Visioning

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Project Visions and Visioning
File:Vision.jpg This article is developed within the scope of the Project Visions and Visioning, an effort to enhance Foresight learning through collaborative work.


Envisioning the future – clarifying the process

Visioning - a complex process, but many times perceived in a superficial light, confused with a simple future scenarios imagination process or with the capacity to forecast great ideas for the future. However, visions are more than some sort of scenarios or goals for the future. The practice of envisioning is the base for obtaining visions, is a method of approaching the future. Acts of envisioning are the result of cognitive and analytic processes on one hand, but highly connected to “the psyche, the spirit and the mental culture of the envisioner” (Ziegler, 1991, p. 516). From a dictionary we can see that envisioning is described as being “the ability to form mental images of things or events, to picture in the mind, to imagine” (reference). This is the base of the process, but it definitely exceeds this step and it also goes beyond a simple process of forecasting or planning in the accepted or expected way.

The idea of vision started to gain grounds beginning with the last decade of 1970, in organizational and political fields within democracies (Ziegler, 1991, p. 519), and nowadays is an elementary process in any successful field. Envisioning is not only for futurists, but is accessible to all of us, as it can be used in so many envisioning occasions from corporate strategies, team-building and personal life to urban planning, health, education reform or cultural future projects. It is used to generate detailed scenarios of the future and it is a participatory process that exceeds departmental boundaries, trends, statistics, requirements, norms, management or leaders’ expectations (Ibidem, p. 517-518). It is not an adaptive process, but a creative and innovative one. However, envisioning is not equivalent to elaborating wishes, but to develop visions through a process that requires discipline, a hard inner work, imagination, identification of dissatisfactions or needs and problems, deep questioning, deep and non-judgmental listening and deep learning. Participants to this type o processes are prepared to listen, clarify, critique (Ibidem, p. 517), complete and then develop visions.

The process of envisioning starts from a set of premises, as it follows: - “the future is not the domain of knowledge but of action” (the envisioning process addresses concrete and relevant aspects so that it can bring solutions into practice) - “the future is a metaphor for the human imagination” (we can approach it through various scenarios relevant in given contexts) - participants in an envisioning process are ready to take risks with each other, share images, listen and clarify irrespective of differences or disagreements regarding their visions, search for shared visions without modifying personal visions - envisioners want to take part in the process and are not asked or obliged to perform - implies personhood, as the only players are the persons, not the organization or the community, even though they benefit from the results (Ibidem, pp. 521-522).

These premises are not exhaustive and they should be perceived more as a guideline in unfolding the process in a proper way, ensuring thus the expected quality of results, the best material to develop visions and then operate with these visions, implementing the scenarios. We have seen what envisioning might be, but which steps should be included in the process, are there any starting points and defining features? The answers are provided as it follows, but before that maybe we should ask why to practice envisioning? Apart from the many fields that benefit from the results of the process, maybe the answer should lay in actions as solving, completing, filing in, because in the end these visions are meant to respond to needs, dissatisfactions, problems, and incorporate solutions.

Therefore, a key element that constitutes the starting point in visioning is dissatisfaction, and some defining elements that characterize the process are participation and commitment to action. Identifying current dissatisfactions, in particular areas and contexts, enables envisioners to find a starting point, a base for developing scenarios. It involves participation as vast and different experiences and biographies of those taking part in the process will result in a diversity of alternative futures that will contribute to complex visions. Also, the process of creating visions should result in determining transformations, elaboration of programmes and changes. The results of an envisioning process might not be liked, approved or easy to put into practice (Ibidem, pp. 523-524).

Moreover, the practice of envisioning the future involves five stages: - discerning concerns (involves deep questioning and deep learning); - focused imaging (involves successive stages of deep imaging as well as deep listening to yourself and to others); - creating shared vision (participants learn discerning and dialogue as ways to negotiate their agreements, ramify details, implications, meanings and perform analytic work); - connecting the future with the present (exercise of perceiving images, scenarios as achieved, and identify the steps that lead to achievement); - discovering strategy paths and formulating action (enables the elaboration of policies, programmes, innovative actions, transforms the visions into reality) (Ibidem, pp. 524-526).

All these features should not be transformed into boundaries, since after all envisioning the future is about “the making of new myths, is about telling stories about the future that compel us to change our ways of doing and being in the multiple action-settings within which we organize ourselves for collective enterprise” and the key words that define envisioning are heal, repair and transform (Ibidem, p. 526). The visioning process involves creating a “compelling picture of desirable future states that often represent quantum changes from the past. They develop memorable imagery and stories about the nature and benefits of this future, and work backwards to understand the journey that could carry people to this vision.” (reference). Within the process, various factors might interfere in the proper scenario building such as tradition, fear of ridicule, stereotypes, conditions, roles, norms, complacency of some stakeholders, fatigued leaders, short-term thinking, fear of having ordinary ideas, ”naysayers”, all considered as representing vision killers (reference). Visioning is considered to generate goals, to offer the possibility of fundamental change in comparison to problem solving gives us the sense of control and generates creative thinking,(reference) and therefore all these factors that block imagination, creation or scenario building, should be eliminated or reduced as much as possible. Otherwise, results might not come into our help or produce real advantages for the area they are meant for.

The process has several benefits such as eliminating boundary thinking, assuring continuity and avoiding the stutter effect of planning, identifying direction and purposes, emphasizing the need for changes, encouraging openness to unique and creative solutions, providing efficiency and productivity(reference). However, visioning is not the only method that helps in studying the future. Apart from visioning, there are methods as trend analysis, cyclical pattern analysis, environmental scanning, scenarios elaboration, backcasting, technological forecasting, futures research (reference). Visioning can compile all these methods if performed in a professional way so maybe we can choose it over the other methods.

Moreover, visioning is an important strategic tool, which starts from analyzing the present and then, developing visions that correspond to concrete needs or dissatisfactions, ending up by doing the most wanted task of healing and repairing through the selected ways of bringing transformation, of implementing the right change, this constituting also, the main reason for a large scale practice.

More on visioning as strategic tools from Professor Andrew Kakabadse, here


References:

Ziegler, Warren, Envisioning the future, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd, 1991.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/envisioning

http://www.nea.gov/resources/lessons/grove.html

http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/cav.html

http://www.gdrc.org/ngo/vision-dev.html

http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/cav.html

http://www.wfs.org/newmeth.htm

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