This is the exciting part of many of my projects: the initial design stage.
I’ve met with my client, understood what they want to communicate and who they want to engage with through the finalised rich picture I will produce. Now it’s time to turn the initial idea into the finished product!
Time to get creating!
An idea that remains trapped in your head serves no purpose.
The above is rather a blunt statement – but is intrinsically true.
If you have a great idea but are not able to articulate it to others or implement it by yourself, then nothing will have been gained by having an idea that could have been the ‘next big thing’!
That’s why helping people find ways of unlocking their thinking and then sharing this with others is so critical to all organisations.
In my experience, helping people visualise their thinking through sketches, diagrams and doodles (either by encouraging them to do this themselves or capturing their thinking for them) helps them focus their thinking, experiment more freely with their ideas and find ways to more easily explain their ideas to others.
The creativity of the visualisation process adds a new dynamic and energy that cannot usually be achieved through simply talking about an idea.
So, why not get your teams to visualise their thinking at your next team meeting and see what great ideas can be released from your teams heads!
John
Crackerjack is pleased to share that Travis Perkins PLC (one of the building industries most popular brands and owner of 20+ trade, home improvement and DIY businesses including Wickes and Toolstation) has asked us to help them design and facilitate a key event in a major change programme and then produce a rich picture to share the ouputs from the event across the organisation.
If a picture speaks a thousand words, just imagine how enabling your people to think visually can help improve communication and creativity in your organisation!
Developing your people’s visual thinking skills…
Providing your people with the skills to enable them to share their thinking visually using drawings and sketches can supercharge this ability in your organisation. A single picture could replace a multi-page report or a bullet-pointed multi-page slide show. 10 minutes around a whiteboard could develop a new product idea or find a way to save time in your production process.
Our Scribble Labs provide you with options for developing these visual thinking skills. We offer a range of workshops ranging from simply developing drawings skills through to helping people facilitate meetings using visual approaches.
Visual thinking support when your organisation needs it…
In addition to developing the visual thinking skills of your people, it can be helpful to call in additional visual thinking support to facilitate creative collaboration and visualisation of more complex ideas. This leaves your people free to get involved in the ideation and productive discussions that visually facilitated meetings can generate.
Crackerjack offers visual collaboration support for meetings along with a number of approaches to visualising ideas.
Embedding visual thinking into your organisation…
Developing the visual thinking skills of your people alongside calling in visual thinking support when you need it will allow visual thinking approaches to begin to permeate your organisation. The more people experience the visual way of working, the more they will engage with it and begin to see it as ‘the way we share ideas around here’.
Crackerjack can work with you to embed visual thinking into your organisation. In addition to the approaches detailed above, we can also help to embed visual approaches into areas such as learning and development interventions and induction programmes.
In addition, please take a look at our 1 minute guide below to find the right visual thinking approach for your needs and use the menu above to explore the different visual thinking approaches available from Crackerjack.
I’m pleased to share with you that Crackerjack Visual Thinking will be working with the Interflora senior leadership team (SLT) in November to help them develop their visual thinking skill set.
We’ll be focussing on helping them develop both confidence and technique in drawing and also capturing information visually in a live environment.
The goal will be to enable the SLT to begin using these approaches in their own meetings to drive better conversations and enable ideas to be explored and captured more effectively.
If you and your colleagues would also benefit from developing these visual thinking skills, please do CONTACT US.
John Ashton
Director – Crackerjack Visual Thinking
In the UK, it’s the half term holidays for many schools and many of you may be taking a few days off to spend time with your kids.
Although there are many things that take up children’s attention during the holidays, (from sports activities to X-Boxes), in my experience kids still really enjoy drawing. A blank piece of paper and some felt-tip pens allow them to be creative and share their ideas (whether it’s Star Wars inspired picture, a fairy story or a new monster from their own imagination!).
So why not get involved too and practise your own drawing skills whilst also spending some quality time with the kids! From simply helping them finish one of their drawings through to having a full-on family drawing competition (e.g. who can create the best monster…), the practise will help develop your own drawing skill and confidence.
And then of course you can put these skills to use back in the your workplace and sketch out ideas (maybe not monsters or fairies!) to share your thinking with colleagues more quickly and effectively.
Remember, drawing your ideas is not childish – it’s the smart way to share information!
To find out more about visual thinking and drawing your ideas, please CONTACT US.
Just thought I’d share a few small elements of a much larger rich picture I’m creating for a client to help them communicate their new vision and engage their target audience in their work.
The staring point for the rich picture was a powerpoint presentation containing outline bullet points for each element of the new vision. I then worked with the client to really understand and explore the vision and identify the real-life impact this would have on their target audience.
From this exploration I’ve been able to create a rich picture that visually shows how their vision will enable their target audience to make a real impact to the lives of the general public.
I’m hoping to be able to share the whole graphic with you in June once it’s been launched at the organisations annual conference (where I’m also creating a live graphic recording of the key themes, thoughts and ideas emerging from the event).
To find out more about our work, please visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or contact us.
It would be great if you had 30 seconds to complete the following poll to help us understand more about how people use drawing to share ideas in the workplace!
Thanks for you help!
John
Crackerjack Visual Thinking
www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com
Just spotted this advert for a new TVR sports car which uses just black electrical insulation tape and a whiteboard to visualise a teaser image of the new car.
Just shows that you don’t have to stick to pens and paper to communicate your ideas visually!
For more ideas on how to visualise your ideas and drive communication in your organisation visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or contact us.
