According to Dr Stephen Covey, everything is created twice. There is a mental (first) creation and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint.

The act of creating the mental creation is called visualization.

Visualization is the process of creating a visual image in one's mind or mentally rehearsing a planned movement in order to learn skills or enhance performance.

This is generally considered an individual activity. I am asking you to make it a collective one. Get your team together, and then follow this process.

Step 1 - Collective Visualization

• Get the team to sit in a circle.

• Move around the circle in a clockwise fashion.

• Tell your team that they will be collectively imagining a perfect scenario. A happy outcome for the guest, the team and the company. Tell them everything in this will be bright and shiny. The only rules are: Do not negate anything your team member imagines & Always take it further by saying 'yes, and...'. (this is an improv tool)

• Tell them to make it real with smells, sounds, and the like. As much or as little detail as they need to make it feel real.

• Take any process that the team is involved in or responsible for.

• Ask everyone to close their eyes, listen & imagine.

• Starting with any one member, ask them to describe the mental picture they see. They can share how much they want and then say 'continue' when they want their team member to take it forward.

• At 'continue' the next person in the circle should take the story forward.

Step 2 - Capturing The Visualization

You may want to have a few practice rounds first, but sooner than later, you should capture this amazing process. Your team will start creating a superlative memory, a story, that can or has the potential to become your ideal or perfect customer service experience. 

The first thing would be to record the narration on audio. Capture the energy, the intonation, the highs and lows, the pitch and the texture of the voices.  

When the process is done, play the audio to the team. They might laugh, cringe, or even be embarrassed, but you will see that they are listening and feeling it even more intently. Ask them if they want to do another round or are good for now.

Step 3 - Revisiting The Visualization

Post the activity in Step 2, let the result simmer in everyone's mind for a week or so. Then, gather them around again, and this time, just tell them 'you know what to do'.

• Repeat step 2, record the audio.

Now play the old audio and the new one. You will see so much more detail emerge. Some team members will have added elements you did not think of or imagine could be part of the process. 

Ask the team if they want to create a video using the audio as a script. Get the team to act in various roles. Keep improving as you go along.

Step 4 - Reimagining / Improving The Visualization

The last step is to keep improving. There are two ways to do this:

• You can ask the team to work on the same process and keep adding more details, depth.

• You can ask the team to start creating versions of the process for different situations or customer segments.

Want to make this WOW? 

• Let every team member lead at least one visualization. Break down the process to as small a sequence of steps as you need to in case you have a large team, but let everyone be activated by this activity.

• You can also ask team members to visualise a particular detail that is unique or different from everyone else's. When this manifests in the real world, it is a light bulb moment. For example, one team member that I ran this with, imagined a whole family wearing identical clothing at the time of check-in. She couldn't stop smiling when it really happened a few weeks later.

Do this for me right now. Close your eyes and imaging yourself doing this at your workplace. Imagine getting everyone together, sharing what you want them to do and leading the session. Imagine each and every one of them enjoying the exercise. 

As always, please allow me to lead a team visualization session for your team. This is with my compliments. I am on p.bedi@eclathospitality.com

This is Insight #26. For all the insights published to date, please visit www.eclathospitality.com