How to paint a picture of the future for your business (or team)

Let's paint a picture - the first step in Releasing Agility.

It is a concrete first step of the model, but a painted picture alone won't give the absolute clarity over what you are trying to achieve. We'll still need goals, identification of problems/obstacles and the formation of a strategy - and then it needs communicating.

But the bright painted picture of the future is the first step.

Listen to the podcast episode here, or read on below:

(You can find the other episodes and posts in this series here)

Agility (or agile as the mainstream may term it) is always in service of something else.

Companies want to go agile to achieve something: typically better business results and retention of staff (by providing a more engaging culture).

As such, it's critically important to understand what you are releasing agility towards.

I've seen many teams (sometimes award-winning teams) helping companies move smoothly and quickly towards the shipping the wrong things. They get better at shipping failed products, or they deal with failure demand better, or they move faster in the wrong direction. Or they enable teams to provide poor service more quickly.

When leaders come to me for "agility" services they often cannot answer the most fundamental question "What do you want to move smoothly and quickly towards?"

Getting Business Results more smoothly and quickly

Releasing Agility is about getting better business results and retaining good people by overcoming obstacles. It’s therefore essential to know which problems are worth solving.

The reason painting a picture is so important is because there are always more problems in a business than we could ever solve. We also need to provide clarity and alignment - and that needs to be around "something" emotionally connecting.

The painted picture is this emotional True North, Guiding Light, Vision or whatever else you want to call it; I call it a painted picture of the future.

It's a story about the future, that we need to write - and then make happen.

Instead of simply solving every problem we encounter with little clarity or alignment around what's important, people tend to gravitate towards easy or interesting problems. But these problems may not be on the path towards our bright future.

So, we must paint a picture that the path leads to so we know which direction we are moving towards. And it should be compelling, interesting, challenging, exciting - so that like minded people WANT to work with you to get there.

If all we do is solve every problem we encounter, we may be solving the wrong ones. Many problems in business need to be left alone - otherwise we would need a huge number of staff to simply overcome them all. We could spend all day everyday solving problems and not improve business results.

As such, it's super important to know what we want and where we are going - and this is where the painted picture comes in.

Business results are NOT part of the painted picture – that comes soon with goals. A painted picture is more about understanding our purpose and what kind of team, department or company we want to become.

Consider a painted picture as a picture of the culture we are after and the impact we wish to make in the world.

I have included some real examples of painted pictures from my time as a VP of Engineering, a VP in HR and one from my own personal life. Yes, this approach works for our own lives too.

The painted picture is about defining, describing and detailing our purpose. Why do we exist? Who do we want to become? Who are we trying to help?

It should be compelling, interesting and exciting. It will form the foundations of our goals, objectives, ways of working and it will give us clarity over which problems we focus on. It will be the emotional connection that people need to feel like their work is making a difference.

It is hard to create a painted picture. On the one hand you must have in the back of your mind the current reality as you know it, but you must also aim high and think big and not be too constrained with where you are now. Business is full of dichotomies.

When I run this exercise with clients it does not come easy to them, but it's a foundational block that is important.

The Painted Picture

I call it a painted picture because a picture tells a thousand words, but I don't paint or draw a picture. I will include visuals with the painted picture, as visuals help, but the painted picture is typically written first, then supported with visuals.

A key aspect of corporate culture is that "what is written is considered the truth". So, we play to this by writing down what our future ambitions are.

I typically aim for a painted picture of 5 years away from now when working with clients. In my own personal life the painted picture is 10 years out. In business a lot can change in a short space of time, much of which we may not have control over. In my personal life, things do change, but I have a lot more control.

For the purposes of this post we'll focus on the two-year time frame.

Two years works well because it's not too far out that it freaks people out. It's also far enough away that huge change feels possible.

A few things you need to know to build the painted picture:

• Who your customers are
• What products or services you are offering
• The overall company market goals and ambitions (you may be creating this for the company)
• Evidence of where you are now - but remember to try and park this to the back of your mind.

