Change Agent | Cate Trotter
Send Story to a FriendWhy is a sustainable vision piece so powerful?
"It is not willpower, but fantasy and imagination that creates. Imagination creates reality."
– Richard Wagner
It's great that so many people have got excited about this vision piece (I'll tell you about the people who are interested in another blog).
But why have a vision piece at all? Why is it important?
"Imagination is ten times more potent than our willpower."
– Anthony Robbins
Because, as all the quotes in this post point out, vision and imagination is incredibly powerful. It starts the process of belief that we can achieve something, and puts our minds into a resourceful, problem-solving mode. Rather than focussing on problems, we begin to find the solutions that help us reach our goals.
We don't have to do this all by ourselves, though: groups' imaginations can be positively affected en masse, as long as you take the right approach.
Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile, who visualised himself breaking the time over and over again, vividly imagining himself during the challenge, and how he would overcome any difficulties. Before he did it, no one thought it could be done. After he'd done it, 37 people managed the same feat with a year. The year after, 300 people did the same thing.
This whole vision proposal is actually an extension of the group scenario planning services Insider Trends offers. It helps groups vividly imagine a variety of different futures, working out how they will make the best of them. We then help them name each scenario so everyone in the organisation can refer to a scenario quickly and easily. We also like to encourage clients to make some kind of movie or animation to really bring the scenarios to life for employees, quickly and easily.
The end result: communication between people in the organisation becomes much stronger and clearer, and everyone feels more confident about the new direction, making better decisions that help them make the most of their futures.
More cheesy images, but remember that the achievement of putting a man on the moon was a collective vision and effort.
And if you don't think it can happen en masse, just think of how China's 1.3 billion population has collectively managed to change its fortunes in just 50 years. There's no reason why we can't develop a similar vision (and hence results) for a sustainability goal.
Our society is just another organisation, really, and as it's so huge we really do need to come up with at least one positive vision that people can easily get to grips with, start talking about and start playing their part in. We can help align billions of peoples' imaginations, but we need a tool with mass reach to do it.
The military, MI5 and Shell have all shown that scenario planning can bring about huge success. So we know it works – but it'd be nice to use this amazing tool for more positive purposes!
"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and, at last, you create what you will."
– George Bernard Shaw
Soooo, I hope all of this makes sense! If it doesn't or you have any related questions, please leave a comment (I think by answering a few questions we can make this concept easier to understand).
If it does and you're excited: please spread the word by mentioning or responding on your own blog, putting this on Digg, Twitter, Facebook... If enough people believe in this idea, it will happen somehow.
And FYI: I'll be blogging about the different ways we could make the movie in a few days, so do check back.
+ Insider Trends' Scenario Planning for businesses
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