Have you heard about a future board before? I hadn’t before yesterday. What about a goal board or an action board? Have you heard of those? If not those, then if you’re a reader of this blog, I know you know what a vision board is.

I stumbled across the term future board while looking for quotes about leading people. Basically, a future board is a work/team related vision board.

I get it. I understand why people call vision boards different things like future, goal, or action boards. They’re embarrassed to use the word vision because it might make them seem wishy-washy and not managerly (yes, I’m saying it’s a word today) enough.

But what do a vision board and a future board and a goal board and an action board all have in common? They are all visual representations of your goals. Possibly, the one difference might be that some feel a vision board is for one person, but a future board or action board can be for a group.

The term future board appears to have been created for a team. Everyone on the team creates one board to represent their team goals and their own individual goals that will help move them towards the team goal. It’s a board of shared responsibility and goals for that team.

Creating a Future or Goal Board

No matter what you call it, it’s great when people can have visuals of what their goals are. And having a future board with pictures among the stats makes it even more fun. Keep in mind, as well, that only 30% of the population are verbal or auditory learners.

A full 65% are visual learners. They need to see their goals. It’s why a thermostat is used to reflect dollars earned during a fundraiser. It’s visual and everyone can see and understand where they are in relation to the goal.

To make a future board with your team, you’ll need two weeks. In the first week hold a meeting to discuss goals: Team goals, individual goals, and department and/or company goals. Discuss how individual and team goals impact departmental and/or company goals.

Then discuss what the goals look like visually. Not just numbers on a page, but how will they feel if they meet their goals. How can they be tracked? How would meeting the goals make them feel? Then task them all with looking for pictures, words, phrases, and unique ways to track these goals. Give them a week to find everything.

During the second meeting, everyone shares the pictures that they collected. Some of the unique things that can be included on the board are visual trackers, specific goals, even things they want to get in their personal lives by meeting the goals, such as cars, homes, or vacations.

As a team, discuss the pictures that everyone brought and come to an agreement on which ones will be placed on the group board. If there are enough items left over, each team member can also make their own future board.

Once completed, you group future board can be placed in a prominent area where everyone can see it.