The vision

What to do at this stage?

• Define your project vision

• Define some concrete objectives that you want to achieve

• Define the indicators to be monitored to assess success

When a new tool is integrated into the existing set of tools, it is essential to evaluate its positioning. Mapping the available tools (mind-mapping tools can be beneficial) and their scope of use from the user's perspective is insightful. This understanding of the solution landscape will facilitate the introduction and comprehension of the new tool's positioning, aligning it closely with users' daily concerns. Once this positioning is clear, it is essential to define what you truly aim to achieve with Elium.

What is a vision?

Defining the vision provides meaning to a transformation project. This is a vital step that enables teams to understand the purpose and take ownership of the transformation. A good vision:

• Impacts the stakeholders involved

• Is positive and does not lead to antagonisms or disagreements

• Is specific and linked to your context

• Is ambitious; achieving it should signify an extraordinary accomplishment that inspires action and inquiry

• Is concise and can be summarised in a few sentences

How to define your vision?

To define a vision, you should be able to answer the following questions (if not, a brainstorming session involving various stakeholders can be helpful): What do you want to improve or solve? What needs to change in the current processes? What problems are you currently facing? What would the ideal future situation look like? Where do you aspire to go?

Try not to limit yourself to concepts or ideas confined to tools; instead, adopt a perspective focused on what would be desirable for your organisation. Here are some examples of visions:

• "Transform the way our support staff collaborate on projects and share information with each other and management to enhance efficiency and clarity."

• "Increase sales team productivity by facilitating cross-site collaboration across functional areas."

• "Improve access to reference procedures and enhance the ability to share best practices to support mutual learning."

• "Boost innovation to give us the agility to meet the needs of our evolving business."

How to translate your vision into objectives?

The short and inspiring vision statement can be broken down into various objectives. These objectives make the vision more concrete and provide clear guidelines on how we will collectively implement this vision.

To ensure they are valuable indicators of progress and success, be sure to define SMART objectives (an acronym based on Peter F. Drucker's concept of management by objectives), i.e., objectives that are: S = Specific, clear and lead to the desired vision; M = Measurable, expressed quantitatively; A = Acceptable, ambitious yet reasonable; R = Realistic, possible to implement; T = Temporal, measurable over a specified period. This mnemonic helps you validate your objectives. For example, "capitalising on our good practices" is not a SMART objective because it is not quantified, generic, and lacks time constraints. In contrast, "capitalising on at least 20 validated good practices on the platform by December 31, 2016" is a specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic objective with a clear deadline. The key indicator measuring the achievement of the objective is straightforward: the number of good practices posted on the platform. Here are some examples of concrete objectives:

• Eliminate all licenses from outdated content databases in favor of a single centralised information location

• Reduce by 20% the number of phone calls received by support teams for recurring questions

• Decrease by 10% the number of emails exchanged between colleagues within 6 months

• Halve the time spent producing the weekly newsletter

• Capitalise on 20 validated best practices by the end of the year

• Increase views on the articles in the reference resource space by 25% compared to the old tool

To effectively monitor project progress, it is important to define a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be measured throughout the project. These indicators should be simple and easy for everyone to interpret.

What Is a KPI?

To track progress against the defined objectives, it is essential to establish a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be measured throughout the project. These indicators must be straightforward and easily interpretable by all. The term KPIs or key performance indicators consists of three significant words:

• Indicator because it should provide a quick and easy representation of performance

• Key because it is a crucial contributor to the project's success or failure. An indicator is key only if it can genuinely influence the project's outcome

• Performance: it is a metric that must be measurable, quantifiable, and controllable to enhance performance

While it is relatively easy to list potential key performance indicators, the challenging part is selecting those that will be truly relevant in the project's context and will validate whether you are achieving your objectives, as defined above. The best approach to define your KPIs is to take the list of objectives for the initiative and associate one or two KPIs with each objective to measure whether or not the objective has been met.

Here are some examples of KPIs:

These are just a few examples; it is up to you to determine the KPIs that best fit your objectives and your professional context!

Now that you know what you want to achieve, how you plan to do it, and how to measure it, this information can be documented in a brief support document shared with your management or on the Elium platform to maintain transparency with users.