Club Visioning

A club visioning session provides a vision for the future and the beginnings of a written plan that promotes consensus, consistency, and continuity. This statement of goals and initiatives provides a road map that’s easy for leaders and club members to understand. It serves as a foundational piece for any club that wants to grow and become more effective.
Club visioning defines and celebrates the unique culture of each club through a 4 hour facilitated delivery of 8 sequenced exercises supporting our motto of “Service Above Self”. Visioning allows the club members to dream about what their club could become. From this dream comes a new sense of identity and a renewed commitment to make a club better than it is today.
So how does your club interpret “Service Above Self”? Without a conscious awareness of that unique interpretation, clubs have a tendency to lose focus. To a club that has not defined who they are, what they stand for and what they intend to do; anything and everything is an opportunity. All it takes is the strongest personality, the one who will give the most time, or the one who is the most influential for the club to run the risk of following personal agendas, short term gratifications and individual legacies. The premise here is that clubs are made up of many talented personalities all supporting one cause…”Service Above Self”. How can we get back to a team that is all pulling in the same direction (without waiting for crises management to occur to get the team to start pulling)?
The simple act of writing down long term goals (strategic initiatives) in a group setting builds camaraderie and fosters agreement on a vision. The challenge to the visioning process is how to gather so many ideas (the dreams) and opportunities for the future from a group of 15-30 people and condense it down to the most important goals determined by that club (consensus) all within a very limited time frame. This is where an outside, neutral team of trained Rotary facilitators can make the difference. Self facilitating any process brings limited success as all are too close. A neutral team of Rotarians understand both the big picture of how Rotary works in the world today as well as how a facilitator should remain neutral. This skill set is the best service we can offer to the visioning process.
The opportunity to serve our clubs with vision facilitation and Rotary “clarity” through modest training within our club visioning process has created a “fellowship” of Rotarians delivering planning and club assistance within each district. Together, we focus on building strong clubs.