A Question of Dreaming

I am a strategic planner for organizations. Although some have been for profit, my specialty has been strategic planning for nonprofits. Charities. Mutually owned service organizations. The family joke was, ‘dad had trouble remembering today’s date because he was always working in the future.’ And that was true.

The planning window is usually 5 years. What do you want to be accomplishing five years from now? What will it take between now and then to be in a position to accomplish those goals? If you can successfully do that, what is the dream for 15 years from now? And so pm. Pushing the envelope of time, thinking and dreaming of better. Better than now.

Solving a raging problem was the usual motivation for planning. That and a continual disappointment in what our company, agency or work groups was accomplishing, or more accurately, not accomplishing.

Such discomfort is good for thinking of solutions. However, my experience has demonstrated the larger dream to be a better creator of good things happening.

Dreaming of the long term, free of the problems that plague us today, what is the hope we embrace? What do we want our field, our organization, or our society to be experiencing? If we could do anything, what would that look like?

Imagine the future is empty if we don’t have something to measure it by. That measure can be very simple. How would the future look if a specific problem were missing, solved in the meantime? That simple step gives the brain something to chew on. A fresh perspective takes shape. Things we didn’t think of before suddenly are visible to the hopeful eye.

Making those dreams come true requires us to take an accurate inventory of what is wrong and what is right. The right becomes the tools to work with. The wrong becomes the problem to define and solve with the tools we have at hand. Building more tools becomes easier and more logical.

Solutions, too, become more logical. Soon the team is working with the doable not the problem. Bits of success begin to emerge. Those accumulate and strengthen abilities to accomplish even more. Soon the team is working more efficiently and purposefully. Not task oriented, dream oriented.

Making the future happen the way we want it to be is the core of what planning is all about. Getting to the desired outcomes happens but only if we define what those outcomes should be. It is difficult to define them if we don’t intentionally do so. The journey to that end is the process of planning. A great tool to make good things happen.

I wonder why congress doesn’t do this. Well, a team of 435 congressmen hardly bodes well. Add to those 100 senators. Well, I think we know why congress underperforms, then. Too many of them to think productively as a team. Huh!

March 22, 2024

 

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