A few key principles when writing the painted picture

• Write the story (painted picture) for about 5 years out.
• Let go of reality when you write it - at least for now as we lean into the current reality as part of Step 2
• Drop the "how" - don't worry about how to bring this painted picture to life just yet.
• It should be written in the present tense, as though you have already achieved it
• It should be rich and compelling and interesting BUT it should not codify processes or results (how) – save these for the next steps of building a strategy.
  • A way to think about this would be if the market shifts and the product or service needs to pivot or change, the painted picture would still be valid

So, you're writing down what you want the world to look like in five years’ time. You are explaining, in the present tense, a world that is better than where you are now without being too limited by current constraints.

You are building it based on the customers your company serves and the products/services you provide. It should be exciting. It should be compelling. And it should be a future that is relevant to your company - as in, don't write a painted picture for a different company.

How to craft it

1. Write it first - and then edit.
2. Co-create this with other leaders/people if you wish. Don't include too many people as everyone has an opinion.
3. Outline your purpose, customers and future intentions.
4. I would always leave out ways to measure this purpose for now – they can come later.
5. Write it like you speak - it needs to feel personal not corporate and formal
6. Write it, leave it alone, edit it and then leave it alone again. Good writing requires space between drafts.

Once you have written it, read it out aloud.

• Does it sound good?
• Does it sound personal?
• Does it sound exciting to be working in this way?
• Does it flow?

Once you're getting close to the final version put yourself into the shoes of those you work with, or are under your supervision, and ask questions of it.

• "What does this mean to me?"
• "This sounds unachievable, how will we do this?"
• "Is this exciting enough?"

And try and weave in any elements you may be missing to the painted picture or prepare your responses to the questions.

Be careful though - the painted picture is a description of a bright future for the business, the obstacles in your way and goals that sit beneath it come later. Right now, imagine you're trying to sell your business idea to an investor, or high quality people you wish to join your organisation - why should they invest time, energy and attention in your business?

Why is your business more exciting and interesting than another one in the same industry? Why is your purpose more meaningful than someone else?

This is a scary activity to perform as you're thinking big and pitching an idea for what the company/team will be like in the future. You need to be sure that if you reach this future the business will be better and it will still be making money - and of course, it will be a great place to work. As in, it should not be at odds to what the company is trying to achieve.

It's also scary because, as we'll cover in other articles, you are not already there. You are writing a story about the future – and you may be wrong.

We will ask the inevitable question, which is step 2 of the Releasing Agility model:

"If this bright painted picture is so compelling and interesting, why are we not already there yet?"

This will lead to a series of obstacles, problems, blockers and challenges - and identifying these, and then overcoming them, is how agility is released. But we cover those in step 2, and once we have the obstacles - and a plan to overcome them - we have a strategy. This post here explains how a strategy must have three things: A bright painted picture of the future (with goals), a list of obstacles preventing us from achieving this future and a plan to overcome them.

Challenging the ambition

If you've been ambitious and applied some creativity to your painted picture, you will inevitably get challenges from people.

• “We’re miles away from this future – it’s not achievable”
• “That’s not how we work around here”.
• "That sounds impossible"

And maybe they are right but if you’re trying to paint a bright future for two years out – you’re going to have to aim high. Small increments on what you currently have may be a good move but more of the same will give us more of the same.

Sometimes, you're first attempt at a painted picture is not ambitious enough, as yu meet the painted picture with ease. Firstly, this is common. Secondly, this is a good thing - the painted picture worked, as it provided clarity and alignment - and action was in the right direction.

Thirdly, just write a new one!

I've had to do this several times, where my two-year plan was achieved in 6 months. I wasn't thinking big enough. The painted picture I created was ambitious, but it's amazing what people can do with clarity over who they are trying to become and what they’re trying to do.

