Having a Vision and then successfully achieving it requires a coordinated approach focusing on three key activities: Communicating, Enabling and Embedding. In this blog episode, I share my thoughts on the importance ensuring you have a joined-up approach to these key activities (and what can happen if you don’t!):
To discuss achieving your organisations vision in more detail, please do get in touch using the options below.
Before I continue, I recognise and acknowledge that the current Coronavirus situation is really tough for many many people and livelihoods and jobs are at risk (putting aside the obvious health implications of the virus). I therefore write this post with that in mind and in the genuine belief that focusing on the future can provide some potential help during these difficult times.
It’s natural and a necessity for people and organisations to be responding tactically at this time to ensure their businesses are able to operate in some way, shape or form during this pandemic. Completely understandable and a requirement of any responsible business.
However, it can be easy for business owners to take their eyes off the long term vision of their business (I know I’ve done it!). It’s also easy to forget to learn from the current situation – there are many valuable lessons learnt already and to be learnt over the coming weeks. So here are some ideas I offer to help:
Taking the time to think about and act on the above will pay dividends for your business both now and after this situation comes to an end. You may even find that your vision for your business alters to a greater or lesser degree due to what we’re all experiencing at the moment. But it will need you to ‘look up not down’ during these tough times.
Good luck and as always if Crackerjack can be of help do contact us.
All the best,
John
Just a quick note to say that meetings don’t need to stop during these challenging times! Work needs to continue for social and economic reasons – it just needs to be done in a different way.
There are many great on-line ways for teams to meet virtually and talk.
However, please remember that virtual meetings need the same (if not more) planning than your ‘normal’ face to face meetings! Here’s a quick checklist:
• Be clear on the purpose and outcomes you desire for your meeting
• Plan the flow of your meeting, weaving together inputs (not too many!), activities, feedback mechanisms and action planning to create a clear path towards the meeting outcomes.
• Check and re-check the on-line meeting platform you will be using for the meeting. Check that all your participants can access the meeting platform and have the log-on details required.
• Don’t forget that just like face to face meetings, introductions, ice-breakers and energisers still need to be part of your meetings. Design virtual versions of these activities for use during your meeting.
• Use pictures and diagrams to frame conversations, drive discussion and engage your participants. And I’m not talking about 80 page PowerPoint decks!!!
We hope you find the above helpful.
Crackerjack is able to offer an on-line meeting facilitation service should you need help running your virtual meetings and virtual events. Please do CONTACT US for more information if we can be of help.
John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking
We’re very pleased to be able share this feedback from Steve Walton, Associate Director for Strategic Consultancy at AECOM Transportation (EMIA) in relation to 2019 Business Plan rich picture Crackerjack created earlier this year:
“Back in September 2018 AECOM’s Strategic Consultancy needed a way to visualise what we do. We wanted to find some way of explaining/demonstrating what we do, and more importantly – why we do it, to any new members of our team, whether that be Graduates, or Apprentices or even more experienced personnel coming to work for us for the first time. Business process, whilst key to growth and success, is not always the most exciting of topics to learn or be told, even when you are actively supporting progress. However we felt that something a little more dynamic was required to maximise inclusion and understanding in what we do. So we worked with John and came up with a way of selling the story of what we do and why, but in a more engaging and interesting way.
The idea behind our graphic was simple enough. It was to tell a story. The story was developed so that it aligned with the corporate objectives, and the tools we have available to us. The story forms a roadmap, explaining who we are as a team, what we are trying to achieve, our vison, our values and our clients – both current and future. The graphic provides us with the ability to demonstrate what we do, why we do it, who we do it for and the value it provides to AECOM. It helps people who maybe have not been in the business long, or even visitors to our team visualise the journey we take every day.
John’s creativity to be able to visualise process and objective was critical here. John has an ability to see things which we sometimes cant, but which are always there. His approach was not one of direction, but simply to bring our story to life through his artwork. John’s work has been recognised by the wider business, and I believe this could be the start of a positive collaboration between AECOM and Crackerjack Visual Thinking.”
Really enjoyed designing and facilitating an event for Travis Perkins PLC yesterday. The outputs from the event will be used for a variety of purposes including helping me design a rich picture showing the benefits to internal and external customers of a new system being launched in the coming months.
This has been a really collaborative piece of work so far and I’ve enjoyed working with my client to develop yesterdays session and plan for the next steps of our work together.
To find out more about how we can help you with your events, please CONTACT US.
John
John Ashton
Director
Great workshop design session with my @TP_plc (Travis Perkins) client in readiness for an event next month. We met at the @SaintsRugby ground in Northampton (the venue for the event) and worked together to create a visual and interactive session that will achieve my clients objectives during and after the event. Looking forward to facilitating the event! #graphicfacilitation #engage
We’ve just received the following feedback from Chris Henderson, Founder of One Third More about the work we’ve recently undertaken for him:
“I commissioned John Ashton of Crackerjack Visual Thinking to create a rich picture and hand-drawn animation of the key themes I explore in my book ‘Jump!: Deliver astonishing results by unleashing your leadership team’. John worked with me to understand the key messages I wanted to communicate and developed a metaphor and storyboard that visualised the story I wanted to tell. The rich picture and animation are excellent and give me two valuable resources that I can share with clients, use in presentations and display on my website. I found working with John to be both thought provoking and supportive and look forward to working with him again on future projects.”
Chris Henderson | Founder of One Third More
Here’s the rich picture we created for Chris. Click on the image to see the hand-drawn animation:
Crackerjack Visual Thinking is really pleased to share that Interflora and Central Manchester University Hostpitals NHS Foundation Trust have both asked us to help them visualise their thinking.
We’ll be providing the full range of visual thinking services including graphic facilitation and rich picture creation to these new clients.
We’re really looking forward to working with both of these organisations and helping them use visual thinking to communicate important information and engage their people over the next few months.
To find out how Crackerjack Visual Thinking can help you, please CONTACT US.
It is acknowledged that sharing information visually via sketches and diagrams can help people understand concepts more easily and drive more meaningful discussions than more traditional methods of sharing information (i.e. reports, bullet-pointed presentations etc).
Is it because you feel your own drawing skills are not up to scratch?
Or is it because you feel drawing ideas doesn’t align with the culture of your organisation (i.e. you might be laughed at or looked down upon for using a ‘childish’ way of working)?
What I’m pleased to tell you is that both of the above reasons for not drawing are wrong!
You don’t need to be a great artist to draw ideas. Simple stick people, basic shapes and a bit of colour are all you need. A simple sketch that helps people understand something is better than not giving it a go and people not understanding the idea you’re wanting to share! Have a look at Dan Roam’s website (one of the thought leaders in visual thinking) to see how he encourages people to use simple sketches to drive business conversations. Crackerjack also provides training workshops to help you develop your drawing skills – click here to learn more.
If it’s a cultural issue, then simply point out that successful companies like Google and Apple actively encourage their employees to sketch ideas out wherever possible. Many forward-thinking organisations have ‘drawing walls’ where teams can work together to sketch ideas, develop new thinking and explore different ways of doing things. They then simply take a picture on their smartphone to share what they’ve created. Simple, efficient and effective!
So, join the visual thinking party and start sketching out ideas in your workplace today! And remember to share in the comments below how drawing has helped you and your colleagues develop ideas and increase understanding where you work!
Happy and productive drawing!
John Ashton
Crackerjack Visual Thinking
