# Looking ahead to 2030 through a memory of the future

> The leadership of a public school had written its vision for 2030. Instead of presenting it, we had managers read it as a text written in the past tense, from 2030. They said what inspired them and where they pushed back, then opened concrete workstreams with clear roles.

*Real case, anonymised: the company name is invented.*

- Company (invented name) : Institut Morvelle
- Sector : Public vocational training institution
- Size : A few hundred staff
- Format : An afternoon and a full day
- Audience : The extended management committee, that is the school’s managers: a few dozen people, first in small teams, then in workstreams.
- URL : https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/cas-clients/vision-2030-souvenir-du-futur

## Context

- Senior leadership has just written a vision of the school for 2030.
- The management change under way in the parent administration has to reach the school, and therefore its training courses.
- The starting diagnosis: staff who stay in an executing role while wishing for less top-down decisions, recognition that rewards reporting more than initiative, uneven management cultures, and little cooperation across departments.

## The challenge

Turn a vision written by leadership into one the management team carries. Without one more top-down presentation, and ending with clear roles.

## Design ideas

- **The Present, Future, Action compass** : Three design principles, taken from an open-licence model. Present: listen to lived realities rather than align on a diagnosis. Future: build on leadership’s vision together. Action: clarify commitments and share out the roles.
- **A silent start** : Using the management principles the organisation already had, everyone silently writes one “strength” and one “challenge” of the school on two sticky notes. They talk about them in pairs, then put them on the wall without comment.
- **The memory of the future** : Ten minutes of individual reading: a text written in the past tense, from 2030. Then a personal canvas: what inspires me, where I push back, and why. Only then, in teams: what happened between today and 2030?
- **Use cases owned by managers** : A handful of telling situations, each owned by a volunteer manager. Teams analyse them in two rounds on a three-page canvas: share how things work today, agree on a new split of roles, set up how it will run.
- **Designed with an in-house team** : Several working sessions with an internal project team. The vision text, the use cases and their owners were chosen with them.

## Run of show

### Day 1 · afternoon

- 2pm · **Introduction** : Leadership’s ambition and the diagnosis.
- 2.15pm · **Check-in** : One strength, one challenge: in silence, then in pairs, then on the wall.
- 2.45pm · **Memory of the future** : Reading, personal canvas, team sharing, plenary.
- 4.15pm · **The use cases** : The cases, their owners and the analysis canvas.
- 5pm · **End of day one** : Followed by an informal evening.

### Day 2

- 9am · **Forming teams** : One team per use case.
- **Working the cases** : Two rounds: how it works today, who is involved, options.
- 12pm · **Plenary** : Each workstream shares its options with the room.
- 2pm · **Next steps** : Individual commitments and the management committee’s role.
- 3pm · **Leadership responds** : What the head of the school heard, and what comes next.
- 4pm · **Close** : End of the two days.

## Deliverables

- A slide report, workstream by workstream, with a few key figures: workstreams opened, working rounds, cross-cutting issues passed up to leadership.
- A “convergences to decide on” page that also says what is missing. For instance: no group had filled in the follow-up page.
- A working frame for each workstream.
- A follow-up plan: cases approved by the executive committee, each director rolling them out, a quarterly check-in.

## The role of AI

The report was prepared with flowAI, Flow Design’s platform, from the transcripts of the plenary.

## Key takeaways

- The vision is not presented, it is lived as a memory. People are first asked “where do I push back?”, and only then “what do we do?”.
- A useful report also says what did not get done: missing owners or timelines, pages left blank.

Related expertise : [Leadership offsites](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/seminaire-de-direction), [Seminar design](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/design-de-seminaire), [AI-augmented seminars](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/seminaire-augmente-par-l-ia), [flowAI](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/flowai)

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Source: Flow Design, https://www.getflowdesign.com
Contact: victoire@getflowdesign.com, marie-violaine@getflowdesign.com, +33 6 72 15 94 77. Request a quote: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/nous-contacter. Draft a run of show online: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/concevoir-mon-seminaire.