The reason this works, and why you may need to rewrite it, is the painted picture acts to galvanise people to a brighter future. Once you've decided what you want, the whole system of work moves to align. But two things are important:

1. You need to be clear about what you want
2. You must decide that this is what you're doing - not make a choice.

The painted picture acts as a True North, a galvanising vision of who we are and what we're trying to do.

Every time I run this, and we land on a painted picture, the organisation is buzzing.

For many people it is often the first clarifying guidance they have seen in a long time. It sits above goals and objectives so it's more compelling. It gives people clarity over where to focus their energy and attention. And more importantly, it gives people hope. Hope of a better way of working. Hope that we're moving to do something interesting and meaningful. It gives them a sense of ambition and direction. It gives them belief that what they are doing is contributing to something important. And that’s energising.

It's that destination on the horizon, something to move towards, our purpose, something to aim at and something to release agility towards. It's what we all want at work - to feel like the goals and direction we are moving in, is bigger and more meaningful, than our daily activities. To feel like we're not just grinding away for nothing.

It means that when we're faced with obstacles or blockers or problems or opportunities, we can hold in our mind our destination and decide our next move. It gives us a direction to get people out of the car to help us pull towards (moving people into motion video explains this idea).

Without a painted picture of what our world of work looks like, we'll fall back to PowerPoints, goals (which may be wrong) or easy problems that look like they'll make a difference. In my work I see plenty of well-intentioned talented people overcoming the wrong problems. And in doing so, they often create the problems of tomorrow.

Communicating it

Once you have a painted picture you must socialise it and communicate it with clarity. Here’s a broad approach I take.

• Everyone likes to be communicated with differently, so you will need different mediums and channels.
• Start with an all-hands meeting (everyone in your structure) and explain the painted picture and why you created it.
• Ensure all levels of management below you understand the painted picture and are in support of it (co-creating it with them helps).
• Ensure all levels of management are communicating it to their direct reports in their team meetings.
• Ensure all levels of management are communicating it in their 1:2:1s.
• Socialise it on the internal chat channels.
• Host it somewhere on the internal systems, print it out, keep talking about it.
• Run weekly sessions in the first 3 months where you keep about it, bringing it to life and explaining how the goals and plans are in support of it
• And remember, this is just the first step - so you should also communicate that we're not there yet - and it's now on us all to work out how to get there.
• In all communication make sure you are energised about the bright future, acknowledge how hard it will, thank people for their support and keep bringing it back to how the work people are doing is linked to this new direction.
• Experiment with different mediums and update frequencies.
• Use visuals.

The painted picture is a statement about who we are and what our way of working is.

Goals

I won't spend ages talking about goals here, but sitting in front of this bright painted picture of the future are "mountains". These are goals.

The reality is you may never achieve your painted picture as it may always be a little out of reach. This is a good thing. But the mountains (goals) that sit infront of it should be achievable.

It's therefore important to set goals that your believe should lead to the painted picture.

I recommend these goals are yearly and are based around what needs to be done to achieve this painted picture. You may set goals before you've leant into the current reality and identified blockers and obstacles, but I suspect you will also have goals that emerge from looking at "why you're not able to achieve this bright future next week".

As such, the goals (mountains) will be a mix of goals from this activity of painting a picture, but also the next stage of the model where we deconstruct some of the reasons why we're not already there yet.

A strategy building activity is the place to refine these goals and ensure you have the right ones in place.

As you will see in the first example below, the painted picture I created was “miles” away from our current reality, but it gave us a galvanising picture of who we were and how things could be better. We then dug into why we couldn't achieve it and identified problems. We put in place a plan to overcome the problems with suitable goals - and we got there. We got there because we made a decision - and the entire system below this vision morphed to move in the right direction. We provided clarity and alignment too - which helps people to prioritise and ditch work that is not adding value.

Miles Away

I recently ran this with a VP leadership team, and they struggled. They wanted to put in goals, outcomes, measures, budgets and processes - all things I would put in the strategy (and routines and habits parts of the model) not a painted picture. We want to get above this to our purpose.

