Why Every Project Should Start with a Vision Meeting

One of the most valuable meetings you can have at the beginning of a project has nothing to do with timelines, tasks or deliverables.

It’s a vision meeting.

Before everyone starts doing the work, get the people involved together and ask:

What does great look like?

Imagine we’re six months down the road.

The project has been a huge success.

What happened?

What changed?

What are people doing differently?

What results are we seeing?

What would make us look back and say, “That really worked”?

It sounds simple.

But this conversation does something important.

It gets everyone aligned around the outcome before they start debating how to get there.

Too often, projects begin with activity.

We need to schedule the training.

Build the materials.

Set up the meetings.

Create the process.

Those things may all be necessary.

But they’re not the goal.

The goal is the change you’re trying to create.

And if the people involved have different ideas about what success looks like, you can execute the project perfectly and still disappoint someone.

That’s why I like starting with the vision.

Get the ideas out of everyone’s heads and into the room.

Write them down.

Talk about them.

Challenge them.

Agree on them.

Then start building the plan.

Because once you know what great looks like, it becomes much easier to figure out what you need to do to get there.