Golden Circle
activities for vision & alignment
By the end of these vision and alignment workshops, you'll have a clear and actionable plan for achieving your bold vision. You'll leave with a renewed sense of purpose and shared understanding with your teams, stakeholders, and customers.
An activity to provide a sense of purpose. Why try the Golden Circle
Are you looking for a way to align your organization toward a common vision for your product or service?
Activity Objective
A well-thought-out product vision sets a clear direction for teams to follow and aspire to meet. When applied correctly in a business, a product vision acts as a “north star” to guide the organization and its people.
Framework Credit
Simon Sinek, the Golden Circle
Templates
Number of Players
1-5 (for larger groups, break people into smaller groups)
Activity Duration
30-90 minutes
Instructions
Starting with WHY is the path to building something remarkable. At its heart, success is about solving problems and understanding why those problems exist in the first place. Then, you make something that lasts by creating your foundation on why this product matters to your customers’ lives.
WHY | Consider that businesses exist for different reasons-your. “WHY” sets your business apart and gives customers and employees a reason to support it.
HOW | Now, use the middle ring to capture the “HOW” You will develop a strategy to achieve the “WHY” Next, identify processes or systems that support your business and set you apart from competitors.
WHAT | Lastly, the products or services your company provides are vital to the “WHAT” of your Golden Circle. Finally, the outer-most ring highlights the products and services that make you competitive.
When your vision “WHY” transcends profitability, customers and employees will have a deeper connection with it. Therefore, you should display your Golden Circle vision somewhere everyone can see it to drive engagement and success.
Check out our blog for reflection questions for teams.
Agenda Example
Welcome and introduction (5 minutes)
Why (10 minutes)
How (10 minutes)
What (10 minutes
Reflection and Learning (10 minutes)
Wrap-up and closing (5 minutes)
Check out our blog for planning meetings and workshops.
Script & Talk Track
Hello everyone, and welcome to this activity. Today, we will use the Golden Circle framework to craft a compelling vision for our product. The Golden Circle is a simple but powerful tool that helps us communicate our product's purpose, value, and impact to our customers and stakeholders.
The Golden Circle comprises three concentric circles: why, how, and what. The why circle represents the core reason our product exists and matters to our customers' lives. The how circle represents the strategy, processes, or systems we use to achieve our why and differentiate ourselves from competitors. The what circle represents the products or services we offer and how they solve our customers' problems.
The key to using the Golden Circle is to start with why and work your way outwards. By starting with why, we can create a strong foundation for our product vision and inspire our customers and stakeholders to support it. By ending with what, we can show how our product delivers on our promise and meets our customers' needs.
To do this activity, we will need a template of the Golden Circle and a pen or marker. You can use the template that I have provided for you, or you can download it from the website link that I have shared with you.
Let's begin by filling in the why circle of the template with a sentence that describes the core reason why our product exists and why it matters to our customers' lives. For example...
Want to build a bold strategic vision with your team using a human-centred approach?