I suggested they save that for the strategy and step back a little.

What were they trying to do? What sort of company did they want?

I asked them to describe the kind of company they would love to work in, one that was brilliant for their career but also amazing for their customers.

After a few hours of discussion, they settled on a painted picture. It was “miles” away from where they are now, but it gave them a picture to head towards. They were excited about it (a good sign) and they believed it was possible, even though it was "miles away" from where they are now.

My next session with them was then about understanding why they’re not already there yet, and identifying obstacles, blockers and challenges. From that session we then derived some important goals and a plan to overcome the obstacles. With these we then had a strategy. (painted picture, identification of blockers and a plan).

There are some examples below – have a go at writing one for your team, department or company and see how you get on. It’s not easy but the only way to get better at this is to keep writing them, and trying.

A sample painted picture from VP Engineering

Current Reality - releasing software every 14 months, small team but about to grow substantially, some new investment, poor performing platforms and service, not the right skillset in the team, sketchy behaviours in team, no real career management, losing customers due to lack of stability, new leaders in place.

Painted Picture - Our purpose is to provide brilliant software on a stable platform that enables our customers to get their business done with ease and effectiveness.

And we do this like the professionals we are - with care; with quality; with speed; with products that works; and with integrity and honesty; all while having fun doing it.

We have no problem attracting talented people to our business as we have the best of the best, we have an environment that supports learning and co-operation, and we have clear goals, strategies and a focus on delivering value to our customers.

We ship new software every week. We know software can fail so we have resilience, fail over and fast fix processes. We don't take the shortcut, nor the hack, and we are proud of the software we produce.

We optimise for flow not capacity and this shows in our ability to go from idea to working software quickly and the fact our team are not working extra hours with regularity.

We know our customers, and understand their needs. Our customers are happy, our product meets its purpose, and we work closely with front line support to deal with issues quickly. We pride ourselves on working closely with our customers to help them achieve their business goals.

We can always be better though, and we improve anything that isn't working to meet our high standards. We take time out to learn and grow, knowing that this will lead to a higher standard of performance in the team.

We line manage with care and pay attention to employee’s career goals, and we have clear succession planning in place. Everyone in the business grows in capability and behaviours, and we're proud to make it hard to get a job here; the standard is SO high.

We contribute to society through our corporate responsibility aims but we also provide free resources, social meetings and internships for the community. We have diversity baked into our recruitment and we respect everyone for who they are. We don’t let people bring down the team.

We have fun, lots of it. We have clubs, social events and communities to support people's interests and hobbies. We speak at conferences; we share what we know and we're always looking for ways to lead our industry.

We're not afraid to fail and we see failures as a way to make the business better. We get stuff done right first time where we can (and we learn if we fail), and we really are a world class engineering team that we’re all proud to be part of.

Outcome - in just two years we went from releasing software every 14 months and a poor working culture, to releasing software every day (better than our original weekly vision in the painted picture).

We had a 99% stable platform, flowed work through quickly and built modern DevOps principles long before this term became trendy or mainstream. We won best companies awards four years in a row. We also won “start-up to watch” awards and eventually the business was sold for a large amount of money.

I caught up with some remaining engineers after the sale (to a large slow-moving corporate) - and their department (my old department) is still working in this same way - they are a shining light in the rest of the organisation - and other engineers are asking for a transfer to them. Other teams are trying to be like them.

This was all due to knowing what we were trying to achieve and the culture we wanted in our team. Everything we did was in service of this painted picture. It morphed the entire system below it.

A sample painted picture from VP HR

Current Reality - a HR team with limited scope to improve the company through their initiatives - pretty much dealing with operational requests only. Retention of good people in the business was poor and very little consistency in HR approach. Management in the organisation was sporadic in competency, quality and direction.

Painted Picture - Our purpose is to enable the business to achieve its business goals and retain our very best people. We do this with professionalism and integrity sticking within the constraints, compliance and legal systems that bind us. But we go above this, and we provide the kind of service that people don't typically associate with HR.

