Steps

1. Define the entity (subject, area, how many years ahead we will dream - normally five to ten years) and check understanding and agreement on the entity with the participants. Write the agreed entity in the middle of a white board or poster.

2. Introduce the dream. As facilitator ask people to relax and (speaking slowly) describes in colourful terms that in five to ten years from now the programme or organisation receives a price of excellence. Let the participants imagine what the speaker, who awards the price, says to explain why the project or organisation deserves the price. The speaker talks about (choose one of the two):

  • The characteristics of the excellent situation of the target group, or
  • The characteristics of the project or organisation that make it outstanding and successful in achieving its aims

3. Dream individually. Let the participants dream for five to ten minutes about the situation of the target group/clients or on the characteristics that produced the success of the project or organisation. Participants write their dreams in key words on yellow cards (one dream per card).

To encourage that people dream beyond 'more of the same', you may specify that everything is allowed, except for dreams that are already pursued at present. You may also require participants to contribute no less than three dreams.

4. Cluster and add:

  • Collect and put the characteristics as sunrays around the entity, meanwhile clustering similar cards (check with participants whether subjects are truly similar)
  • Let participants in reaction put more ideas on orange cards (observing the characteristics identified by others may inspire further ideas)

5. Realise dreams: Once you have a rich collection of dreams, ask people what they could do towards the dream - let them write it on green cards which you put next to the dreams. Go cluster by cluster. Two options:

  • Develop an action plan: Let people write ideas of actions they could do tomorrow (or the very near future) as a first step towards the dreams
  • Develop an organisation mission or project overall objective: Let people write products and services needed to completely realise the dreams

6. Criticise dreams - or reality check. Once you have a collection of characteristics as well as practical plans, analyse which ones to adopt. Criteria can be cost-effectiveness, risk, any other criteria from your Basic Question (if you work with a BQ), or factors that affect the realisation of the dream

7. Prioritise and choose objectives and/or actions through voting. Give each participant a number of votes with the instruction to give ideas minimum 0 and maximum 3 votes:

  • If you develop an action plan: Give people 10 votes for possible short-term actions. Adopt the 10 most popular actions in the action plan
  • If you develop a mission or project objective: Give each person around 5 votes for characteristics of the project or organisation. Adopt the most popular 5 to form the overall objective or constitute the organisation mission