We’ve updated the Crackerjack Visual Thinking website to help people better understand what we do, find their way around the site and more easily see examples of our work.
Please let us know what you think!
Category: Graphic Facilitation
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My daughters room has the biggest flat wall in the house! #VisualThinking
My daughters room has the biggest flat wall in the house – ideal for #graphicrecording on!
p.s. I created the graphic recording during the United Nations led global #HeforShe ideathon event at the University of Leicester earlier this week. Just adding a few finishing touches!
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The important ART of conversation #communication #engagement
Have you ever had one of those conversations that doesn’t seem to go anywhere? You may have been talking for a long time with the other people involved in your conversation but feel like none of you are really understanding what the other is trying to say.
Sound familiar?
Whilst most of the time this lack of understanding is frustrating, it doesn’t necessarily have immediate serious consequences for organisations. Time wasted, frustration and inefficiency are often the product of these type of unresolved conversations – not desirable but often not enough on their own to cause fatal damage to an organisation.
However, imagine if this lack of understanding related to the vision of the organisation. People not being able to understand, discuss and share the organisations vision (its DNA) accurately and understand what they need to do to make the vision a reality could ultimately be fatal.
The result of not understanding the organisations vision could include:
- The wrong critical decisions being made.
- Confusing messages being communicated to the public/customers.
- Lack of engagement amongst employees.
- Internal conflicts caused by differing views of what the organisations vision actually means and how it should be implemented.
So, how can people be helped to have the right conversations to enable them to fully understand an organisations vision (or indeed any other important information that needs to be communicated consistently and accurately)?
A visual representation of an organisations vision in the form of a rich picture provides a single-page engaging view of what can often be a complex story.
A rich picture created to communicate the vision of Solent NHS Trust By showing the various elements of the vision and how they relate to each other in the form of a rich picture provides the following benefits:
- Images (combined with the economical use of key words and phrases) enable your brain to process information more effectively and make linkages between ideas and concepts more easily.
- Rich pictures by their nature are engaging. Initially people want to look at the picture and then they start wanting to read the detail. Not necessarily what happens when people are presented with a large PowerPoint deck or a lengthy report!
- Rich pictures are accessible to all people at all levels in an organisation. They are designed to work for everyone regardless of role, length of service or seniority.
- People can gather around a picture together (whether it’s in the form of a large poster, displayed on screen or used in a virtual meeting) and discuss what they are seeing. This process enables people to check and challenge their own perceptions of what the rich picture is communicating as well as beginning conversations about what the vision means in reality for them as an individual/team/organisation.
- The rich picture creates a new common way of discussing the organisations vision (e.g. “You know the bit of the vision represented by the rocket ship…” etc). It is not uncommon for people to go into meetings with a copy of a rich picture for reference during meetings or events!
Of course, the whole process of using a rich picture needs to be well-managed and time needs to be made to allow people to review the rich picture both individually and as a team.
A rich picture created for the Institute of Asphalt Technology It’s also important to remember that a rich picture is not just a one-hit wonder. The rich picture will continue to provide a valuable method of discussing an organisations vision for the lifetime of the vision itself. And if required, rich pictures can be updated easily to reflect changes as they happen.
In summary, art (in the form of a rich picture) can play a hugely important role in helping organisations enable their people to understand, discuss and engage with their vision. This understanding, discussion and engagement with the organisational vision is critical. A well-designed rich picture could therefore be the artistic key to success for many organisations.
To find out more about rich pictures and visual thinking, please contact us, call +44 (0)775 282 6227 or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
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Helping the NHS transform using visual thinking #engage #communicate #NHS
In the news the NHS is never far from the headlines. ‘7 Day Working’, ‘Improving Quality’, ‘Focussing on Prevention’ and ‘Better Use of Technology’ are often mentioned and form key parts of the NHS 5 Year Forward View. This builds upon 15 years of improvement in the NHS and provides a broad consensus on what a better future for the NHS should be.
Over the last couple of years Crackerjack has been working with a number of NHS Foundation Trusts (Oxford Health Foundation Trust, Solent NHS Foundation Trust and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) as they work on finding ways to implement the ideas and initiatives contained in the 5 Year Forward View. It’s pleasing to see that visual thinking approaches are playing a part in helping NHS Foundation Trusts in this important work. We’ve been involved in the following work to date:
- Designing and developing an interactive on-line ‘Improvement Guide’ for Oxford Health Foundation Trust.
- Creating a rich picture showing Solent NHS Foundation Trusts new vision.
- Designing and creating an interactive on-line ‘7 Day Services Guide’ for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
- Graphic recording a number of strategy and engagement events for both Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
- Designing a graphically facilitated ‘Making Every Contact Count’ engagement session for Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.
- Running a graphic skills workshop for the Oxford Health Improvement and Innovation Team.
- Designing and creating an interactive on-line ‘Oxford Quality Improvement Toolkit’ for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The tools and approaches we’ve created all have a single goal: to engage people and provide them with the information they need in the most accessible, informative and relevant way possible. Using visual thinking principles in all of our work enables Crackerjack to achieve this goal.
