Change is a constant, and so is resistance to it. Planning is a necessity, and the more input we have, the more interested we are in being involved in implementation. On top of that, the fact that we’re more likely to put our back into it if we have a sense of purpose is probably our inner four-year-old seeking some satisfaction for asking “why?”

This team was in a good space. New leadership after a tumultuous few years (it’s the early 2020s, who DIDN’T have a tumultuous couple of years?), a fresh grasp on who they were and how they showed up for each other, and now they were due to write a new strategic planning document. Whatever they did, it was essential that they did it with a big sense of moving together, and from a place of building from common ground.

This is where the Three Horizons Framework came in. It’s become a Hunch and Lever favourite for strategic planning because of the way it treats the conditions that led to the present and the shape of the emerging future as a connected system that the people in the room have lots of agency over. It also steps out very tidily beyond a model and a framework into a process.

This workflow plays out a little differently from other LEGO Serious Play sessions. It still begins with individual interpretations of the big framing questions – in this case exploring how the organisation works and how that arose on Horizon 1, and what they want for the future, and what competing versions of it may be emerging from outside on Horizon 3. Where it differs (and deviates from a stricter form of LSP!) is in the way the collective play comes together. Rather than the structure coming from within the LSP Method, the structure comes from the 3 Horizons framework.

Participants in groups were able to build a sense of the place’s identity and function with a visual sense that the status quo will eventually decline, so they get a say in how that happens. They were able to build a sense of the future, and identify where the emerging buds of that are visible in the present.

This focus on the first and third horizons with the large group created a solid grounding for a smaller group to oversee the action planning that takes place across Horizon 2 – bridging the present and the future with intentional action.

I love working with teachers. Having spent many years in the classroom myself as teacher and instructional coach, it feels like home.

That being said… they tend to be a group that loves rules and structure and predictability, and want to know if they’re doing it “right.” It takes a lot more trust-building to get them out on a limb to explore possibility than it does with any other profession, probably due to the risk-aversion, high stakes, and acute public scrutiny that’s inherent to the job.

What I especially love about sessions like these are that they very naturally make big, broad systems thinkers out of people who are often trained not to be. The conversations about the interdependent relationship between alumni presence in the learning program, teacher networking opportunities, and career aspiration in their students came very naturally when it was visible, tangible, and able to be moved, tested, and made part of a bigger, emergent story.