Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Tag: picture

  • Got a complicated message to communicate? Let a rich picture make the complex simple!!! #visualthinking #communicate #engage

    Have you spent ages trying to simplify a complicated message into something that will inform and engage your people across your organisation? If so, a rich picture may be just the thing you are looking for!

    Rich pictures distill your key messages into a one page visual that can be shared across your whole organisation in a variety of printed and on-line formats.

    We’ve created rich pictures for organisations including The Woodland Trust, The Institute of Quarrying and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

    Here’s what some of our clients had to say about working with Crackerjack to create their rich pictures:

    “John has the amazing ability to make sense of complex information and translate a concept into something that is creative, meaningful and has impact! Creating our High Performing Hospital ‘rich picture’ required incorporating a diverse range of views and opinions – never easy-  but John was patient and flexible and as a result we have something that has wide appeal and application.” Helen Farrington | Associate Director of OD and Training | Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

    “I commissioned John Ashton of Crackerjack Visual Thinking to create a rich picture and hand-drawn animation of the key themes I explore in my book ‘Jump!: Deliver astonishing results by unleashing your leadership team’. John worked with me to understand the key messages I wanted to communicate and developed a metaphor and storyboard that visualised the story I wanted to tell. The rich picture and animation are excellent and give me two valuable resources that I can share with clients, use in presentations and display on my website. I found working with John to be both thought provoking and supportive and look forward to working with him again on future projects.” Chris Henderson | Founder of One Third More

    “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 50th anniversary 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.” Geraldine Walsh | President | Institute for Asphalt Technology

    To discuss creating rich pictures for your organisation, please CONTACT US.

     

  • Helping your people engage with your organisations plans for 2017 #engage #communicate #vision

    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

  • 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.

    solent-nhs-trust-vision-small2
    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.

    IAT Vision 2016 Small
    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