Three Horizons Action Planning
Three Horizons Action Planning helps teams translate a future vision into actionable steps by identifying current concerns, future aspirations, and innovations needed for the transition. It's effective for creating a shared understanding and a concrete pathway towards a desired future state.
Use this method when a team has already mapped their Three Horizons and needs to develop a concrete action plan to move towards their desired future, especially when navigating complex transformations within existing systems.
Solves: Lack of clear action steps following a strategic visioning exercise; difficulty translating abstract ideas into tangible initiatives.
- 1
Step 1: Identify Areas of Concern (20 mins): Ask the team to review the First Horizon stickies from the original map and summarize key issues or areas where the current system is losing relevance. Write each concern on a large sticky note and place it on the vertical axis of the new 3H map.
- 2
Step 2: Visionary Aspirations for H3 (30 mins): Transfer all Third Horizon stickies from the original map to a flip chart. Facilitate a clustering exercise to group these aspirations into a few descriptively labeled clusters. Transfer these cluster descriptions to Box 1 of the new 3H map.
- 3
Step 3: Pockets of Future in the Present (15 mins): Identify existing practices or initiatives that align with the Third Horizon aspirations. Summarize these 'pockets of the future' as bullet points in Box 2.
- 4
Step 4: Sustaining and Transformative Innovations (45 mins): Review the transition zone stickies from the original map. Guide the team to categorize these as either 'sustaining innovations' (Box 3) that improve the current system or 'transformative innovations' (Box 4) that support the journey to the Third Horizon. Encourage new contributions.
- 5
Step 5: H1 in the Future (10 mins): Identify aspects of the First Horizon that will continue to play a role in the Third Horizon. Capture these in Box 5.
- 6
Step 6: Decommissioning Current Practice (10 mins): Brainstorm and document ideas for practices that should be discontinued to make way for the new, placing these in Box 6.
- Encourage participants to think broadly about both sustaining and transformative innovations.
- Help the team differentiate between innovations that simply improve the current system and those that fundamentally shift it towards the desired future.
- If the group struggles to identify transformative innovations, prompt them with examples of inspiring practices or initiatives.
- Use a voting system to prioritize the most impactful sustaining and transformative innovations.
- Assign owners to each action item to ensure accountability.
- Break down the larger actions into smaller, more manageable steps.