Lumen Impact Group
Lumen Impact Group

Vision Stories: A Practical (And Surprisingly Simple!) Tool To Successfully Initiate Change

Published: April 26, 2024

When you’re looking to make a shift, start something new, or refresh something that maybe isn’t working as you’d expected, how do you make sure that the change you’re implementing is actually going to help you reach your desired goal? 

At Lumen Impact Group, we have found that building a common understanding of success is key to successfully initiating change, and we are big believers in using Vision Stories to build this understanding. 

Whether you’re talking about something as big as a new nation-wide initiative or something as small as running your weekly staff meetings, starting by writing out your vision for success and getting understanding and buy-in from those involved with that activity will help make it a reality.

How to Write a Vision Story

When writing Vision Stories, put yourself out in the timeline — whether it is three weeks, three months, or three years. If all is going well, and you’re on track, what will this look like? What will you be proud of? What kinds of things will be happening? What will be the impact? How will people be involved? 

Write those things down and craft them into a story that shows, not just tells, the expectations for success. Your Vision Story doesn’t need to be more than a paragraph, but it does need to be aspirational, strategically sound, and actually written down, so that you and your team can come back to it when it feels like you’re off track, or to gauge how it’s going throughout the process.

What Does a Vision Story Look Like? 

You want to implement a new meeting format for your team. Before you begin to initiate that change, you might write a Vision Story that sounds a little like this: 

“It’s three months from now, and ever since we implemented our new meeting format, team meetings have been a time that everyone looks forward to. Each person on our team shows up on time and excited to share their good news, and they’re ready with updates top of mind for projects they’re a part of. Some of us even keep an updates sticky note to be prepared, and everyone follows along using our running agenda as notes are taken. We regularly talk about how we all value that our time lets us connect and have fun but is also efficient and relevant because individual teams don’t monopolize everyone’s time with details unrelated to the work of the whole group. Even when some of us aren’t involved on a particular project, the updates from those who are give us insight into capacity and into the work that we do as a whole. This has supported us all in having better insight into who we are, what we do as an organization, and we hold it as a priority. It’s so nice to be able to say that our team meetings are not just another thing we have to go to in the week, but really an impactful time for us all.”

Now, when it feels like you’re off track or wondering, “is this really working?”, your Vision Story can serve as a guide to whether the change is having the positive impact you hoped for. 

What’s coming up for you and your team? Consider leveraging this practice to help you kick it off! We’d love to hear about it!

Testimonials

"“They don’t tell you what you want to hear. They tell you what you need to hear. That makes a huge difference. We needed to understand our weaknesses in order to make the organization work right, and I was overwhelmed by how they really got it and they helped us to get it too. They were able to do it in a way that really made me want to understand the goals we needed to focus on. I believe Lumen was absolutely the best we could have found.”"
Barbara Sellinger
Cresthaven Academy
"“I’ve been in nonprofits for 30+ years and have used the services of many consultants, but I have never been so comfortable with their commitment to helping us. It was as if the Lumen team shared our need to have a successful outcome and they were committed to the notion that they would indeed bring value to what we were doing.“ "
Caroline Novak
Alabama School Readiness Alliance
"“The Lumen team did a really good job sharing the hard truths with us. Their findings were different from what we were expecting, but they used the information to push us farther than we originally planned. They were candid and didn’t hide anything from us. We’re now on the path to developing products that are very different from what we’ve done before but are hopefully much more useful for the people we serve.” "
Drew Jacobs
National Alliance of Public Charter Schools
"“The management of a federal CSP grant is a really niche area that requires a tremendous depth of expertise and technical know-how. You need to have a microscopic attention to detail when it comes to compliance and reporting timeliness. The Lumen team is excellent at all of the above." "
Tyler Barnett
New Schools for Alabama
"“In my coaching, we make really strong, specific plans for next steps and then we follow up on them in our next conversation. We try to keep those next steps really manageable. When I’m busy, I can’t layer a ton of personal growth on top of my other responsibilities, so we make plans for growth that are baked into the work I’m already doing. That has been really helpful for me.” "
Kristen Forbriger
City Fund