This lecture begins with telling us what a vision is and what it is NOT. We also learn the important connections of analyses, mission, vision and strategies. Actually, we could somewhat generalizing say that the four constructs just mentioned are the four most important constructs in visionary and strategy formulations process. We close the lecture with learning about the assignment of detecting the megatrend, the waves of change,

Assignment before the lecture: Read from Bennet & Cartwright chapters 5-7.

Open or save the PowerPoint slides related to this lecture EDLS210_S7_L3.pdf​.

Listen to the lecture, and afterwards do the assignment given below.

Write your learning experiences into your personal Reflective report

Assignment after the lecture: This group assignment is the starting point of any visionary process, and thus it is of great importance. In groups of 4-6 people as assigned by the course leader, your task is to work on one (or several) sectors in the society (political, economical etc.) in area to look for the megatrends. As mentioned in the lecture, a megatrend is a major external factor that will be effecting your organization in the next 2-5 years, even longer. Usually, the megatrend is not yet present, but we can locate it “in the horizon” if wee look sharp enough. This search of weak signals is the key in finding megatrends. And, it is also about anticipating. We need to single out those factors, that right now can just barely be seen, but which we anticipate to grow into megatrends in the near future.

We need to remember that normally megatrends are individual to the organization, but also very often the megatrends effect the whole industry, like education, the same way. The role of each member in the group is first to think by himself/herself some megatrend by name which might be in question in the designated area (economical, political, etc). Then, second, each member places the list in the discussion area HERE

After that, all members in the group discuss about that list, and decide which 5-6 megatrends are seen most important. Then thirdly, the individual megatrend are given one (or more) to each member and this person writes down both a detailed definition of it. This definition is rather shot, about ½ page, and places it into the discussion area. After that, fourthly, all members comment of the definitions of the megatrends, and e) finally, the original writer makes the final presentation of the megatrend(s). You may also listen to lecture 4 where the students report the findings of their analyses of megatrends. Note that the students come from different countries, and their solutions may not always fit other countries.

Note also, that during this discussion, you only should focus into the detecting the various megatrend, and not to discuss the possible implications of them. That, too, is very important, and is a separate process in the “real” visionary process.

After the group discussion is complete, place all the definitions of the discussion area of the whole class. HERE