Very pleased to be featured in an article by Laura french-Constant of Research to Action about Visual Note Taking at Conferences. You can read the article by clicking here.
To find out more about how Crackerjack Visual Thinking creates images that start a conversation, contact us at info@crackerjackvisualthinking.com or call us on +44 (0)775 282 6227.
“John [from Crackerjack Visual Thinking] took the information relating to our 10 year vision and represented it in a really clear way that made perfect sense.”
I often get asked “Is visual thinking is exclusively about the use of pictures?” and “Can I not use words in my pictures”?
My answer is that visual thinking can be just about the way you position words in relation to each other.
For example, the following template is used to help people share their thinking about an organisations values:
People are simply asked to write their thoughts directly onto the large template. When the activity is completed, the relative density and positioning of their responses can immediately and visually provide valuable feedback about the organisations values:
In the example above, before we even look at the detailed content of the responses, we can immediately see that:
All the above insights are obtained without the use of any pictures – simply from being able to see the positioning and density of the words on the template.
So the answer to the question is “No”, visual thinking is NOT all about pictures. It is all about helping people see information more clearly – whether this involves words, pictures or any combination of these.
John Ashton
Telling a clear story can be the key helping your people engage with your organisations vision and purpose.
Being able to ‘see’ the story as a picture can further enhance their understanding, helping them both see the ‘big picture’ and well as better understand where their role fits into what can sometimes be large and complex organisations.
Find out more about how visual thinking can support engagement in your organisation by listening to John Ashton from Crackerjack Visual Thinking on Engage for Success Radio:
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of discussing the links between visual thinking and employee engagement on the Engage for Success Radio Show.
As a supporter of the Engage for Success movement, it was great to share thinking on how using visual thinking tools and techniques in an organisation can help people have better conversations and enable an organisation to tell its story (often referred to as its strategic narrative) more effectively.
Here’s the link to the interview: Engage for Success Radio Show #132
Hope you find it interesting and please do share your feedback and thoughts!
Visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com to find out more about how visual thinking can enable employee engagement and better conversations within your organisation.
When people commission visual thinking projects (e.g. creating graphic recording, rich pictures, organisational storyboards, animations etc…), it can be very easy for them to focus first on the content, size, shape, style, layout and colours of the visual being produced.
However, often people forget to really think about how the visual is going to drive meaningful conversations in their organisation. Before taking on a piece of work, we always ask clients how they think the visuals we produce are going to engage people, enable understanding and even drive change in their organisation.
So, before you commission a piece of visual thinking work, really consider the effect you want the visual to have. This in turn will inform the design of the visual including the type of content, the size, shape, style, layout and colours etc. Remember, a pretty picture is not always the most informative picture!
Visual thinking it not just about the picture itself, it’s about the effect that is created when people view the image and discuss it with their colleagues. These are the conversations that can drive change in an organisation!
Crackerjack Visual Thinking is very excited to be working with the Woodland Trust to help them engage people with their new 10 year strategic plan. The strategic plan supports the Woodland Trusts vision of ‘A UK rich in native woods and trees, for people and wildlife’. Put simply, ‘Life’s better with trees‘.
We’ll be creating a ‘rich picture’ of the 10 year strategic plan and advising the organisation on how to use this most effectively to create an engaging organisational conversation about the vision and new strategic plan.
Visit the blog for an update on this work in a couple of weeks.
#woodlandtrust #engage #communication #visualthinking #crackerjackvisualthinking
Helping people throughout an organisation have a shared understanding the organisations story (often referred to as its strategic narrative) is a key part of any engagement strategy. The story can detail the history of the organisation, its current state and its future vision amongst other important information. For maximum impact, the story should detail the ‘what’ (i.e. what happened and when?), the ‘how’ (i.e. how were the things achieved?) and the ‘impact’ (i.e. how did people feel?). This combination of hard facts and emotion can provide a powerful tool in helping people understand the organisation, their feelings towards it, the role they have played and the role they can play in the future.
Now imagine that rather than just reading the story, people can see it mapped out visually on a large poster.
They can gather around the poster and use it (either ‘freeform’ or as part of a structured meeting or event) to stimulate thinking and discussion and engage with the organisations story on a deeper level. Imagine if this activity was repeated across the whole organisation so that everybody understood its strategic narrative. Powerful eh?
Visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or contact us to find out more about how our visual thinking work can help you tell your organisations story.
Had a interesting couple of hours last night graphic recording Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire’s CIPD annual meeting. Both David MacLeod (Engage for Success) and James Taylor (Macildowie) spoke about the need for engagement in the workplace. David stressed the importance of having a clear strategic narrative in an organisation and I was struck by the role visual thinking (both in terms of graphic recording and graphic facilitation) can play in helping to tell an organisations story.
Here’s the graphic I produced during the meeting:
