The VISIONS Model

The Greater Us' approach to organizational culture change is deeply rooted in the VISIONS model, a robust relational framework that Founder & Principal Dr. Leena Akhtar has been engaged with since early 2019.

History & Approach

VISIONS was founded Dr. Valerie Batts, Angela, Bryant, and Ida Dew Hickerson— three Black women who grew up under legalized segregation— and Dr. John Capitman, a white Jewish man. In the aftermath of the changes brought about by the Civil Rights movement in United States, they wanted to understand how to build institutions where people who had been historically excluded could not just enter, but actually thrive. Bringing together approaches from across sectors including psychology, law, education, and public health (among others), the founders developed a model that takes seriously the question of what is needed to produce sustained transformational change. Four decades later, VISIONS remains one of the most robust and transformative bodies of work in this field.

The VISIONS model draws heavily on transformative 20th-century social psychology and integrates Transactional Analysis into cultural change work across the personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels. What distinguishes this model is its approach to working affectively, engaging the work at an emotional level, rather than just cognitively or behaviorally. Most frameworks for equity and inclusion focus on awareness and skill development. VISIONS starts with the premise that how we feel, and how we've been shaped to feel across lines of power and difference, is itself terrain that requires careful attention if transformational change is to be possible. That integration of feeling, knowledge and behavior-- heart, head, and hands-- is what produces durable change.

Training in the VISIONS model is serious and slow by design. It begins with a year of mentored group learning, followed by an apprenticeship phase in which consultants work alongside more senior practitioners in trainings and consultations. The Greater Us is connected to a global network of practitioners who share a common framework, common commitments, and a shared understanding of what deep culture change work actually requires.

Connections to South Africa

The VISIONS model has a deep connections to South Africa that go back to its earliest days. Psychologist and transformational leadership consult Dr. Julian Sonn was living in exile in the United States when he encountered VISIONS founders Dr. Valerie Batts and Dr. John Capitman. His contributions helped shape the model during its formative years. Dr. Sonn returned to South Africa in the early 1990s as apartheid was ending. He brought VISIONS founders and consultants with him to do work on the ground, training people across different sectors of the country during one of the most consequential transitions of the 20th century. and has been doing transformational change work rooted in the VISIONS model in South Africa since then.

I had the privilege of recording a two-part conversation with Dr. Sonn on behalf of VISIONS in 2024. In it, Dr. Sonn reflects on his life, his exile years, his contributions to VISIONS, and what the work of transformation has meant, and continues to mean, in South Africa. Access Part I and Part II here.