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Summary
This exercise will get team members to collaborate on a ‘vision of success’ for their effort.
Outcomes
Strengthened trust and cohesion between team members. Alignment on goals.
Objectives of the play
Creation of an articulation of a shared vision of success, which can be used for the development of strategy and starter dough for a theory of change
Original Source
Adapted from Keystone Accountability’s IPAL Guide 2: Developing a Theory of Change
Context
Time needed for the play
45 to 60 minutes
Number of participants
3 to 24 participants
Where it happens
This can be run online or inperson.
In-person will work best in a room with space for small group breakouts and wall or floor space for review of epitaphs.
Preparation
The participants: This works best with a team working together on an effort and long-term goal
Accessibility:
Setup:
Materials:
Online tools: are there any templates ready to re-use? Are there any recommended online tools to aid collaboration?
The Play
- Instruct participants to write an epitaph for their effort.
The facilitator asks participants: What would you like the world to remember your organization for?
Picture a future world where your effort no longer needs to exist because you were successful. How did it contribute to this future? How should it be remembered?
- It should capture the essential transformation the effort would have made in the world as briefly as possible.
- It must be written as an outcome (e.g. a result that you would see if you were to visit the context at some future time). However, the transformation must be one that the organization can plausibly influence.
- Usually, it involves identifying one or more key actors (groups or institutions) in their context and how they are behaving and relating differently.
To facilitate their thinking an epitaph metaphor is used: in the vast graveyard of dead CSOs, what would you like to have inscribed on the tombstone (or other non-Christian equivalent were appropriate) of your organization?
What is an epitaph?
Definition: a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.
Examples you can share:
An epitaph of a children’s rights organisation in South Africa. Effective, efficient and well-resourced communities are working with families and child-friendly government structures to ensure that the rights and welfare of children are realised.
Thanks to Fairplay Alliance, A free just society of active people who are not afraid and don’t cheat because strong and open institutions enforce rules transparently
Thanks to Level Up, individuals provide digital safety training and education, developed through shared values of what effective training looks like, how to deliver effective training, and being able to understand why it is effective.y.
Thanks to MozFest, diverse community groups regain ownership and shape the future of the internet, holding makers and platforms accountable to ensure the internet is healthy.
- Small group breakouts
After the examples are shared, break your participants into groups or 3 or 4. Ask participants to form groups with the people in the room they work with the least.
- Large group breakouts.
After the epitaphs are written – get people to read them (move around the room in gallery format or the google doc).
Then large group discussion questions –
– how are they similar?
– Where are the differences?
— are those differences significant?
Final bonus question –
How long? what year would it be when the effort has died from being successful. [reference the pace of transformational change. How would you test your assumption here? Measurement of success]