Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Category: Engaging your people

  • How Personal Visions can increase the success of your Leadership Development programme

    How Personal Visions can increase the success of your Leadership Development programme

    The success of your Leadership Development programme is often dependent on helping leaders see how investing time in their development will help them progress towards their professional and life goals.

    Visualising the development journey they need to take to achieve their professional and life goals and ambitions can be extremely helpful for a number of reasons including:

    A Personal Vision acts as a leadership development compass…

    Visualising a leaders personal vision as an image provides them with a quick reference map as they progress along their leadership development journey. It helps them see the skills they need to develop, the relationships they need to build, the decisions they need to make and the behaviours they need to grow. It acts as the leadership development compass to keep them on course.

    The process of creating a Personal Vision is as important as the vision image itself!

    The very act of creating their personal vision can also be as educational to your leaders as the end vision image itself. Going through the process can reveal new ideas, things they hadn’t thought about, new pathways to their goals – or even completely new leadership opportunities they hadn’t considered before!

    How to integrate Personal Visions into your leadership development programme…

    The ideal time to help your leaders to create their personal vision is at the beginning of your leadership development programme – as a compass setting exercise. However, creating a personal vision at any point during the development programme will also be beneficial for the reasons described above.

    Feel free to use the questions in the image above as a catalyst to help your leaders create their own vision. If you would like some additional help with the process of helping your leaders create their own personal vision, do get in touch using the contact us button below and find out more about our Personal Vision service here.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    We’d love to talk about your ideas and see if we can help you visualise them!

    Click on the button below and let’s start a conversation…

    CONTACT US
  • Organisational Vision Rich Pictures – 1 minute overview

    Organisational Vision Rich Pictures – 1 minute overview

    Organisational Vision Rich Pictures increase engagement with your organisations teams, partners and customers and help you share complex stories and messages in easy to understand and impactful ways.

    A Crackerjack rich picture

    Used standalone or as part of planned communication and engagement initiative, rich pictures can be shared on-line or in print formats including posters, murals, large format displays and interactive business games.

    The rich picture process includes:

    • Scoping sessions.
    • An iterative design process.
    • Full feedback and sense-checking phase with stakeholders and a cross-section of your target audience.

    RESULT: Teams, partners and customers are engaged with your organisations vision.

    We’d love to talk about your ideas and see if we can help you visualise them!

    Click on the button below and let’s start a conversation…

    CONTACT US
  • Creating your Personal Vision – a new service from Crackerjack Visual Thinking to help you map out your professional and life goals and help keep you on track

    Creating your Personal Vision – a new service from Crackerjack Visual Thinking to help you map out your professional and life goals and help keep you on track

    Having a clear idea of where you’re heading in life (both professionally and personally) enables you to make the right decisions and choices along your journey towards your goals and ambitions. Having a map ensures you keep on track!

    I’m very pleased to share with you that Crackerjack Visual Thinking is now offering its new ‘Create your Personal Vision’ service to those people looking to map out their own (or their teams) goals and ambitions and understand the steps they need to take to achieve them. Find out more about the new service below and feel free to contact me to learn more about the benefits of creating your Personal Vision.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    AMBITIONS REALISED…

    We work with you to create your professional or life vision (or combination of the two) as a rich picture. This illustrates your professional or life goals and the journey you need to take to achieve them.

    IMAGE ABOVE: OVERVIEW OF THE TYPES OF SUBJECTS WE’LL EXPLORE DURING THE CREATION OF YOUR PERSONAL VISION RICH PICTURE.

    Building on our tried and tested approach to creating organisational vision rich pictures (examples shown below), your bespoke personal vison rich picture can be used as a map to help guide you in making the right decisions and choices along your journey and also as a reminder of what you are aiming to achieve.

    This can be particuarly helpful during times of change or challenge, when a clear focus on the future and a big picture view is most needed.

    Combining elements of coaching with our visual thinking approach enables us to support you as you plan for your future.

    Whether it’s a 1 year vision or a 20 year vision, your personal vision rich picture will be a reference point that travels with you on your journey.

    We are happy to work with you to update your personal vision rich picture on a regular or ad-hoc basis to ensure your personal vision continues to guide you towards your goals.

    WHAT’S INCLUDED:

    • Initial session to agree the scope, focus and duration of the visioning process.
    • Virtual/face to face sessions to explore your professional or life vision.
    • Creation of your personalised vision rich picture.

    RESULT: You can see your personal goals and ambitions and have a clear route to achieveing them.

    We’d love to talk about your ideas and see if we can help you visualise them!

    Click on the button below and let’s start a conversation…

    CONTACT US
  • A quick infographic showing the practical business benefits of using visual thinking tools in your work

    A quick infographic showing the practical business benefits of using visual thinking tools in your work

    Visual thinking is a term that you may have heard of, but it isn’t always clear what practical business benefit can be derived from using visual thinking approaches in your work.

    To help with this confusion, I’ve put together this quick guide to the Visual Thinking Toolkit that describes how each tool can help you in your business and what the high level result of this approach will be. I hope you find it useful.

    click here To print or download a copy (no email address required!)

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    We’d love to talk about your ideas and see if we can help you visualise them!

