The journey to the future

Imagine you are one of the leaders of a leadership team. You really want to lead differently and give your teams more decision-making space. You notice that your teammates are not at all concerned with this and prefer to keep everything within the walls to move quickly. Involving teams takes time. Time that is not available. However, you also notice that your teams are grumbling about decisions that were taken. They don’t feel involved and have different ideas about solving certain problems. It is time to bring this up with your leadership team. Ask for half an hour of your weekly meeting for the exercise “the journey to the future”. 

• Create two areas: one side of the room represents the current situation and moment, and the other side represents the future situation. You can visualize this with an A4 sheet with “current situation” and an A4 sheet with “future situation: the responsive organization”.

• First, stand together in the present. Let everyone talk to a teammate about what is characteristic of your leadership and decision-making now.

• After a few minutes, ask if anyone wants to say something about this to the whole group.

• After some exchange, ask everyone to walk to the other side of the room, to the future situation. Once there, ask everyone to talk to a teammate about how it will be in two years. What will be characteristic of your leadership and decision-making then? What will have changed compared to two years ago?

• After a few minutes, ask if anyone wants to say something about this.

• Ask everyone to take a position in the room between the current and future situation. Where do you stand on this imaginary line? How do you relate to the current and future situation?

• When everyone has taken a position, ask the team members to look around. Then ask the following questions for everyone to answer individually: what do you notice? Who is close, and who is far away? Where are you looking, and where are others looking? Who or what do you not see? What costs energy in this position, and what provides energy?

• Let the team members share their answers with each other and how everyone relates to the movement to the future.

• Conclude together that change is needed and that these changes don’t happen out of the blue but need to be actively worked on. Ask how this change can come about and make concrete agreements about what everyone will do in this regard.