To find out more about how Crackerjack could help you engage and communicate with you people more effectively (whether you work in the NHS or in another sector), please contact us, call +44 (0)775 282 6227 or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
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Don’t take our word for it! Read about a clients experience of work with Crackerjack Visual Thinking #communicate #engage
Here’s a link to a blog article by Andrew Scott (of Andrew Scott Training) describing how Crackerjack worked with him to provide graphic recording support during an Open Space session for the University of Newcastle he was facilitating:
Open Space and Graphic Recording
Here’s the completed graphic recording capturing the rich detail of the day:
If you would like to discuss how we can provide graphic recording support and other services to help you in your work, please contact us, call +44 (0)775 282 6227 or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
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We’ll soon be ‘revealing all’ about our busy summer here at Crackerjack! #visualthinking #communication #engagement
Hope you all had a great summer!
Whilst we’ve been able to fit a few holidays in over the summer, we’ve also been busy supporting clients in a number of different ways. Whilst we can’t yet reveal everything we’ve been doing (client confidentiality, hence the blurred images below!), we can tell that we’ve doing lots including:
- Creating a new interactive toolkit to help managers improve quality and care at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. The toolkit is due to be launched in the next few days.
- Graphic recording for number of clients including Northumbrian Water, National Trust and Oxford University Hospitals.
- Delivering our first 1:1 Scribble Lab coaching programme for a client at EVHR Consulting.
- Creating a rich picture detailing Solent NHS Trusts new strategic direction.
We’ll be revealing more details on this work over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, why not visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com to find out more about our work. Alternatively, feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements in more detail.
- Creating a new interactive toolkit to help managers improve quality and care at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. The toolkit is due to be launched in the next few days.
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Creating a rich picture of the Institute of Asphalt Technology’s new 5 year vision #visualthinking
Recently, Crackerjack Visual Thinking has been working with the Institute of Asphalt Technology (IAT) to visualise their new 5 year vision. The aim of the project was to create a rich picture that engages, informs and drives conversation about the IATs new vision amongst its members, other institutes and the wider industry. To create the rich picture (shown above), we used the following process:
STEP 1: We reviewed a written version of the vision consisting of a number of bullet points against each of the key elements of the new vision. We then asked clarifying questions to ensure we fully understood the new vision and how it would be used by the IAT.
STEP 2: We created an initial version of the vision rich picture and then worked closely with key stakeholders from the IAT (including its President Geraldine Walsh) to further develop the graphic.
STEP 3: The IAT vision rich picture was then shared with the IAT Executive Committee for approval. We were very pleased to hear that the committee were extremely positive in their comments about the rich picture and only minor amendments were required before the rich picture was officially signed-off.
STEP 4: The new IAT vision rich picture was launched at the IATs 50th Anniversary Conference which took place in June 2016. Crackerjack also provided live-scribing/graphic recording on the day of the conference to capture key themes and outputs from the event as they happened:
The IAT vision rich picture will now be shared both electronically and in printed format in IAT publications. It will form the basis of discussions about what the IAT does, what the result of its strategy will be and the impact this will have in the wider world.
After the conference Geraldine Walsh, President of the IAT provided the following feedback:
“John of Crackerjack Visual Thinking was employed by the Institute of Asphalt Technology to create both a rich picture of our new vision and a graphic recording of our 50thanniversary conference. It is evident from the quality of his work that he has a true talent not only in terms of creating the actual artwork itself but also in terms of listening, understanding and interpreting our requirements. His work is outstanding on many levels. Never before have I received such positive commentary on any project. Thank you John – it was a pleasure to work with you.”
We were extremely pleased to have this testimonial from Geraldine about our work.
To find out more about the work of Crackerjack Visual Thinking, please contact us or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
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House of Fraser L&D team develop their scribbling skills! #visualthinking
I spent half a day yesterday running a bespoke version of Scribble Lab 1™ with 12 members of the House of Fraser learning and development (L&D) team.
The team is keen to incorporate visual thinking approaches into their work and the workshop helped them begin to develop the core drawing skills needed to do this.
Developing these core drawing skills will enable them to feel confident in creating images to communicate information and drive conversation during the design and delivery phases of their work across multiple learning channels.
At the end of the session, the session participants were all able to identify immediate ways in which they could incorporate the skills learnt during the Scribble Lab™ into their current and future work.
To find out more about Scribble Labs™ and how they could benefit your organisation and teams, please contact us.
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House of Fraser chooses Crackerjack Visual Thinking’s Scribble Lab™ 1 to help develop its #visualthinking skills!
Crackerjack Visual Thinking is very pleased to have been asked to deliver a bespoke version of our Scribble Lab™ 1 visual thinking training workshop to House of Fraser’s learning and development team later this month.
Scribble Lab™ 1 enables participants to draw great graphics and use simple visual tools in the meetings and events they lead (ideal for learning and development teams).
To find out more about Scribble Labs™ click here or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
