Case study: Visioning process launches highest performance year ever for dedicated team
Problem: Mission-driven team overwhelmed by service requests
A very customer-oriented team of people felt that they were always missing the mark, never fully achieving their very high team and personal goals, no matter how hard they worked. Responsible for meeting disabled students’ needs for support at a large university – and viewing it as a mission, not just a job – members of this team found it hard to “de-prioritize” activities even though they found it hard to keep up. Their plight was even more of a concern when they looked to the future, with its growing population of students who would need their services.
Solution: Create team vision, long-range strategy and annual plan in rapid cycle planning offsite to prioritize work and stretch resources
Enact a rapid-cycle visioning and strategic planning session for the full team. The goal was to help them discover ways to serve disabled college students more effectively using existing resources. This high-energy workshop was held at the team’s annual offsite planning meeting. The leadership team’s goals included clarifying the group’s mission and vision; strengthening requirements and capabilities; defining work to be done within their mission; and simplifying the decision-making processes. The overall impact was a combination of helping the group to eliminate unnecessary or less-valued work and adding structure to help them to work smarter.
I was hired to design the visioning and planning process and to lead the team through it. The process featured many different wall-sized graphic templates. We wanted to capture the full power of the team’s imagination and creativity. We were able to tap into their critical thinking abilities, as well, by prioritizing what mattered to student clients most. Our goal was to leave the two-day session with a compelling vision, plan and commitment to make it happen.
The project was complicated before starting. One member of the offsite planning team was convinced that a planning task could not be completed in two months, much less two days. In her experience, projects like these usually dragged on for weeks, leading to few conclusions or results. However, her manager was committed to the process. Therefore, she knew she had to “go with the flow.” I knew that even though she was in a leadership role, she was not yet an active supporter of the project. It was also something I had to be aware of, and to work with effectively, without letting it stop our progress, as a team.
As we prepared for the visioning and planning work, we created subteams of people who did not normally work together. We did this to strengthen bonds between members of all subteams and to share ideas across the full group.
As we began the visioning work at the offsite meeting, the team assessed its strengths and weaknesses, as a full group. Each subgroup had very different and specific needs to support. For example, some of their clients had hearing or vision impairments, other had learning disabilities. There were also a number of mobility challenges they helped other student clients to handle, and more. We also considered forthcoming changes in the growth of the student population at the university, and what it might mean in terms of the services their future clients might need.
Throughout the two days of work, we created the team’s long-term vision and strategic plan. We also designed an action plan for them to follow as they moved through that year. The team continued to work with high energy and focus throughout the planning process. As different as this rapid-cycle process was from any other planning process they had ever used, it turned out to be highly effective and enjoyable, despite their initial apprehensions.
Results: Compelling vision and clear plans act as catalyst for high-energy, high-results year ahead
We created a vision far more powerful than expected. The vision and process were so effective that they became the catalysts for more achievement and satisfaction than the team or its clients had ever experienced in prior years. The vision and plan helped individuals and specialized client teams alike. Each could focus on a growing student population with specific support needs, and each had a greater ability to make clear, timely decisions about the best use of resources in the coming year. It also enabled groups to set – or re-set – expectations among their student client population about how to become more self-supporting, along with the services this group was providing them. This had a positive impact on students’ preparedness for life beyond college, during which they might encounter less accommodating environments than in the college atmosphere.
Not only was the team thrilled about how much we accomplished during the two-day offsite sessions, they were amazed at how prepared they felt for the forthcoming year. The enthusiasm and energy continued throughout the school year because of the clear, shared long-term vision and the well-understood annual plan.
When I saw members of the team in the future, their faces lit up with big smiles and they started, instantly, to recall the fun and intensity of the experience. I also received good-natured teasing about the planning "thrill ride” we took in those two days together, given the great focus and purposeful intensity with which we worked. The team successfully implemented all planned actions well before the end of the next fiscal year, all well within their budget.