By Tamara Bertram
Finding out what your goals really are, the reasons behind them, and what’s stopping you from achieving them is crucial. This exercise brings together teams and stakeholders to gain a shared understanding of their goals, drivers, and barriers. You can discover what is slowing you down or if the purpose or goals are not quite right. Here’s how you can do it:
The Sailboat Exercise
1. Prepare Your Whiteboard:
On a whiteboard, draw a boat out at sea. This boat represents your team or project. Next, draw an island in the distance, which represents your goal.
2. Identify Goals:
Ask the group to write down what they believe the team or project’s goals are on sticky notes. Each person should contribute their thoughts.
3. Share and Organize:
Have each team member share what they have written. Sort the sticky notes around themes near the island. This helps in clustering similar goals and identifying common themes.
4. Identify Drivers:
Draw a sail on your boat. This sail represents what is driving you towards your goal. Ask the group to write down the drivers (factors that are helping achieve the goal) on sticky notes. Share and discuss these drivers, and place them on the sail.
5. Identify Barriers:
Draw an anchor on the boat. This anchor represents the barriers to the goals. Ask the group to write down what’s slowing or stopping you from achieving these goals on sticky notes. Share these barriers and place them around the anchor.
6. Prioritize Goals and Problems:
Finally, give each team member two dot stickers. Ask them to put a vote on the board for the goal they believe is most important to work towards and another dot for the problem they believe is most important to solve. This helps in prioritizing the goals and identifying the most critical barriers to address.
Benefits of the Sailboat Exercise
- Shared Understanding: Aligns the team on common goals and barriers.
- Clear Drivers: Highlights what is propelling the team forward.
- Identified Barriers: Clearly identifies obstacles that need to be addressed.
- Prioritization: Helps in focusing on the most important goals and problems.
This exercise can be a powerful tool in both business and personal settings to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same objectives with a clear understanding of the factors influencing their success.
Source: Workshop Tactics, Pip Decks (2022)
