.... PLANS ARE USELESS BUT PLANNING IS INDISPENSABLE
Dwight D Eisenhower
Are you dreaming about a wonderful future, but feel that your recent work falls short of taking you there? Do you sometimes think your only choice is to leave the workforce to put your energies in new directions?
Some of us have grand plans, others settle for a rough belief that we'll exist in a few decades' time. In your future vision, you might own a more impressive house, you might be in the garden or playing with great-grand children. You could be sharing some fond memories of travel and adventures. For many, there will be a sense of having a career that was, well, satisfying and, even useful.
Why put this effort in if the plan is useless, you say?
Funnily enough, it is the format of the plan and the process behind it which count most. The playfulness of the planning and the type of map you get make something shift in a permanent way that traditional plans miss:
- A rough map gives you a sense of direction when there is rapid change. It does not declare the territory or reality, but helps you check in with the gap between what you'd planned and what is going on.
- You now have an opportunity machine in your hands. Putting more detail in creates more ways in which things can turn out the way you've set out, or another more unexpected way.
- You get greater efficiency where two 'wishes' or outcomes can buddy up, not be done separately
- Being able to share your map opens up the chance to win resources from others, to give and to get; strangers can be generous and insightful
- Planning with friends and colleagues gives you a second gift, the great feeling you get from hearing and watching them build an exciting path to live forwards into, helping them see opportunity and finding things you can do to help them
- When you are confused between choices, you have a structured way to test out alternatives and experiment and then decide
Going through the exercise of working out a rough plan (Eisenhower's planning) gives your future a shape and a way to connect with others over what you intend to happen.
In this workshop, we will;
- set up a vision of where you want to go in paper in a large-as-life format
- find some easy and some more challenging steps to get you there
- learn how to connect your work or study with other activities in your life
- create a map you can share with others
If you have nothing to lose, you must have everything to gain. The journey of a lifetime starts with excitement then daring execution.
Workshop presenter, Dr Wendy Elford is an experience designer with more than 20 years in user centered design..
She has picked up some very useful skills in insight and visualisation techniques through hearing the stories people share about their work and wider lives.
She specialises in creating tangible ways to see a much bigger picture of current and future 'realities' to help real people succeed faster in work systems, both big and small.