We deal with operational demands by studying what is causing them, turning off failures and flowing value requests through our HR process with speed, care and attention. We train and up skill managers and leaders to deal with requests they should be dealing with, reducing the operational burden on HR.

We don't just provide training courses for people to attend. We provide training that improves the behaviours and capabilities needed in the business by working closely with managers to understand their needs.

We are here for people no matter their emotional and mental state and have a myriad of specialists to bring in, or call on, to support our people. We look after our people and are always providing the latest initiatives to deal with life and work - from meditation to counselling to mental health hotlines.

We have diversity baked in and publish our diversity and inclusion data with pride. We provide the right talent sourcing for managers to solve their problems, ensuring the process is a WOW process for both the candidate and the hiring manager. We don't own recruiting - managers do, supported by compliant and legal frameworks that we provide,

We process all payroll and benefits activities in time, accurately and with diligence. Mistakes help us get better.

We provide a vast array of social responsibility activities at a local and global scale. Our business exists in a local society, and we do lots to provide financing, practical volunteering and training to the local community. If our company was to disappear, we would be missed - the test of whether we're making a positive contribution to the society we operate in.

We are here for our employees. We support managers with change programs through job recalibrations and hiring. We support managers with active daily performance management and train our managers on how to be effective in their roles. We deal with conflict, performance and legal cases with professionalism and dignity - ensuring everyone is heard and facts outweigh subjectivity and emotions.

It is a hard job, but we see the difference in the business. We are no longer merely operational support for HR queries - we are a trusted partner in accelerating business results and retaining good people. And we have fun doing it. We are humane and resourceful. We are here to protect the business and support managers in achieving business results whilst helping employees with their careers and personal growth. We really are here to nurture an organisation that enriches the lives of all who work in it.

A sample painted from my own life – certain things omitted.

I am so happy and grateful that I have a strong, trusting and caring relationship with my wife. I am present with my kids, and we get up and do activities together. I teach them how to live a good life by role modelling what good looks like. I am here to help them in their lives. 

I feel good, dress well and live a simple life. I don’t buy things I don’t need and take care to own very little. I move daily and eat clean.

I am so happy and grateful that I make £X per year helping companies release agility and people lead a good (work) life through my Cultivated Media company. This is done through my videos, books, podcasts and other media. I also teach, speak from the stage and consult. I provide enough value that I secure enough money to keep doing this. I contribute back to society through my charity and volunteer work.

I am so happy and grateful that the boys have a bright future with enough savings to support them through education if they wish to.

I am so happy and grateful that I am honing my craft in media production and learning how to be better. I am becoming a craftsman at making videos, drawing, podcasting and writing, and even if I am not successful in the outcomes above, I am learning and enjoying the process. I am developing a skill that I enjoy.

Conclusion

A painted picture is not a simple thing to create but it is the galvanising picture of the future that underpins our ability to move smoothly and quickly and release business agility. It is essential if you’re going to create a strategy, and it's essentially if you want people to feel an emotional connection to something bigger than their job.

Who wouldn’t want to join a company or team with a bright painted picture of the future: something they can help to bring to life?

Podcast Transcription (Computer Generated)

Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of here's an idea worth playing with with me, Rob Lambert from Cultivated Management.

Now this is the first of at least 5 podcasts which are gonna be short sharp introductions to the model that we use called releasing business agility. Now baked into this model are all sorts of cool things that you could use actually in your own life if you really wanted to but also at work.

Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna introduce the model here today in this episode, then we'll tackle step number 1, which is painting a bright picture of the future. In the following subsequent episodes, we'll cover steps 2, 3, 4, and 5.

My goal with here is an idea worth playing with is not to have super long episodes, so I'll try and keep this fairly short. What I'll do in these episodes is just give you enough that's hopefully super helpful for you to start with. And then if you wanna find out some more then head to cultivateermanagement.com where you'll find all sorts of different articles about releasing business agility. So what is releasing agility?

