Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Category: Induction and Onboarding

  • Visualising complex product ecosystems

    Visualising complex product ecosystems

    Organisations like SAP, Siemens, and PTC offer comprehensive solution ecosystems that span multiple domains—PLM, simulation, digital twins, IoT, and more. While these solutions are powerful, they are also complex. As a result, many customers struggle to understand how the various tools relate to one another and, more importantly, how they align with their own operational challenges and transformation goals.

    The Communication Gap

    • Customers often focus on immediate problems and can’t always see how a broader platform approach addresses their needs.
    • Sales and product teams may describe capabilities from different angles, leading to inconsistent messaging.
    • Internal stakeholders may lack a shared view of how the offer is positioned for different markets or maturity levels.

    A Visual Thinking Approach

    Using a facilitated visual method—such as the creation of a rich picture—can help bridge the gap between technical solutions and customer understanding. A rich picture is a large, illustrative diagram that captures:

    • The customer’s operational environment and key challenges.
    • How different products or tools contribute to solving those challenges.
    • The broader transformation journey and how solutions align to that trajectory.
    • Dependencies, touchpoints, and contextual factors that are difficult to convey in text or slide decks.

    Benefits of this Approach

    • Customer Understanding: Provides a visual narrative that helps customers see where they fit and how the solution supports their goals.
    • Sales and Marketing Alignment: Offers a consistent, reusable asset that can guide strategic conversations and value positioning.
    • Internal Clarity: Acts as a reference point across teams—helping product, sales, and delivery functions align on message and intent.
    • Adaptability: Can be tailored by sector, persona, or maturity level to suit different engagement scenarios.

    Common Use Cases

    • Industry-specific product overviews.
    • Executive briefings and stakeholder workshops.
    • Onboarding tools for new clients or internal teams.
    • Strategic planning, partner enablement, or bid development.

     If you would like to explore how visual thinking can help you engage clients with your product, please contact us.

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  • How rich picture’s help engage people during onboarding

    How rich picture’s help engage people during onboarding

    Based on my previous experience in L&D (working for Boots the Chemists and The Nottingham Building Society), one of the crucial elements of engaging people during onboarding is providing them with a sense of purpose and place in the organisation.

    We can help people have a sense of purpose and place by:

    • Helping them have direct line of sight from their role to the customer.
    • Understanding how their role ‘fits’ into the organisation.
    • Understanding the impact of the organisation on the wider world (including environmental impact).
    • Getting a sense of the culture/values/ethos of the organisation they have joined.

    It’s a lot to cover!

    Throughout my career (both as an employee being onboarded myself and as an L&D manager doing the same for others), the most effective tool for growing understanding, driving discussion and generating insightful questions about an organisation has been (in my opinion) the effective use of rich pictures as part of the onboarding process. So much so in fact that I now spend most of my time creating these for organisations!

    Nursing and Midwifery at NUH Rich Picture
    Nursing and Midwifery at NUH Rich Picture

    Rich pictures are images that share complex organisational stories and messages in easy to understand and impactful ways. They can be static images or evolving images that build to create a complete story over the course of the onboarding process.

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

    Rich pictures can be shared before an employee joins an organisation as a pre-orientation tool or during the onboarding process itself once they have joined the organisation.

    RICH PICTURES ARE ALSO IDEAL FOR VISUALISING, COMMUNICATING AND ENGAGING PEOPLE WITH THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS:

    • Organisational / Business Vision
    • Organisational / Business Strategy
    • Culture and Values
    • Transformation and Change
    • Health & Safety and Regulatory Compliance

    I’m very happy to have a further conversation about the use of rich pictures in the onboarding process if that would be helpful. Feel free to contact me or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com to find out more about our work.

    John