Activity 1: How-Tos for Creating Work-Community Meaning

Instructions. Steal some quiet time by yourself. Imagine your work community at a time in the future being "the best it can be." What would be true about it?

1. Record your thoughts. Listed below are some considerations.

   values	levels of achievement
   team contributions	leadership and employee development
   diverse talents that contributed to success	recognition received
   obstacles overcome	partners and alliances created
   customer satisfaction	revenue, market-share, growth levels
   best practices and innovations	risks that paid off
   changes made	teamwork that strengthened the community
   flexibility to respond to change	span of influence
   symbols of success

2. The next step is to shape your thoughts into a message or a few thoughtfully crafted statements that will help you share your vision of the future with others and enlist them in it.

Activity 2: Creating a Vision Story

Instructions. Throughout history stories have been a most effective means of communicating. A vision story can serve as an innovative way to communicate a work community's vision and values, so that everyone is included and can see his or her part. To try it, you will have to tap into your creative talent.

• Pick a person, an event, a problem, a happening from the past experiences of your work community.

• Write a story about that person, event, or problem that reflects not only what happened but the way the values, purposes, and ideal processes of your work community helped shape the result. Include in the story descriptions of the risks, struggles, achievements, and rewards encountered along the way to completion of the event or solution of the problem.

• Give the story a title.

• Share it with everyone in your work community.

• Publish it in your work team and elsewhere as appropriate.

• Talk about it often.

• Reevaluate it occasionally.