Well, I used to work in companies that were termed agile, and agile is a sort of software development approach about iterative releases of value about, you know, really moving smoothly and quickly and getting software out into the customer's hands or onto the platform.

Now what I, was tasked with doing after setting up an extremely well, a a team that was called Frightening the Agile team was to go and do the same thing in HR and then to do the same thing through consulting with big companies and enterprise level type stuff.

The challenge is that a lot of the agile techniques, and I'm not gonna bash agile at all, but I don't use that phrase because it's loaded with so many different perceptions and ideas about what it actually means. I came up with this model after literally a week of deep thinking in which my hair turned gray and I lost all social contact for a week. And I extrapolated out what it was that we did behind the scenes as leaders and managers to enable these sort of more tactical things to happen. And that was the releasing agility model which I now use everywhere I go.

It isn't an agile model, I'm not gonna say it is. It's a communication thinking model. It gets you thinking about whether you have the right things in place. Now the key thing with this is you can actually apply it to your own life and I actually do this. So as we go through today's podcast and the subsequent ones, we can think about how we can apply these things to our own lives as well as work.

So let's break down what releasing agility means. Now the idea is that, you know, small companies generally start out with lots of agility. They tend to be able to move quite not necessarily smoothly but certainly quickly towards their goals. They kind of have to because they've got to they've got to find the market fit, they've got to get permission in the marketplace, they've got to get the processes stood up and their inventory loaded in or software released or whatever it is that they're building. Job descriptions and titles and responsibilities tend to be a lot more fluid.

You know, people can do stuff and they just help out and everybody gets stuck in to try and bring something to life. There's also very few rules and processes and governance and red tape and bureaucracy standing in the way of a very small startup company. You just gotta get stuff done and I love that. But as those companies grow in scale there is a need for a bit more rigor. The problem is is that well intentioned leaders, managers and employees add far too much rigor.

And therefore things start to slow down, decisions need to be pushed upwards or sideways and we start to, you know, break apart the organization into different functions and then we've got different processes and rules and politics creeps in. And depending on incentive models, you know, it's all after ranks and perks and people start fighting each other for promotions and it it just it becomes a very difficult place to get stuff done. So the word agility means moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals. Now, right there we have a clue that if we don't know what we're moving towards, there's no point moving smooth completely the wrong direction. We could be shipping really bad products and services smoother and faster.

That makes no sense whatsoever. So it's all about moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals. And we're gonna talk about goals in this first particular podcast. So the word release means to set free from confinement. So this is the idea that, you know, we've slowed organizations or ourselves down by adding too many options, too many decisions, too much work, too many governance boards, lack of autonomy, and all sorts of different reasons why we can no longer go from an idea to value as quickly as possible.

We can no longer go from an imagination, a dream, an idea, or you know a concept into releasing and getting it done as smoothly and quickly as possible. So we have to find those things that are stopping us and remove them. We have to release that agility. And as we do this, we uncover more opportunities to release and it's a never ending cycle of looking at what's stopping us from moving smoothly and quickly and working out how to remove it or mitigate it or work around it. Now this isn't a call for no process, no due diligence, no planning, it's not a call for that at all.

We need those things still. Well, what we don't need is all of that nonsense that stands in the way of employees as they're trying to do something. And when we think about our own lives, sometimes getting really simple basic things done can be so difficult in our own lives because we've added complexity to it. It's really a call for simplification of getting down to being effective first and then efficient. So it makes no sense as I've said to move smoothly and quickly and to release agility in the wrong direction towards the wrong thing.

So that's where we start with the first step of the model which is to paint a bright picture of the future. In other words, we wanna be able to write a story about what our future looks like. Step 2 is then to ask the salient question, if this bright future is so interesting, so compelling, so amazing, so exciting, why are we not already there yet? What's stopping us from achieving it tomorrow or next week or even next year? Step number 3 then becomes making sure we've got the right people in the right place with the right behaviors to build the culture that we want and to get the work done.

