Any vision for a strategic plan starts with a simple thought and that thought is born out of our imagination. It’s easy to think of strategic planning as a process driven activity but without imagination we have nothing to plan.

At Aspire we often come together to focus on stretching our imaginations for creative strategic planning.

Here are a couple of examples of how we do it:

Reflecting on our personal journey through imagination

As trainers and supporters at Aspire, we are often focused on how we can help others around us and see how we are able to bring out their best qualities to make them shine.

On our recent Aspire day, I wanted to flip this on its head and ask fellow colleagues to look inward.

As a creative practitioner, I wanted to make this both tactile and visual so I presented each person with some clay and some tools

The task for them was to create, in any way they liked, an object that represented themselves as the great Aspire team members they are. The results were all so different and although we all loved seeing what each of us had come up with the most interesting part was hearing everyone’s story of how their thought process unfolded whilst holding this lump of clay in their hands.

For me, the exercise really concreted the importance of bringing creativity to a task and the fact that a visual can sometimes be worth more than a thousand words.

by Marcus Aitken

Be careful what you wish for!

The second half of the day focused on getting our unconscious ‘onside’ with a relaxing and creative imaginary moment that helps to create ‘future memory’.

Used in all sorts of performance & critical planning, this exercise comes out of our natural ability to imagine a better world for ourselves in some way. This is a bit like the current trend of manifesting.

We asked the Aspire Team to imagine and immerse themselves in a better future where they were enthralled and overjoyed with an achieved success and to plan a humdinger of a celebration to recognise the finish line.

Whether it’s a party, a trip or a big treat, the invitation was to create something by way of an illustration, be that abstract or a representation.

We then asked each of our Aspire team members to talk us through the details of what they were celebrating – their imagined better futures – with all the knobs and whistles!

In this way, the seeds are planted for all sorts of wonderful personal achievements.

A warning:

Be careful what you wish for – these things have a habit of coming true!

by Doug Osborne