Accelerate your vision with AI

For many initiatives, the starting position is actually quite good: content is available, data exists and has been collected over many years. Structures are in place, and yet progress still feels slow.

In the following text, I share my experiences from two projects.

Abstrakte Luftaufnahme eines komplexen Autobahnkreuzes mit vielen Fahrspuren als Metapher für fehlende Ausrichtung. — Too many directions slow things down: only when everyone shares the same target vision does a project finally start to gain momentum.

When the target vision is missing

Especially in complex organizations, I repeatedly encounter a similar starting point. There is plenty of knowledge, many perspectives flow in, and many people are involved. What’s missing is rarely the content. More often, it’s a shared understanding of the target vision — the direction in which the project team wants to develop the new initiative.

In the project of an authority, this became particularly clear. A great deal of content already existed, and countless texts were available on the intranet. After all, the structures had been refined over many years, and now a new website was suddenly supposed to be launched.

One might think: let’s just reuse this content as-is. But that would lead to redundancies, and the target groups and their needs differ significantly.

Setting the target vision deliberately

In this project, we learned just how difficult the starting phase can be when a shared target vision is missing. Once we began sharpening the definition of our target groups and illustrating content for them through concrete examples, a common foundation emerged. This made discussions easier, and with these interim results, the project team was able to make decisions much more quickly.

But first, we had to commit: This is where we want to go!
And why we want to go there and for whom we are doing it.

Reaction before the workshop

In another project, I started with the target vision right away. Before the very first workshop, I brought along a tangible visualization.

I presented the management team with a new positioning and deliberately chose a direction that would shake the team up a bit. The starting point was conversations with the sales department, the website, and existing documents. From this, I derived how the company could clearly differentiate itself in an increasingly saturated market with many competitors.

From my experience, it is far more effective to show a direction early on than to begin with workshops. The reactions come immediately — and there’s no need to be afraid of that.

Power your start with AI

The new visual language therefore deviated significantly from what is usually expected in the industry. I deliberately designed it to provoke one or two industry experts.

Using AI tools, I was able to visualize the new direction in a very short time. This made it more tangible for everyone much faster. Images or videos can be processed in the mind much more quickly than text.

Not every direction I initially presented was pursued. Ultimately, the client has to prioritize; I can only provide recommendations. Furthermore, the client's internal resources, as well as realistic budget and schedule planning, are crucial factors.