A vision is a description of the lasting change the achievement of your mission would produce. It is the standard by which you judge whether you have achieved your mission and how you continue to fine-tune your programs, products, and initiatives to be closer and closer to this ideal. I like to go to my favorite evaluation framework to help me with visioning – the Socio-Ecological Model of evaluation. In a nutshell, the Socio-Ecological Model is a lens through which you can view all of the interrelated environmental influences on a person. The model has its roots in developmental psychology, but it can be applied to any sort of social change activity. This post will help you structure your vision statements to address all parts of this model in an effort to create lasting change. Let’s get visionary!

Step 1: Get Familiar with the Socio-Ecological Model

As mentioned above, the Socio-Ecological Model is a fantastic framework upon which to build your definition of lasting change. It creates a cohesive view of the factors affecting individual agency and and influence by reconciling one’s environmental microsystems and macrosystems. If you’re a bit lost, don’t worry! Here’s a picture to help you visualize the spheres of influence that affect an individual from the individual level to the policy level in the context of cancer treatment and prevention. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1139"]

Image credit: The Centers for Disease Control[/caption] The levels are defined as follows:

• Individual: pretty self-explanatory
• Interpersonal: People very close to the individual in the context of the problem to be solved
• Organizational: the systems and entities that are in place to solve that problem
• Community: the interactions between organizations about the problem
• Policy: Laws and ideologies /attitudes that inform those laws

The great thing about this system is that it is extremely adaptable and allows influences to exist in multiple levels at one time. Why does this matter to your vision? Good question! Here’s how: the socio-ecological model is how you are going break down the factors that affect the social challenge you are addressing with your social enterprise. My friend and impact extraordinaire, Gillian Adler, MPH, is the expert program evaluator who introduced me to this concept. You should definitely contact her if you'd like to know more about the theory or if you have questions about program evaluation, public health, or grantwriting.

Step 2: Focus on the Challenge

Now that you have at least a small grasp of the Socio-Ecological Model (if not, Gillian and I are always a resource for you if you have questions!), take a landscape-oriented piece of the paper or word document and divide it into 5 columns. If you’re using a computer, you can create a chart with 5 columns fairly easily. If you’re using paper, just fold it into thirds and use the front and back. Above the chart on the computer or on the 6th space on your piece of paper, write out your mission and the societal challenge it addresses. If you need help with crafting your mission, you can always refer to my handy one-page guide. Next, write at the top of each column a different level of the model: individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy. You are going to define the problem in the context of each area. Refer to the above image if that’s helpful in helping you write out the challenge.

Step 3: Identify the Key Players

In each column, write out all of the different people and entities who are involved with the problem you are trying to solve. In the cancer treatment and prevention example, you can see that the interpersonal level consists of people close to the individual – family, provider, patient navigator, and friends. Go through each level and brainstorm the people, entities, and ideas that re involved with the problem, good or bad. This may take a bit of time and a lot of mental energy, so don’t worry if you need to set it down and come back to it in sprints.

Step 4: Give Your Key Players a Job

Once you’ve listed your key players, take another piece of paper or move to a new page in your digital document, and write what each level of the model would be doing to solve the social problem in your ideal vision of the world. For example, in the cancer treatment and prevention example, you might task individuals with getting regular screenings if they are available. On the interpersonal level, you might task providers with knowing the most effective and least invasive treatments. You might task health plans with providing incentives to getting the most effective and least invasive treatments. Give every group on every level a job to do to mitigate the societal issue you are attempting to solve, but don't give them more than one just yet. You can quickly send yourself into overwhelm if you start getting too granular too early.

Step 5: Give Your Socio-Ecological Levels a Job

It would not only be overwhelming but nearly impossible to execute on what you’ve just build alone. That’s why your next step will be to summarize each Socio-Ecological Model level’s key players’ actions into one statement that describes what they will do the prevent or mitigate the problem. Using our cancer treatment and prevention example and moving from the top level this time, we could give the Policy level a job described as: Mobilizing and codifying into law equal access to and implementation of the best cancer prevention and treatment strategies. On the community level, the vision statement could be described as: Cultivating empathy for, awareness of, and deep knowledge of comprehensive cancer prevention and treatment in all community members. These statements don’t have to be long, only representative of the jobs you’ve given key players in that particular level.

Step 6: Convert the Level-Based Job Statements into Affirmations

Now that you’ve got job statements for each level (you should have 5), you can easily convert them into affirmations that, if you are moving toward your mission, will come to be fact. Take off any –ing items and make them statements. The only way I know how to describe this is through examples. Instead of “Mobilizing and codifying into law equal access to and implementation of the best cancer prevention and treatment strategies”, you would rewrite it to say something like “The best cancer prevention and treatment strategies are codified into law and public policy and equally accessible by everyone.” Instead of “Cultivating deep empathy for, awareness of, and deep knowledge of comprehensive cancer prevention and treatment in all community members”, you would rephrase it to be “All members of the X community (could be be a city, state, region, country, etc) are treated with empathy and equipped with the knowledge and awareness needed for comprehensive cancer prevention and treatment.” [caption id="attachment_612" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]

Image credit: happytoinspire.blogspot.ca[/caption]

Step 7: Review Your Handiwork

You now have 5 statements that paint a picture of a world where your mission has been fulfilled – your vision statements! Compare them with your mission to make sure they accurately describe what you envision. If they do not, start over from Step 2 and ensure you’ve included the right key players. Then double check their jobs and the jobs of the socio-ecological levels.

By entering into this process periodically (I recommend at least once per year), you, your employees, and your volunteers can keep the finish line in sight and judge any new activity against whether it puts you closer to the state of the world described in your vision statements and embodied in your mission.

Need some more direct coaching through the process? Sign up for The Social Entrepreneurship Hub! Looking for more information on building a social enterprise? Sign up for my mailing list! Have questions? Send me a message at kat@katbloomfield.com!