A workshop on your own behalf

About four years ago we last thought about our vision at coeno. At that time it was still a pure management issue, i.e. a topic that Markus and I thought about and then only communicated the results internally to our employees.

A lot has happened since then. Not only our management style has changed. We are also tackling strategic issues like developing a vision in a new way.

Today, it is important to us that we do not decide on development topics top-down, but work in a team and that the results are also communicated to the outside world.

And because in our daily work, both internally and with clients, we work on complex topics in workshops, Anja has planned the appropriate workshop concept for our joint vision development.

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Day 1 of our vision development

The Introduction

We started with a look into theory: What does a vision mean? What can fulfill it? Who benefits from it? And why is it important?

We rounded off the introduction with a summary of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and risks based on the market and competitive situation and our self-image and external image, which we determined in a customer survey.

The Warm-up Session

To loosen up all workshop participants a little bit and to release blockades, we first held a little quiz. We wanted to know: Which vision belongs to which company:

"Creating a better everyday life for many people."

"Imagine a world in which every single person has a free share in the totality of knowledge.

"To enable all people to buy the same things as the wealthy."

"Our goal is to organize the world's information and make it accessible and usable for everyone at all times".

Would you have known? (You will find the resolution at the end of the article).

The sentences describe the uniqueness and identity of the respective company. And with us, images immediately sprang to mind.

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Take away fears: Enter the creative session with a snowball fight

Whoever is to develop a vision is sometimes afraid of what is demanded of him or her. That's why we all wrote our greatest fear regarding the workshop on a piece of paper, wrapped the paper into a "snowball" and threw it into the room with our eyes closed. Everyone picked out a snowball and read the text on it aloud. We realized that we all had very similar fears and that no one is alone with his or her concerns.

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After the introduction and the warm-up session we were all ready and very motivated to formulate the identity and uniqueness for ourselves.

Vision development - an act in 5 steps

Step 1: The creative phase

With the so-called "Vision Boarding", a method of capturing visions, wishes, intentions and goals with pictures in a collage, each individual - equipped with magazines, journals, catalogs, pens, scissors and glue - dealt with the question: "What do you think distinguishes the work at coeno?" and "And what will this work ideally look like in five years?

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Step 2: Gallery phase

During this phase, everyone took their time to look at the visions that were created and internalized the ideas of the others - in silence, no statements, no discussions!

This was not an easy task for us frequent commentators and chatterboxes :-).

Afterwards, everyone chose a collage that they felt was appealing. Only not their own.

Step 3: Interpretation phase

Then it was time to interpret. On blue cards, everyone recorded the content and effect of the chosen collage in their own words.

Step 4: Evaluation phase

For evaluation, all blue cards were divided into small groups. In each group these cards were discussed, sorted and summarized on one to three yellow cards. The task: whole sentences or half-sentences were to be written on the yellow cards, expressing the statements on the blue cards as concisely as possible

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This ended the first day of the workshop.

We were all satisfied with what we had achieved, but discussed the different collages and their meanings for some time.

Day 2 of our vision development

Step 5: Conclusion phase

The day began with the presentation of the yellow cards with the summarized interpretations. Each sentence was presented and discussed individually.

It was important for us to have a common understanding of each statement and its relevance. We discussed with great commitment in some places and reformulated the sentences until we reached a consensus.

We then sorted the statements according to similarities and searched for an umbrella term for each cluster. Afterwards the clusters were evaluated. Each of them could assign five adhesive dots (method for idea evaluation Dot-Mocracy) for the clusters most important to them.

Most points fell on the statements:

• With creative passion and quality
• For the people (in the sense of: for the users, for the customer, for us)
• With fun

On the basis of this result, we moved on to the next round, in which we brooded in a small group over the formulations for our vision statement. This was fine-tuned and optimized until we had exactly the formulation that we all stand behind.

With creative passion we design - as a team - digital solutions that inspire people.

This sentence expresses our goal, which we strive for with every project, which drives our actions, which motivates us and with which each of us identifies.

For me the two days of the workshop were a real enrichment. They once again contributed to our internal confidence and team building. It was really a lot of fun to take two days and to deal intensively only with the topic "coeno Vision". In doing so I also realized again what a great team we are - with completely different personalities but the common real will to make a difference.

I am very proud of you all. And my special thanks go to Anja, who prepared the topic perfectly, moderated it and at the same time contributed to it.

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You are great!

Quiz answers

"Creating a better everyday life for the many people." – Ikea

"Imagine a world in which every single person has a free share in the totality of knowledge." – Wikipedia

"To enable all people to buy the same things as the wealthy" - Walmart

"Our goal is to organize the world's information and make it accessible and usable for everyone at any time." - Google