Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

Reflective Visioning

In order to explain the steps in the reflective visioning process (upper left-hand part of figure 5.1), we assume that the entity going through the process represents management of a corporation, of a division, or of a major (relatively independent) subsidiary. The process can, however, also be applied to functional areas in a company, for example an R & D or Human Resource Department.

Before entering the first step of the process, the group is familiarized with the concept of a vision and of visioning much along the lines we have discussed in the previous chapter. One of the main aims of this presentation is to impress on the group that it will have to avoid the temptation of falling back into some of the familiar routines of traditional (incremental) strategic planning. After this introduction, the group is invited to begin the reflective visioning process itself.

Figure 5.1 The vision-building process (Parikh–Neubauer model)

Step one

The creation of a vision depends heavily on two major aspects:

• a break (or discontinuity) in the environment and/or a new way of “reading” that environment, and
• the ability to create “an image of a desired future organizational state” of the unit under consideration

In step one the first of these two aspects is dealt with.

In order to familiarize the managers with what is happening in the different environmental domains, they ...