Dragon Dreaming
Research shows that only one in a thousand dreams comes true.
So, we believe that dreams don’t come true.
And what happens is people lose their dream.
The consequences are apathy, feeling of powerlessness, living from day to day, blaming others, blaming yourself, an endless search for short-term happiness, addictive behaviour, endless consumerism (‘if only I had a little bit more, I would be happy’).
By enabling us to reconnect with our dreams and make them come true Dragon Dreaming lets us rediscover that we are more than we think we are.
– John Croft, the co-creator of Dragon Dreaming
‘The future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their
dreams.’
Dragon Dreaming has found that a successful project design follows four steps – Dreaming, Planning, Doing and Celebrating. Photo: from Marco Steiger personal archive.
Dragon Dreaming is a playful and efficient project design and training method based upon the principles of personal and group empowerment.
Dragon Dreaming was first developed by John Croft and his late wife Vivienne Elanta. John, a professional project manager, community developer and educator, from 1974 has explored factors which make a project successful.
Dragon Dreaming combines the wisdom of Australian Aborigines, Living Systems Theory, Deep Ecology with methods of traditional project management and the ideas of hundreds of thinkers, educators and change agents such as Gandhi, Paolo Freire, Carl Jung, Joana Macy, Scott Peck, Arnold Mindell, Marshall Rosenberg and others.
The method integrates holisticaly aspects which have long been ignored, separated or divided in our cultures:
- our right and left brain hemispheres,
- logic and intuition,
- individual and environment,
- theory and practice,
- thought and action,
- work and play,
- success and failure.
Dragon Dreaming is based on liberating collective intelligence, creativity, cooperation and the sleeping power within ourselves and inherent in our communities.
Four Steps Towards Your Dream Project
Dragon Dreaming founder John Croft has found that a successful project design follows four steps – Dreaming, Planning, Doing and Celebrating.
To make your dreams come true you must have a dream and then build a project around your dream. Our research shows that 90% of projects get stuck in the dreaming stage. This is usually because people do not share their dreams.
So the first task in making your dream come true is to share your dream in such a way that you build a dream team around your dream to make it come true.
The second stage is to create a plan. But with conventional hierarchical planning, 90% of projects fail to work according to plan.
Conventional planning just creates two groups of people, neither of whom are really committed, and who can blame the other when things go wrong. This is because the planners in control blame the people who have to do the project, and the doers blame the people who plan for being out of touch with reality.
To make your dreams come true you need to integrate the planning and the doing, creating a project that both groups are committed to and support each other.
Research has shown that 90% of projects fail to last longer than three years. This usually happens when those involved get burn-out, need to move on, or their interests change.
This is because people leave out the 4th step, which is to celebrate. Celebration is the way to avoid burnout – and it connects the doing stage back to the dream.
Dragon Dreaming is a set of efficient methods that help 100% of your and your team’s dreams come true – no compromise!
How to Make Your Project Successful
Dragon dreaming recognises that a successful project requires four different steps – Dreaming, Planning, Doing and Celebrating.
These steps represent four kinds of skill sets, usually four different kinds of personalities that you need for your projects to come true.
But there is a problem. If you are a “Doer” who likes getting things done, your biggest frustration is to have to work with dreamers all day.
And if you are a Planner, you find the Celebrators are chaotic and disorganised, wanting immediate gratification, while the Celebrators find the Planners are anally retentive perfectionists, who are just boring.
But you will probably need all four kinds of people to make your dream come true, and so if you have a balanced project team you will probably have a lot of conflict.
Dragon Dreaming has discovered the best way to deal with this conflict is to make your project playful.
Get your team to play the game and when the game is finished your project is up and running and is outrageously successful.
The Three Core Values of Dragon Dreaming
Dragon Dreaming recognizes that in fulfilling one’s dreams, the person will have to face their inner dragons. Photo: from Marco Steiger personal archive.
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