The trouble is, most of what we produce as goals fails to energize, or only scares us when we see the number of projects needed to produce the desired revenue.
Here's an alternative that might help you and your team get charged up and dream a little, instead of just feeling overwhelmed by the official plan. It's called Picture It, and you can do it on your own or as a group.
Picture It
What you need:
[1] Some bigg-ish pieces of paper or posterboard. The low-budget approach is to take some file folders and open them up. Everyone needs one. Colored is always better, it helps us be more playful, always a good thing when we want to get some positive energy moving
[2] A bunch of magazines. Go for stuff like business and news magazines, because they have more evocative images than fashion magazines. e.g. Fast Company, Wired, Time
[3] Scissors
[4] Glue stick or tape. Could use a stapler in a pinch
[5] Garbage bag
[6] Optional: colored markers. I like the ones meant for kids, because they're inexpensive and built to take a lot of abuse
What you do:
Spread all the materials out in a big pile on a table.
Give everyone a piece of cardboard and a magazine to get them started.
Read the instructions, shown below. Don't get stuck on clarification, just get started.
Give people enough time to flounder and then get started on their own. The leader, of course, must also do the exercise. People will likely need at least 20 minutes on this part.
You should have a lot of paper mess on the table once this gets rolling. [That's what the garbage bag is for.]
When everyone is about finished, invite people to hold up their collage and share their ideas. Plan on 3 - 4 minutes for each person. You may be surprised at how much discussion this triggers, so plan for lots of time on the debrief.
As the leader of the group, ensure that the discussion stays positive. This is about wishing and dreaming, not about logistics. You don't have to know how the wishes will be achieved to share them.
Plan to keep the collages. People may want to post them in their own work area, or put them up in a central place together as one giant collage.
Verbal instructions:
Flip through the magazines looking for images or words that capture your ideas about what we could be in the year ahead. Don't overthink it. Just start tearing out images that seem to relate to the year ahead, and your ideas about what we could be or become or achieve. Don't limit yourself to any one area -- you could be thinking about how we work together, how we treat customers, how we innovate, or anything else that seems to fit.
When you have a good pile of images, start cutting and pasting these onto the folder. Add any words or drawings that help to illustrate the thought or bring the idea to life.
Tell people this is not about artistic ability, it's just a way to liberate some creative thinking and ideas about the year ahead.
The results:
When we can clearly picture a goal or a desirable outcome, it's much more likely to happen. You might have encountered this concept as a dream board for personal planning. There are many possible variations.
The worst case? You'll have a high energy meeting to start the year, instead of a deadly dull one.
If you try this, please come back and add your comments to let us know how it worked, what you tweaked, etc.
And happy new year!
Resources:
More on dream boards here on WikiHow and here on EHow