    Click on the button below and let’s start a conversation…

    CONTACT US
  • THE THREE KEY ACTIVITIES REQUIRED TO SUCCESSFULLY ACHIEVE YOUR VISION ACROSS YOUR ORGANISATION

    THE THREE KEY ACTIVITIES REQUIRED TO SUCCESSFULLY ACHIEVE YOUR VISION ACROSS YOUR ORGANISATION

    Having a Vision and successfully achieving it requires three key activities: Communicating, Enabling and Embedding. In these short videos, I share my thoughts on the importance of having a joined-up approach to these key activities and the 3 Steps to successfully achieving your Vision.

    A joined-up approach is vital to achieving your Vision!

    In this introductory blog episode, I share my thoughts on the importance of having a joined-up approach to these key activities – and what can happen if you don’t!

    Step #1: Develop your Vision

    In this blog episode, I talk about how visualising your organisations Vision can improve communication, understanding and business performance. This is the all important first step to embedding your Vision!

    #2: Develop your People!

    In this blog episode, I talk about how aligning the skills, knowledge and behaviours of your people to your Vision is vital in enabling your Vision to be achieved.

    Step #3: Develop your Organisation

    In this blog episode, I talk about the importance of alining your systems, processes and organisational behaviours with your Vision to deliver a great customer experience and build trust in your organisation.

    COMING SOON – We will shortly be launching our new Achieving Your Vision members area on our website which will provide you with support, resources and guidance to help you successfully implement your Vision across your organisation. Click on the subscribe button below to keep up to date!

    If you would like to discuss how to successfully implement your Vision across your organisation, please call +44 (0)115 6483381 or contact us to discuss your requirements in more detail.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • CRACKERJACK VISUAL THINKING CREATES EASTLIGHT HOMES 2021 AGM ‘VALUE FOR MONEY JOURNEY’ WHITEBOARD ANIMATION

    CRACKERJACK VISUAL THINKING CREATES EASTLIGHT HOMES 2021 AGM ‘VALUE FOR MONEY JOURNEY’ WHITEBOARD ANIMATION

    Crackerjack Visual Thinking was recently asked by David Hall, Eastlight Homes Executive Director for Resources, to create a whiteboard animation to support the finance section of Eastlight’s 2021 Annual General Meeting.

    The brief was to create an engaging, informative and fun animation that provided an overview of how Eastlight provides value for money for its customers. David has kindly agreed to let us share the ‘Value for Money Journey’ animation below which takes people “along a road very near you”…

    Eastlight Homes AGM 2021 Value for Money Journey Whiteboard Animation

    After the event, we asked David how the animation had been received by the AGM audience and his answer was:

    “Very well.  We presented the animation at the meeting yesterday evening and had some very positive immediate feedback. People liked the different and more informal approach to this subject and we are going to put it onto our website.”

    David Hall | Executive Director Resources | Eastlight Homes

    This was great to hear and we’re really pleased that the animation will provide on-going value via Eastlight’s website (in addition to the original aim of creating the animation for use at Eastlight’s AGM).

    If your business would benefit from telling a story via a Whiteboard Animation, please call +44 (0)115 6483381 or contact us to discuss your requirements in more detail.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • Oops! Our ‘Contact Us’ page has been broken!

    Oops! Our ‘Contact Us’ page has been broken!

    Huge apologies if you’ve been trying to contact us via our website or through our blog posts over the last few weeks – our contact form developed an issue which has meant it hasn’t been delivering your messages to us!

    This is now fixed. If you have been trying to contact us discuss how we can help you illustrate your organisations Vision to engage your people, partners and customers, please do reconnect using either of the options below:

    Phone: +44 (0)115 96483381

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  • Creating your organisations vision for 2022 (now is the time!)

    Creating your organisations vision for 2022 (now is the time!)

    With just under 3 months to go before 2022, have you got a clear idea of your vision for 2022? If not, now is the time to create that vision and begin sharing it with your people!

    For various reasons, many organisations only begin planning for the new year ahead a month or two after it has begun! That’s a couple of months where people may not have the clarity or direction they need to lay the foundations for a successful year ahead.

    Creating a clear vision for 2022 ahead of time allows people to prepare themselves, their teams and their organisations ready for the start of the New Year. Investing time and resource into creating your vision now will pay dividends (metaphorical and literal!) in the coming year.

    To discuss how best to visualise your vision for 2022, please do give us a call on +44 (0)115 6483381 or contact us.

    John

    John Ashton – Founder of Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • Does your retail organisation have a clear vision for sales success this Christmas?

    Does your retail organisation have a clear vision for sales success this Christmas?

    Christmas is the month after next – don’t panic!!! Having a clear vision for sales success will help everyone in your organisation know what they need to do achieve your seasonal goals.

    Giving your people clarity about what they need to do at any time of year is important in the retail sector, but even more so when faced with the pressures and demands of the all important Christmas period.

    Whilst you will probably have your sourcing plans in place, ensuring that your manufacturing, supply chain, order fulfilment, support services and customer facing operations are aligned, joined-up and working effectively will remain a key challenge over the next few months.

    This is not only a matter of helping people understand their specific role in your organisation, but also helping them understand how their actions directly and indirectly impact on other people and processes involved upstream and downstream from them in your seasonal operations.

    Illustrating the vision for your organisations Christmas operations via a rich picture can be one of the most effective ways of aligning your people to your plans in the run up to this key trading period. This approach creates a shared understanding of what needs to be done, as well as helping people see how they can best support their colleagues across the organisation in achieving your seasonal trading goals.

    To talk more about creating a clear vision for sales success this Christmas, please call +44 (0)115 6483381 or contact us.

    John

    John Ashton – Founder of Crackerjack Visual Thinking