to take responsibility.

Out of that noticing conversation came a very focused set of vision and mission statements that described the field of work of the organization and the kind of role it wanted to play in the world. It is important working with this kind of process that we don’t close the space down with wordsmithing, because at this stage, the new born vision and mission needs time to sit a ripen. The staff of the organization began to play with some of this final wording and then offered to find a wording proposal for board after letting the concepts gel a little more over time.

It’s important in an exercise like this to keep things open and to use language that does not convey “business as usual.” Great visions are inspirational and invite us to travel to new worlds. We cannot get there with the tools and language of the present world. We need the tools of spirit and collaboration to move into the place we have never been before. Working with those parts of ourselves that are alive brings the language of life, growth and promise to this work and works at the levels of language and process to propel us into the desired futures we share.