!!!NEW VISUAL STRATEGY MODELS SYSTEM LAUNCHED!!!
To help you get 2017 off to a flying start, we’ve created a new Crackerjack Visual Thinking ‘Menu’ that provides you with a quick reference guide to our services and how they can meet your organisations needs. So if you are looking to engage and communicate with your people in new and different ways during the coming year, click below to view the menu:
Thought you might like to have a sneak peak of a small bit of a rich picture I’m currently working on for a client. Very much work in progress!
The client wants to have a rich picture they can use in several different ways to promote their work including as a takeaway at events, as a basis for an animation and as imagery to use on their website.
2017 seems to be just around the corner!
Although many organisations financial and strategic planning years do not align with the calendar year, it’s important to remember that moving into 2017 will, for many of your people, represent a new start.
Did you know that most life changing decisions (both personal and professional) are made during the Christmas and New Year periods? The mix of time away from work, seeing family and friends and the ‘out with old, in with the new’ feeling that a New Year brings plays a large part in this.
For this reason, the Christmas and New Year period (and the run up to it) should be a time when engaging with your people and helping them understand the role they will play in delivering your organisations ambitions for 2017 is vital.
So how do you achieve this?
The ‘normal’ line management process including reviewing objectives and discussing how these can be achieved in 2017 can play an important role in helping people understand the tasks they personally need to achieve in the coming year. However, it’s important that these conversations are also framed in the context of the organisations vision and ambitions.
People become more engaged with an organisation when their own values, beliefs and ambitions align with those of the organisation. Where this alignment is missing, the greater chance that good people will make the decision to leave an organisation.
So, ensure that you bring the bigger themes of the organisations vision and ambitions for 2017 into the conversations that you have with your people as we head towards the fast approaching New Year. Discuss what this means to them and the role they see themselves playing in achieving these goals. Ask them what other information they would need to fully understand how they fit into the 2017 plan. Ask them what they like about the 2017 vision and what they may find more difficult to engage with.
Above all, have an honest conversation about 2017 that isn’t simply task focussed and takes an individuals hopes, beliefs and aspirations into account.
At Crackerjack, we have found that rich pictures (examples shown below) are a valuable way of sharing an organisations vision, values and plans with its people. A single engaging image of an organisations story that everyone can see, discuss and understand across an organisation could be a powerful tool to support engagement with your people as we head into 2017. To find out more please contact us, call 0775 282 6227 or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
Earlier this year, Crackerjack was commissioned by Belinda Boulton (Director of Transformation for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) to design and produce an on-line interactive service improvement guide for her organisation.
The ‘Oxford Quality Improvement Toolkit’ brings together numerous quality improvement tools, templates and techniques into one simple to use practical guide that is accessible across all platforms and devices including laptops, tablets and smartphones.
The toolkit is designed to support anyone (from front-line staff to senior management) who wants to make an improvement in their part of the organisation, whether that’s making a change to a single patient process through to managing a major change programme across a team or department.
We were extremely pleased to receive the following feedback from Belinda on completion of the work:
“We knew what service improvement information we wanted to convey. However, we weren’t sure about how to present that information in such a way as to engage our colleagues and enthuse them in relation to our service improvement goals. John Ashton from Crackerjack Visual Thinking listened to our ideas and explored with us the nature of our audience and what would give them an affinity with the ‘Toolkit’. John helped us to bring our ideas to life in the form of an interactive ‘Oxford Quality Improvement Toolkit’, an on-line guide which brings service improvement tools to life. The work was delivered to time frames and exceeded our expectations. We are looking forward to working with John in the future on other projects.”
To discuss how Crackerjack could help you in your work, please contact us, call +44(0)775 282 6227 or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
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:
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
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:
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.
Earlier this week I graphic recorded the Fulfilling Lives Conference for CFE Ltd (one of Crackerjack’s existing clients). The event focussed on bringing together stakeholders with an interest in multiple needs (individuals who are experiencing at least two of the following: homelessness, reoffending, substance misuse and mental ill health) to share learning and reflect on the Fulfilling Lives programme and the sector more broadly.
Here’s the graphic I created during the conference:
To find out more about the work of Crackerjack Visual Thinking, please visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com.
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
