In reading Jay Vogt’s “Recharge Your Team: The Grounded Visioning Approach” (2009), I found strategies for creating a vision with any size team, or an entire organization in as little as half of a day. Who wouldn’t want to know more about that? This seemed highly suspect to me and also peaked my interest since the premise of grounded visioning is based on appreciative inquiry. This is a popular theory being quoted for organizational change planning in my field of work. Mohr and Watkins (2002) talked about the foundational principles of appreciative inquiry as the appreciation of people and the organizational system as well as the ability to communicate the strengths or best practices of an organization, to design a vision for the future. Vogt (2009) takes the tenets of appreciative inquiry and puts them into a user friendly guide with sample agendas for various forums for grounded visioning planning sessions.
Using the Appreciative Inquiry process, organizations examine and identify areas where their current systems are successful, and then determine ways to make those successes more constant. The process involves storytelling and interviewing to draw on the best of the past in order to effectively visualize a successful future. Questions used in these sessions invite participants to share what attracted them to and what keeps them with the team or organization. High points, success stories as well as dreams, hopes and aspirations are shared. The final question being, “What is the one reason for optimism that those dreams, hopes, and aspirations might actually come to pass? (p. 49). This process works according to Vogt (2009) because it is a low cost, easily implemented, collaborative and positive method.
I could see this method functioning with a small team, but it is quite a stretch for me to imagine this working effectively for large scale organizational change visioning. I have participated in a number of fast paced visioning sessions that were meant to accomplish much in a short amount of time. I have also seen a great deal of progress made in a short time, with an approach similar to grounded visioning. The issue that seems to derail the process is the work that needs to happen after the initial meeting. People leave with specific leaves tasks assigned for completion. Often there is no one who monitors and reports back to the group as a whole, about the progress being made. I would benefit more from a part two to this book. It would give user friendly tools for setting the vision in motion and the ongoing monitoring of progress.
It sounds like grounded visioning without action can also be called day dreaming. I guess that's where leadership meets management. Leaders without management skills had better know how to surround themselves with the right people to get things done.
Posted by: James | May 19, 2010 at 07:59 PM