This essay presents a general model for rigorous envisioning. All rigorous envisioning efforts need to make tacit knowledge explicit, through a five-stage process, to identify the enablement needs of a community.
Purpose of Rigorous Envisioning
The purpose of Rigorous Envisioning is to map out the following:
- Who the real beneficiaries are.
- What their aspirations are.
- Why their aspirations are not being met right now.
- What the clearly defined “state-descriptions” are that will describe the world they want to be in.
- How exactly these “state-descriptions” will be arrived at.
Each of the above questions represents a detailed “structure of enablement” that will come into being.
Through Rigorous Envisioning, (i) the purposes of the manifestation become apparent, and (ii) the constraints defining the manifestation also become clear.
Potential stages in a Rigorous Envisioning journey
- Explorations into Concerns
- Definition of Measures
- Creation of a “State of Enablement” comprehension
- Description of a Possibility Space
- Envisioning of an Enablement Frame
1. Exploration into concerns
A Concerns Map represents how there is a matrix of “related” concerns that actually derive from the same spatial issue. In other words, we need a case for a shift in world view. We need to articulate this shift in world view and also determine what the “conjoint effects” of such a shift would be.
The Concerns Map is probably one of the most important documents. It clarifies and shows why a new approach or world view is not just a nice thing to have but an imperative driving the engagement. This makes the Concerns Map a powerful “reason to live” document for the project and the need for new solutions.
2. Definition of measures
What are the measures by which a new world is to be measured?
This is crucial to the construction of the entire framework for transformation.
If the measures are not designed upfront, there will be no “solid” way in which the entire project will stay together in the client’s mind. Often the measures determine the perceived value of the project, and who the potential stakeholders are.
The “audit measures” can often be a major study. For example, if we are talking about an “agent-enabling environment”, what are the true measures of agent enablement? Are they likely to be identified? Can they be defined, “quantified”, or at least “concretised”?
These measures will be, in our view, the industry-changing dimension of our work. Objective Models thus defined demand that true aspirations be identified and real stakeholders be clarified, and a “nice world to be in” becomes at least a definable space in the collective consciousness of all those involved.
Often, the Concerns Map and Objective Models may be one-time efforts that determine an entire class of solutions, and will drive marketing and much of the early client buy-in for a project.
3. Creation of a “State of Enablement” comprehension
A State of Enablement Report defines where, and how much of, the world-that-we-want-to-be-in is already in place. It determines the true state of options and the current technological or delivery possibilities, and describes, in short, the logic for intervention.
The State of Enablement Report is not meant to be an “indictment” of the current state of things. It is meant to be a powerful model for describing the criteria on which enabling solutions will be built.
For example, “What are the potential sources of enablement?” would be a study in possibilities, and would help us define what kind of enablement toolkit should be put in place.
This report represents, as it were, the “circle of enablement” that we intend to put around each stakeholder, and therefore, in very specific terms, what needs to “come into being” for enablement to take place.
4. Description of a Possibility Space
The Possibility Space description shifts the logic from an individual client level to an industry-level problem. It asks what the final toolkit is going to look like, and how the entire “practice” needs to be constructed. It describes, in short, the capabilities of a “solution design lab” that will “hold” the entire set of enablers needed to make solutions happen: the enabling world that comes into being for that specific possibility space.
5. Envisioning of an Enablement Frame
The Enablement Frame is the envisioned world that we seek to bring into being. It carries within it a description of the entire world we want to bring into being, at an extremely precise level of communication. This is, in short, what will be manifested.