Step number 4 which is where a lot of people dabble around particularly consultants is processes, routines, and habits. These are super important and in our own lives we can think about this as well. Do we have the right habits and routines in order to to bring about a vision for our life? That's really what we're looking at here. And then step number 5 is really one that probably encapsulates everything.

It's all about learning. It's about getting better. It's about developing more competencies. It's about better habits, better behaviors, and learning how to make the business better. So they're the 5 stages.

Within each stage, there's nothing really prescriptive in this model because it's designed to get you to think. And the reason I call it a communication model is because all of the success of these 5 stages hinges on our ability to communicate effectively. To be clear. To get alignment. To get clarity.

So let's jump in to step number 1, which is about painting a bright picture of the future. Now, this isn't about grabbing your paintbrushes and drawing and painting although you can if you wish. This is about writing a story about the future. Now, I have some not so much hard and fast rules around this but I have some guidance on how to do this. And this works in our own lives as well.

If we wanna move from where we are today to where somewhere else we need to be clear about what that somewhere else looks like. And there's nothing more valuable I don't think than writing a story about what that future looks like. Now I call this a painted picture. We're gonna paint a rich, compelling, interesting, exciting picture of where we wanna get to. And this is so powerful in work and many teams don't do this.

And we will talk about strategy because this isn't a strategy, this is bigger than a strategy. Some people call it a true north or a vision or sometimes even a mission. But it's not, it's really a story about the future. Now, I have some recommendations here. Write it in the present tense as though you've already achieved it.

Ground it in the reality that we are living this, this is it, we're gonna go and do this. It's not something that's abstract and out in the future, it's grounded as though we've achieved it already. The second rule I would say would would be to paint this picture for about 5 years out. Now that might seem like a long way out but in a business and organization, that's actually gonna fly by and we actually underestimate how much we can get done in a year. So think about 5 years out.

As a minimum, I'd encourage you to go no less than 2 years out because 1 year can fly by by the time you've even got yourself organized. Whereas 2 years feels about right, but for me it's always 5. Now when I'm painting a picture in my own life, it's usually 5 to 10 years out. So another rule is to let go of reality whilst you're writing this painted picture. We will come back to reality as part of step 2 when we ask, well, why we're not already there yet?

And then we'll lean into the current reality. That's a really important stage. But there's no point leaning into the current reality and doing an order of the obstacles and problems if we don't know where we're going. Because in our own lives and an organization we're gonna have way more problems than we could ever realistically solve. So we wanna be sure that we're only tackling the problems that are on the path to our painted picture.

But we'll cover that in the next episode in this mini series. So paint the picture for the future, 5 years out, write it in the current tense if you can. Let go of reality for now and think about awesome, think about Nirvana, think about utopia, think about what perfect might look like and write that story. And then another idea, another potential rule when you're writing this is to forget the how. Don't worry about how you're gonna do this.

We'll cover that in the next stages. For now, what we want is this bright, compelling, amazing, exciting, brilliant future that if you were in that future now, your business would be super successful. People would be flocking around to join you. You'd be living the dream as a business owner, a leader, or a manager, or even an employee. And And in our own lives if we think about this, what would perfect look like?

How much money would we be making potentially? What would we be doing? Where would we be? Who are we helping and how are we helping them? These are sort of big ideas to play with as you write this painted picture.

Now the painted picture needs to be ambitious. It needs to be aspirational. It is aspirational. It's this thing, this true north, this painted picture that we wanna head towards. Now in reality, will you ever meet the painted picture?

I believe you will, And we'll come on to why that is the case in, the next few episodes of this podcast. But for now, we want to write that painted picture as though we're living it for 5 years from now. So when I was doing this for an organization that was, it was a software development company and we were releasing software every single year which was just way too slow to meet the market demands, to meet the customer needs, and frankly to remain relevant in that marketplace. So we painted a bright picture of the future. The picture went something like this.

