Posted by Jutta from Visionautik Akademie

Ask your group to first give the project or vision they are developing a prototype name and write it on the tree trunk. It can still change at any time but is important to give the project tree a focus.

Let them then connect with their vision and write all ideas, questions and aspects they can think of about their focus topic on post-its - one idea per post-it. They can be all sorts of ideas ranging from very philosophical overall intentions to very practical action steps. They should write down all ideas and all questions they can think of. Once those thoughts are on paper and they have the confidence that none of those ideas and questions will get lost, the mind can become clear and fast and present again.

A good time for that step is 10 minutes, but anyway you will notice when your group’s writing dries up. If you stop that phase you can reassure them that they will have enough opportunity to continue adding post-its - it is part of the next steps anyway.

Explain to them the five levels of the project tree. There are:
(1) basic assumptions,
(2) values as roots,
(3) the vision/project topic at the trunk,
(4) objectives in the branches, and
(5) actions in the leaves.

Ask them to stick their post-its into the section they think the idea is about. Sometimes it is not so clear where an idea belongs. Then they should just stick it where they find it fits best. There’s no need for analytical precision in this exercise.

Explain now how they can play around with the tree, exploring each idea by climbing up and down the tree: If they ask the question “why” they move downwards towards the ground, if they ask the question “how” they climb up level by level heading to the sky until they end in the action leaves. If they start for example in the trunk (vision/project), they can ask the question “why?” (why do I want it this way?) and thereby move down towards the roots (values). If they ask “why?” again, they go one level deeper towards the soil (basic assumptions). The other direction towards the sky works with the question how. They can go back all the way up level by level by asking “how?”. How do I want to express this basic assumption? In this value. How do I want this value to manifest? With this vision/project. How do I want to achieve this vision? With these objectives? How do I want to reach these objectives? With these action steps.
Find an example from their world of reference and make the process clear with the help of that example.
Encourage your group to play around with their ideas in this way - adding new post-its whenever something new occurs, modifying or taking away post-its when they realize by thinking it over that they are not in line with what they want. They can use the tree as well for knowing exactly why they want what they want and why they do what they do as for finding ideas about how this could be done.
Then either leave your participants time to work on the task by themselves or facilitate the common group work around climbing the tree together.
Note: Usually people have a preference for dwelling in a certain area of the tree: Some of them love to think about concrete steps most of the time and others prefer to think about the very fundamental and philosophical questions. You can make that explicit and facilitate a balance. The tree helps to visualize imbalances (e.g. lots of roots and almost no leaves or the other way round) and the jumping up and down the levels helps to lure participants out of their comfort zone and into blindspot areas of the project.