align your organisation around a shared destination before deciding how to get there
using the metaphor of a container ship navigating towards a distant island, this tool creates a shared language to explore a compelling ambition, assess trajectories and evaluate priorities, opportunities & risks along your innovation journey.
how Vision & Voyage creates value:
- creates a shared long-term North Star vision
- aligns leadership around a common direction
- defines milestones & success signals
- identifies innovation & experimentation opportunities
- surfaces risks, assumptions & external influences
- connects today’s decisions to future ambitions
define the destination. align the crew. navigate with confidence.
whether you’re defining a corporate vision, preparing for growth, navigating uncertainty or aligning leadership around a shared future, Vision & Voyage creates the clarity needed to move from ambition to action.
Strategy & Growth
zoom out to the big picture to chart long-term ambitions, enter new markets, scale operations
Innovation
Leadership Alignment
create shared direction across business streams, teams and transformation programs
Portfolio Management
balance short-term initiatives with long-term value creation and manage strategic risk
why it works:
Sometimes, organisations jump straight into projects, investments and initiatives without first agreeing on where they are going. Vision & Voyage changes the conversation by starting with the destination. Using a simple but powerful maritime metaphor, it helps teams break down abstract strategy discussions into concrete elements.
Where do we want to go, where are we today, what are we carrying, what forces influence us and how will we know we’re making progress? The visual format creates a shared language for discussing growth, uncertainty, innovation and change. It helps leaders align around a common ambition before making decisions on budgets, priorities and execution.
Vision & Voyage origin story: the long read
Perhaps we should preface this, by saying we have been enjoying river cruising and ocean exploration on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea for 2 decades and simply enjoy the occasional maritime metaphor (could it be the rich seafaring history of Belgium, with its 65km of coastline?). But aside from this peek into personal leisure preferences: we created Vision & Voyage for our strategy workshops, building upon agile facilitation techniques such as the Sailboat Retrospective, Futures Thinking, Visioning Workshops and Strategic Roadmapping.
While traditional sailboat exercises often focus on reflecting on the past, this framework shifts the focus towards future ambition. Together, these elements transform strategy from an abstract discussion into a tangible story of movement, choice and direction. The result is a shared picture of where the organisation is heading, what could accelerate progress and what might stand in the way. The core components are:
the ship traverses a specific context: ocean currents capture invisible forces, clouds represent visible influences, other ships reveal competitors
step-by-step guide:
advice for practitioners:
- start with the destination: create direction before discussing solutions
- encourage participants to think beyond annual planning cycles and imagine what success looks like in three to five years
- use concrete milestones and success signals: how can you realistically measure completion and stay on track? (link this to the OKR framework
- explore visible influences (competitors, regulation, technology) and invisible forces (culture, incentives, assumptions and internal politics)
- use speedboats to discuss experiments, pilots and MVPs without requiring immediate commitment from the wider organisation
- treat the exercise as a collective storytelling activity: the most valuable outcome is a shared narrative rather than a polished canvas
curious?
