Vision driven planning creates such changes in planning that people actually start to enjoy it, the planning is a focus rather than the answer, and it actually creates change…Well done for articulating what all nonprofits and strategic planners really need to hear.

I thought you might enjoy some of the points of view I have about planning that mirror your blog post (and of course The Pollyanna Principles)

-A question creates your organization, an answer defines your organization

-Which choice here would create the greater number of future potentials

-Everyone goes: “What question do I need to ask”, but seldom “What question am I not being?”

-What would be greater than I could even imagine?

Keep the great work up, you are an inspiration.
Steve Bowman

We all get so used to doing the same thing in the same way and hoping for different results. (Yes, that old definition of insanity…) But when we change the way we see things, things change.

So yes, viva the heretics! They are our only hope for creating more significant change in our communities!
HG

Helping people “Reverse Engineer the Future” as you describe it makes lots of sense. The semantics of this process is foreign to so many and takes a real shift in thinking. It’s hard to get my mind wrapped around this because it goes against what I’ve been taught in my years of volunteer and Board training. It’s soft, intangible and like herding jello, and I’ll have to erase a lot of bad tapes to get it in motion.

Problem solving is common vernacular that most people immediately understand and embrace. The challenge as I see it is to help others understand, embrace and engage in vision-based planning and reverse engineering the future. Focusing on what it takes to make something happen instead of nay saying and delivering the whys it can’t happen is ultimately about an attitude and behaviors. So it’s about awareness to action which is the foundation of social behavior change.

Perhaps as community benefit organization leaders, we need to start recruiting the “heretics” of problem solving as our board members and committee chairs, those who automatically embrace vision planning and have the right mindset from the start.

Here’s an example:
Group: “We need is computers.”
Libba: “Why?”
Group: “Well, we need them.”
Libba: “But why?”
Group: (sighing)”Well, because they will help the children build literacy skills.”
Libba: “Why do you want to build literacy skills?”
Group: (getting really irritated now — as if I were questioning why motherhood and apple pie are good things) “Well so that the kids can learn to read, of course!”
Libba: “You’re teaching them to read, aren’t you?”
Group: “Of course we are, but the children aren’t learning!”
Libba: “And why is that?”
(Usually at this point the group is quite certain that I am clueless, and they begin looking for other things to do.)
Libba: “For the children to perform as you know they must to be successful in life — because that really lies at the foundation of everything you are trying to do — what must be happening in the school? How would you interact with parents and the community? What would it feel like to be here — how would you describe the culture and the atmosphere?”

When I interject a question like this, it is amazing how people become very reflective, quiet, and really focus in on what truly matters. As you observed, their replies center on something that isn’t a solution to a problem, but a vision of what could be. From there we begin tracing backwards, identifying the conditions, activities, people and resources that must be in place to make that vision a reality. It is a powerful experience.

Until I read your article, it didn’t occur to me that I was helping people reverse engineer the future. I thought I was helping them to solve problems, but it really does go way beyond that.

Thanks, Hildy! Once again you’ve inspired me!!

Libba