Hopes & Fears

I created this exercise while I was at IBM when a team was struggling and it became important to understand what’s unsaid. Hopes & Fears is particularly helpful when kicking off a new project.

You can do this exercise on a wall with post-its and stickies or an online tool like Miro.

Generate

Give participants the prompt “What are you concerned about? What might go wrong?” And ask them to brain dump for 3 minutes.

Then, without synthesising fears, give participants the prompt “What about this project are you really excited about? What has potential?” And ask them to brain dump for 3 minutes.

Synthesize

Ask participants to group and dedupe their hopes, adding anything else that comes to mind.

Then, without discussing hopes, participants to group and dedupe their fears, adding anything else that comes to mind.

Discuss

Looking at the groups of fears, extract themes and identify behaviours that can help mitigate the risk of those things happening. Consider making a plan to mitigate the most dangerous risks.

Looking at the group of hopes, extract themes and identify behaviours that can help maximise the chance of those things happening. Consider adding the most positive behaviours to your team norms.