On your marks. Get set... Go! The official race - Part 4: Vision Sprint

Visions change the world by leading the way to something new. But in a world where the word "vision" is often tossed around as meaningless corporate jargon and dominated by corporate planning, how can organisations create visions that help them seize inspiration and new opportunities?

Using our strategic product design approach, we've created the Vision Sprint to help organisations create ambitious future visions. The Vision Sprint identifies and seizes new opportunities by translating insights and inspiration into a new concept of vision. The resulting vision is an ideal, non-existing solution for what the organisation wants to achieve and see in reality.

The entire Vision Sprint is actually a weeks-long marathon due to the importance of pre- and post-sprint phases. But if pre-sprint preparation and inspiration phases are complete, it's time to run the official Vision Sprint race.

Different from a (product) Design Sprint

Vision Sprints have a similar underlying model to Design Sprints for products, with a few differences. The Vision Sprint lasts five days instead of the Design Sprint's usual four. The extra day (Day 3 of the Vision Sprint) is added to ensure that decision makers and experts, who often don't have the time to attend the whole sprint, can come in and provide direction. The concept is also chosen and decided upon on this day.

A Vision Sprint is often run over a weekend with a gap between decision day (Friday) and prototyping day (Monday). This space gives decision makers time to simmer down and ruminate over the winning idea, as well as the chance to recall it before prototyping day if necessary. We don't do this in regular Design Sprints because there's a risk of losing the momentum and vibe of a sprint. However, the decision being made during a Vision Sprint isn't light, so the comfort of having come to a decision (which we facilitate) is more important than the momentum and vibe of the sprint.

Another reason for having the five-day format run over a weekend is to give the sprint team members time to recuperate. A Vision Sprint requires an abstract and high-level way of thinking, making it a tougher version of the Design Sprint. Most of the sprint team members likely don't do this for a living and the upcoming prototyping day will require them to forge ahead full speed, so it's best to let them re-energize over a weekend. After all, there is only so much energizing and healthy drinks or snacks can do.

The Vision Sprint agenda

The agenda runs over five days, following an underlying sprint model and diverge-converge pattern. The agenda is as follows:

*The second selection chooses three of the best ideas. Why three ideas? One or two ideas are insufficient and will make the final selection process on Day 3 feel set in stone. More than three ideas risk a no consensus amongst decision makers, leading to inertia and lost time. Three ideas are a middle ground that works.

** The goal of the prototype is to validate the vision and convince decision makers to invest in that vision. Present the vision with a lot of visuals, concrete storytelling and supporting materials to make the most impact. Make it come alive for the final presentation to management.

Sprint tips and tricks

A lot has been written about tips and tricks for sprinting and facilitating workshops. Such resources are really useful and can easily be found on Google, so we won't spend too much time on all of them here. Consulting various resources provides more expertise and a higher chance of success, so we strongly recommend using these resources. However, we would like to highlight a few tips and tricks that (according to our experience) can make or break your sprint. 

1. Be on time!

Start on time. Like, two hours before.

On one occasion, we arrived two hours before a Design Sprint we were going to facilitate. Just as Joeri touched the handle of a glass door to enter the room, the glass door exploded into thousands of small pieces. It was an extremely hot day and we had no choice but to start cleaning everything up (we received help, without which we couldn't have finished in time). The client had arrived by the time we got most of the glass out and we felt exhausted and irritated, which reflected on the rest of the day. To make matters worse, we had to start the sprint even though we were still in the midst of setting everything up. Believe us, that's not what you want.

2. Prepare your exercises

Tailor exercises to the intake and ability of each sprint team. Some teams are more creative than others and diverse teams may have a combination of creative and less creative people. As a facilitator, it's your job to ensure that everyone is able to keep up and follow along. For individual exercises, try to come up with a few variations that you can use on the fly (your expertise as a facilitator will be crucial here). Make use of mood boards, posters, whiteboards, props, etc. for each exercise throughout the whole sprint. The goal is to make everything visual and concrete.

Be clear about instructions and expectations from participants during exercises. We recommend creating templates as it helps participants stick to instructions and process everything with minimal thinking. It's also important to clarify how the input and output of consecutive exercises are connected in order to achieve the sprint's ultimate goal. This improves creative processes as participants will focus on completing each exercise rather than overthinking the entire process. The sprint starts with inspiration and ends with a presentation to decision makers, everything in-between is a link in a large chain of events. If an exercise doesn't rely on input from a previous one and doesn't provide output for the following exercise, then it doesn't belong in your sprint and is simply burning valuable energy.

3. Eating and drinking

Consuming healthy snacks, drinks and light meals is very important for any sprint. Heavy meals, like burgers and pizzas with fries, and sugary snacks make people drowsy because they spend all their energy on digesting. Providing light lunches, with ample healthy drinks and snacks between, helps people balance their sugar and energy levels.

Coffee is a tricky one. It's often a creative fuel, but can also be the cause of frequent bathroom trips or irritated tempers. So, remember to provide coffee alternatives!

4. Dual expert committee

We recommend using a dual expert committee that consists of both internal and external experts. Internal experts know the organisation, their processes and expertise well, but present the risk of tunnel vision. On the other hand, external experts are gathered from various industries, organisations and areas of expertise to provide insights and different perspectives.

External experts may include people the organisation looks up to, unrelated to the industry but highly skilled in a specific technology, or part of the industry but well-known for approaching things differently. Compose the external committee with two thoughts in mind: who can help create a truly unique future vision for the organisation and who can help validate that vision. Another recommendation, which we put into practice often, is to split the external expert committee into inspiration experts and validation experts. 

Now that the official Vision Sprint has come to an end, it's time to solidify and execute the organisation's new vision. Next week, we'll delve into how to accomplish this through an Acceleration Sprint and other post-sprint follow-up. 

Until then!