When an organization faces the need for change, whether it is a hospital’s need to rethink how it manages patient intake or a multi-national corporation that needs to revitalize and reinvigorate its core values, the question, “How do we accomplish this?” naturally emerges. Typically, a few people are called together and a brainstorming or planning process is used to come up with some alternatives. Or, one person is tasked with creating a proposal that usually includes identifying the tradeoffs in various options for moving forward. Often, however, the stress and pressure of the day-to-day lead a single leader to make somewhat arbitrary decisions based on constraints like time and cost.
There are many hidden and not-so-hidden costs to this approach. The failure of the change effort to provide the solutions that were needed can quickly become obvious. For example, the new patient-intake system may have solved a few of the most glaring problems, but it soon becomes apparent that many of the same problems, such as unacceptably long waiting times and the lack of a quiet place for administering paperwork, are still unsolved. And, despite an internal marketing campaign full of value-oriented bling, office contests and recognition programs, the multinational’s core values are not assimilated or aligned around the change in the manner that is imperative for business success.
Clearly, finding and using methodologies that both leverage the full possibilities for a group’s creative thinking, and unite and align stakeholders around how to move forward are critically important. Taking the time to engage a group in a manner that allows it to bring the full potential of the whole brain to the table brings powerful insight and unleashes opportunities that were simply not accessible through traditional planning or problem-solving processes.
Change efforts require a high level of engagement from an organization’s people. Diverse groups of stakeholders must come together and agree on what the future should look like. A shared vision does exactly this – it provides alignment around a picture of what the desired future will look like. It unites and provides the link between diverse people, interests and activities. Shared visions are expressions of what people have in common; of what they are committed to. People with shared vision are more likely to take responsibility; they are more likely to challenge the bounds of convention.