Mandy (@mandyjayh) introduced the daily intention board recently at ALC Oahu. It’s a brilliant tool in its simplicity but what I want to tell you about is how it came into being.

When I came to ALC Oahu intentions were stated from memory at the beginning of the day and there was no explicit space for reflection on those intentions at the end of the day. I brought this up as an awareness at the Change Up Meeting and we soon implemented holding space for reflections in the end of day meeting before moving into gratitudes.

This worked well to close the intention > creation > reflection loop at the root of ALC. However intentions and reflections where being pulled from memory. It was clear that we were often not reflecting intentions that we forgot and not acknowledging activities we did without setting the intention.

Part of the importance of the reflection process is to see these unintended activities and lost intentions so we can set more accurate intentions in the future. Put another way, the reflection process helps us set better intentions. I brought this up on the ALC Oahu Staff Change Up Meeting as an awareness.

The next week @mandyjayh had implemented the Intentions board! An elegant solution to the awareness I had brought up. It has two areas, one main one for intentions and a small bubble labeled “done” where completed intention go.

I love this implementation because it’s not complex! As the need arises new sections can be added. This seems like a great example of four step game design which I explored in another blog post. I often make the mistake of introducing a concept with too much complexity, had I done this it probably would have looked more like my group kanban, which is really complex. She probably doesn’t know it, but I’ve learned a great lesson from Mandy seeing her model this solution.