Back to the Future
It involves creating a roadmap starting from the end date and going back in time to identify the different steps that will lead to the success of a project, task, job, etc. as the future becomes the now. Participants will collectively share their vision of success for the goal.
Pre-requisites
Prepare a Board activity in Beekast by creating one category per time phase. Adapt these phases according the end date of the project (short, medium or long term) by choosing phases in weeks, months or quarters.
Configure your Board in round by round mode to encourage individual reflection. An icebreaker activity should precede this one in order to prepare the group.
Activity settings Board
- Activity format: Round by round
- Category: one category per time phase (depending on the project)
Process
Presentation
Pose the question to the group that best summarises reaching the objective in the future.
It’s December 2020, our site is online and generating lots of traffic, how were we able to do this?
It’s September, more than 500 people attended our seminar and left very satisfied. How did we prepare for this successful day?
It’s June, sales are up 25% after I gave the sales team some tips. What actions did we take to get there?
Tell the group how much time is allocated for each phase.
Ask each person to contemplate individually during the time provided.
Exploration
Each participant writes down in the Board’s notepad all the ideas, events, obstacles and actions that, in their opinion, made it possible to achieve the goal.
Selection
One by one, the participants send their notepad ideas to the Board, taking a few minutes to comment on each idea. They post their ideas in chronological order.
You can group identical ideas together and use colours to identify elements such as strengths, weaknesses, unforeseen events, external or internal events, milestones, etc.
Then, once the overall vision has been shared, encourage the group to think about and comment on this particular version of the future and identify the best path forward.
Summary
At the end of the workshop, ask a member of the group to present the path identified to reach the goal
Put together the few actions, expectations or steps in order to update the initial roadmap
Suggestions and variations
For an effective workshop, you need an appropriate group size: not too big, not too small. Ideally 5 people. You can create sub-groups and assign each of them to a Board. A representative can present the summary to the others.
The way the question is worded is very important. Consider testing it yourself before the workshop. You won't get the same kind of result on both forms of this same question:
How will our product help you hold effective meetings?
How did our product make your meetings effective?
Remind participants that they’re in the future. Using past tense while creating the timeline makes the exercise easier.
This workshop is very simple to run and can be adapted to a whole host of situations: project roadmap, client expectations on a project, criteria for a job’s success and even team building.