We are the most trusted and respected organization in this industry. We release software every single day or at least weekly so that we can meet the customer demands and we can stay competitive and stay ahead of the competition. We have a huge queue of people waiting to join our organization because it's fun to work there. It's rewarding. We have awesome management.

We look after people's careers. People, if they do choose to leave, will become the most employable people in the market. We volunteer our time for local communities. We give back to the society that we work in. And we are building a community within the business that respects, trusts and empowers people to do the best job.

People love working in our organisation. And as a side effect, we are hitting our goals and milestones towards that growth that we and the investors are aiming towards. So that's a very small part of what was a bigger painted picture. But what happens when you paint this picture is you create an emotional connection to it. You describe a world that people can connect to and go, yes, I want to be part of that.

Now are we there yet? Of course not. We'll lean into that in step 2 in the next episode. But for now we wanna paint that picture. We've not codified in there how we're gonna do this.

We've not lent into our current reality to see where we are so we know where we're starting from. But what we have done is painted a rich, compelling, bright, and interesting future for the organization. Now you can do this for your own life, of course. You know, I wanna be earning x amount of money doing this particular work, helping these people, living in this particular area. You know, but don't describe the how.

Let go of that. Let go of the current reality for now as you write this bright painted picture. Now of course once we've got this bright painted picture, I like to describe this picture. Imagine, you know, we've written this out. It's in words.

We've described it. But then try and imagine a picture, an actual painting on an easel. And in front of this vision that we've created, this painted picture, are some mountains. Now the mountains are goals. And what we're gonna need to do now is to derive some goals from that painted picture.

So for example, we might have a goal that is to create a world class rapid, fast, and effective recruitment process. We could have a goal that says we are going to make sure our platform, if we're doing software, is the most reliable platform it possibly can be. We might have a goal that says we're gonna grow our team by a 100% by the end of the year and it's only gonna be filled with really high caliber people that add to the society of our company. We're gonna make it hard to get a job here. You know, and you can start to see how some of these goals will sort of fall out from that painted picture.

Now these aren't gonna be the only goals because as we move into step 2, we're gonna add some more goals to this list because we're gonna lean into reality to understand where we are so that we know what to do to move towards this bright painted picture. But this is a picture. This is aspirational. This is nirvana, utopia. It would be an amazing organization to work for if we were living that reality right now.

And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create an emotional connection to this bright future, to this painted picture So that like minded people wanna join us and help us and wanna buy into that mission. There's something connecting them. We're not here just to make a profit. We're not here just to build 1500 widgets.

We're here to do something bigger and that is the whole point. This bright painted compelling picture of the future. And that is step 1 of the releasing agility model. Obviously, I haven't gone into a lot of depth on that but there will be a blog post on cultivatormanagement.com where I include some more examples of painted pictures from my own experience. And also some more ideas on how to, I guess, write your own and come up with your own.

Like I say, this works for your own life as well and it's something that I've been doing for years. I remember 17 years ago now when my first son was born, I did this exercise. And frankly before that I was just living life day to day with no direction, no focus, no goals, not a lot of drive and motivation to do anything more than play video games and drive around in Japanese supercars. That was about my life. And when my first son was born, I sat down and I created a painted picture for my life 10 years from then.

And everything on that list, everything in that painted picture came about. And we'll talk about why that is in step 2. And it's got everything to do with focus and energy and attention and making a decision which we'll talk about in episode 2. So with that you might have heard in my voice I'm still recovering from that virus that shall not be mentioned otherwise this podcast wouldn't get aired. So I hope you've enjoyed that though.

I hope that's been helpful and it really is a powerful technique. And in the next few podcasts what we'll do is we'll break down the next parts of this model. But in order to release agility to move smoothly and quickly towards your goals, you're gonna need those goals. But in order to drive those goals, you're really gonna need to know what it is that's bigger than that. And that is what the painted picture is.

And with that, I look forward to speaking to you in the next episode. You take care of yourselves. Bye bye.