The problem this solves
Enthusiasm produces adjectives. Indispensable. Game-changing. Seamless. Everyone nods, everyone leaves happy, and nobody can build anything from it.
A vision needs claims, not adjectives.
Two moves fix that, and neither of them involves you writing the vision.
Move one — ask them to fast-forward
Don't ask people to describe a vision. Ask them to stand in the future and report back.
“It's three years from now and this has worked completely. What is different about how a customer deals with us? What are you telling the board?”
Description produces adjectives. A report from the future produces specifics, because the mind has to picture something before it can describe it.
Move two — give them a frame with empty slots
Six slots, from Geoffrey Moore's elevator pitch. Every one has to have something specific in it.
FOR who exactly this is for WHO the need or opportunity they have [PRODUCT] IS A what kind of thing it is THAT PROVIDES the one benefit that matters most UNLIKE what they'd otherwise do OUR PRODUCT OFFERS the thing only we can claim
The frame does what a good frame does: it shows you the slots where you have nothing.
UNLIKE is the hard one. It always is.
It asks what you are genuinely competing against. A team that cannot fill it does not have a vision yet — it has an ambition.
And if you do have to show the list — get it said out loud.
Reading a candidate to the room is not the same as the room agreeing to it. Put it up, then wait for somebody to restate it in their own words, and for at least one other person to push back or add to it. Only then is it theirs.
Because if it stays in your wording, you will be quoted as the author of it — and the first time it is questioned, everyone will look at you rather than at the person accountable for the outcome. That is a bad place for a Scrum Master to be standing, and it is entirely avoidable.
The prompt
Use this the same way as the driver prompt: after you have asked and the room has stalled, not instead of asking. The amber parts are the ones you replace.
I am the Scrum Master, preparing a product vision workshop. I am NOT writing the vision, and neither are you. The room writes it, or it belongs to nobody. Give me drafts that are deliberately imperfect, so they have something to argue with. CONTEXT Organisation: [what they do, size, market] Business drivers: [the agreed drivers, with their success outcomes — paste them in full] What the room [the adjectives and ambitions people actually said: offered, in their words] Who is present: [roles] PRODUCE Three candidate visions, each filled into this frame: FOR / WHO / [PRODUCT] IS A / THAT PROVIDES / UNLIKE / OUR PRODUCT OFFERS Make them genuinely different from each other — not three wordings of one idea. One should be conservative, one ambitious, and one should take a position most of the room will reject. The rejected one is often the most useful, because rejecting it forces people to say why. FOR EACH CANDIDATE, ALSO GIVE 1. WHICH DRIVER IT SERVES — name the specific business driver each phrase traces back to. If a phrase traces to no driver, say so explicitly. That is the most valuable thing you can flag. 2. THE UNLIKE TEST — one sentence on what this vision is competing against. If the honest answer is "nothing in particular", say that. 3. WHAT IT RULES OUT — a vision that rules nothing out is not a vision. Name one thing this version means the organisation will not do. CONSTRAINTS No adjectives that cannot be checked. Ban "seamless", "innovative", "world-class", "next-generation", "game-changing", "delightful". Every claim must be something a customer could notice. Do not produce a polished paragraph. Produce filled slots.
What it produced for Beauty Spot
Three candidates, deliberately different, drafted from the five agreed drivers.
The third one earns its place by being wrong. Rejecting it takes about ninety seconds and forces the room to say what they are not building — which is the hardest thing to get out of a vision session and the most useful.
Beauty Spot's real vision came out closer to the second, but with the advice claim removed. Nobody could say who would give the advice, or when. A vision phrase nobody can staff is an ambition.
The question that matters most
Whatever the room produces, ask this of every phrase in it:
“Which of our business drivers does that come from?”
It is a quiet question and it does an enormous amount of work.
If a phrase traces to a driver, it stays. If it doesn't, you have found either an ambition that belongs somewhere else, or a driver leadership forgot to write down. Both are worth knowing, and both need deciding out loud rather than absorbing into a sentence nobody will re-read.
That question is the difference between a vision and a wish list with good grammar.
The homework applies here too.
Everything in this session lands better if you already know where the sector is going and how this client arrived where they are — the mergers, the exits, the restructure nobody mentions. It is what lets you hear what is underneath a stakeholder's first answer.
There's a research prompt for it on the business drivers page.
Running the session
Before
Ask the Product Owner what already exists. Strategy days, board papers, an away-day output. Whatever is there beats anything you generate. Then, as insurance only, prepare the candidates.
In the room
Fast-forward question first. Wait. If specifics come, put the frame up and fill it from what they said. You have not contributed a single idea — you are asking them to be specific about ones they already had.
Only if the room stalls: put up the three candidates as a first draft that is probably wrong. Say so plainly.
After
Keep the filled frame alongside the polished sentence. The frame is where the arguments are. The sentence is what gets quoted.
Limits
The model knows what visions usually sound like. It knows nothing about the acquisition that went badly, the market you quietly exited, or the board member who blocks anything touching pricing.
Everything that makes a vision true is in the room.
And a vision written by a Scrum Master is worth nothing, however good the sentence is. If you find yourself drafting rather than facilitating, stop.
The same pattern elsewhere
Wrong-list-first works anywhere a group has to produce something from a blank page.