Here’s an unusual action planning activity for use at the end of your training session.

Purpose

To visualize the potential impact of the newly-learned skills and concepts across different time periods.

Participants

Any number

Time

20 - 30 minutes

Flow

Find a partner. Ask the participants to organize themselves into pairs. Explain that each pair will discuss several questions and come up with joint responses.

Ponder on the distant future. Ask the first question:

Thirty years from now, what results would be produced by the skills and knowledge you learned today?

Encourage the participants to work rapidly and to imagine broad impact on personal, professional, organizational, societal, and global areas.

Present a report. After a pause of 3 minutes, ask for a volunteer. Invite this person to report the conclusions reached by him or her and the partner. Applaud this report and repeat the process with another participant chosen at random.

Repeat with different time frames. Ask the pairs to imagine responses to this new question:

Three years from now, what results would be produced by the skills and knowledge you learned today?

Point out the differences between this question and the previous one. After a pause of 3 minutes, invite presentations from a few volunteers.

Repeat with new questions. Repeat the same procedure with these three questions:

Three months from now, what results would be produced by the skills and knowledge you learned today?

Three weeks from now, what results would be produced by the skills and knowledge you learned today?

Three days from now, what results would be produced by the skills and knowledge you learned today?

Ask the here-and-now question. Ask the participants to work individually to come up with personal responses to the next question:

What should you do right here, right now for the next 3 minutes to ensure powerful future applications of your newly-learned skills and knowledge?

After a 3-minute pause, invite a few volunteers to share their thoughts.