Introduction

What is a Vision of Success?

A Vision of Success is a short and specific description, in a few sentences, of the sustainable future that you wish to see realized. A future in which a social actor does or experiences something differently than before, and in a sustainable manner. A change moreover, to which your organisation can meaningfully contribute, working alongside others.

Your Vision of Success thus represents the heart of your organisation: the statement seeks to inspire those with whom you engage and shows what you are fighting for. It should answer the question Why you do the things you do? It is grounded in a thorough situation analysis of the issue you intend to address; the context in which you operate.

The vision must be:

Plausible – focus on a change that your organisation can realistically contribute to in a 10-15 years’ timeframe. It should not point to a vague, idealized situation that is unachievable.
Systemic – reflect the complex and dynamic system in which people and institutions are working effectively in relationships with each other to realize the desired change.
Actor-based – state clearly who is supposed to be benefitting from the change. Moreover, the description should describe who is doing something differently than before, resulting in the realization of the desired change.

Illustrations

Girls and young women in Malawi are better able to make their own choices in life, because the Malawian government prevents abuses and protects the rights of the girl child through the implementation of an appropriate legal framework; and because sexual and reproductive health service provision is responsive to the needs of young people, in particular girls and young women.

Media and journalists, as independent players in civil society, constitute a diverse and professional media landscape and function as change catalysts, because an enabling environment for the media is established, because media serve the interests of the public and act as a watchdog on their behalf, and because journalists and media actors work professionally.

Tools

Visioning is a guided process that can be used to assist groups of stakeholders in developing a shared direction for the future. Several creative tools are available to help you brainstorm what you want the world to look like in 5-10 years from now, when the focal problem has been effectively dealt with. Such exercises help to generate a common goal, and very likely to spur a sense of collective engagement and lots of energy.

Most visioning tools listed below (Epitaph, Helicopter, Award Ceremony, Magazine Cover) build on existing situation analyses and primarily look at the future. Other tools (Rich Picture), may be used more elaborately by first developing a creative representation of the current state of affairs together and taking that as a starting point for the subsequent vision drawing exercise.

* Change Elemental: Visioning toolkit.

* Multi-Stakeholder Processes Knowledge Co-Creation Portal on Visioning.

The Magazine
Cover

The Helicopter

The Rich Picture

The Award
Ceremony

Crafting a Vision
of Success
Statement

The Epitaph

An exercise to create a brief description about the impact you would like the world to remember your organisation for, by developing a tombstone text that captures your legacy to the world in 15 words. Â

Key guiding question: Which essential transformation has our organisation made to the world?

An exercise to identify the Â differences your organisation has made to a certain geographic area, by describing what you see when flying over the project Â implementation area in a helicopter. Â

Key guiding question: What can you see that is different?

An exercise to celebrate the contributions your organisation has made to a community, by setting up a programme for an award winning ceremony for the successes achieved during the implementation of your project. Â

Key guiding question: Which successes are you celebrating, and for whom?

The Award Ceremony

An exercise to show the success factors involved in being a successful organisation, or implementing an effective programme, by making a collage for the cover of a renowned, well-read magazine in your sector. Â

Key guiding question: What are the headlines or images on the cover that represent your success?

The Magazine Cover

The Rich Picture

An exercise to make a collective drawing that illustrates the main factors and relationships that need to be in place to create a desired situation. Consisting of drawings, doodles, symbols and icons that each individual adds, the resulting Â collective picture is called a â€œrichâ€ picture because it graphically illustrates the richness and complexity of a situation from different perspectives. Â

Key guiding question: Which drawing or symbol, best represents – for you as an individual – the situation after the focal problem has been solved? Â Note that the process does not involve any discussion. If needed, questions for clarification can be asked. After participants have drawn their contributions, they can add to the drawings of others.

Crafting a vision of success statement

Of themselves, the above exercises are not yet Vision of Success Â statements. They provide inputs that need further elaboration into a concise Vision of Success statement. Â The following steps may be helpful to come to a consensus about such a statement in a group setting.
– Reviewing: As a group, review the available output(s) from the previous visioning exercises, and write out ideas about the Vision of Success, using post-it notes.
– Sharing: The facilitator invites participants to come to the front of the room to read each of the notes for a few minutes or, alternatively, reads each note to the group. Â
– Sorting: Then the group sorts promising ideas into general categories and processes outliers appropriately.
– Wording: The group develops short statements about the remaining concepts, that can be combined into sentences forming the Vision of Success.
– Voting: The group democratically decides which statements best reflect the groupâ€™s vision for the future.

– Different uses of land
– Different buildings, waterways, crops, infrastructure
– Different activities and who is involved in them
– Different behaviour, from whom, and how it shows
– Different relationships
– Who is walking around and who wasnâ€™t before
– Different emotional states of people in that situation

More information

The Epitaph

* Keystone, page 8 of Developing a theory of change.

The Rich Picture

* Oakden, J. (2014). If a picture paints a thousand words: The use of rich pictures in evaluation. Kinnect Group. Available here.

* Multi-Stakeholder Processes Knowledge Co-Creation Portal. Available here.

Crafting a Vision of Success Statement

* A.A. Anderson (2006) The Community Builder’s Approach to Theory of Change: A Practical Guide to Theory Development, Aspen Institute. Available here.