The best place to start creating an inspiring vision statement is to get a group of people together. For example, your management team. If your business is small, get your entire team involved. If you work alone, invite a group of great friends who support your success. Everyone will have great ideas to contribute.
A FUN way to do this is to get everyone off site into a more creative environment. If it’s warm enough to be outside, go to a park where there are tables and benches. Pick a beautiful spot for the juices to flow.
It also works just as well in your office. All you need to do is make the environment stimulating. Play upbeat music. Have the team decorate the space with balloons. And the delicious snacks and lunch work wonders too!
Bring colorful and fun items to use in the creative process, such as colored pens, pencils, and stickers. Have Silly Putty and other materials that can be moved into different shapes, as well as toys. Anything that is creative and adds some flavor and fun. And use flipchart paper that you can stick on the wall.
You want to engage all the senses because you will ask your people to play, imagine and dream with you, all to create your ideal future.
The power of having your team participate in this process is that they will be 100% on board and committed to bringing your vision statement to life, as they helped create it!
What you will create together is an inspirational vision statement that is a description of where your company will ideally be in 3-5 years – choose your timeline, either 3 or 5 years.
Take your team through a visualization process. Start by turning off the music, then have everyone close their eyes and calm down and be still. Invite your team to imagine 3 or 5 years in the future. The company is now amazing and wildly successful.
How do you create an inspiring vision statement?
As you guide people through this process, invite them to imagine the details of that future by answering these questions:
* What is different about the company?
* What are we known for?
* How big are we?
* How are we most successful?
* How has our culture changed?
* What are we doing differently?
* What products or services are we offering now?
* How do we serve our customers?
* How have our customers changed?
* What has caused our growth?
* How are we playing biggest in the world?
* How are we making a difference?
* How can we make an even bigger difference?
* What are we recognized for now, both in the media and in our industry?
* What awards have we won?
Guide your team to imagine their future in all this detail: the more, the merrier. And feel free to add questions that resonate with you and your business.
Then take your team out of the visualization process and invite them to capture what they were imagining, writing, drawing, modeling, whatever works best for each individual.
Remember that there should be absolutely NO EDITING at this stage of the process. There is no such thing as a dumb idea. Challenge everyone to resist the urge to edit or correct others. Adding and building on others’ ideas is great! There is simply no need to make it “perfect” at this point.
Keep the ideas flowing freely and the energy high. A simple way to do this is to have people pair up and take turns freely sharing while the other writes them down. The goal here is to capture all of its brilliance!
The wealth of ideas you will gain from this process will amaze you! It’s enlightening to find out what your team members see as possible for your company!
It is essential that you do not start the process of organizing all the ideas during the creative process. This will happen later! If you start organizing ideas as you collect them, what will happen is that you will get bogged down in the details, and this will stifle, if not decimate, all progress.
Later, you and your team will organize your ideas and dreams into a template. You’ll distill them down until they all come down to the core words and phrases that best express your inspiring vision statement.
So have a WONDERFUL time with all of this! Remember to HAVE FUN as you lead your team through this amazing process.