Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Tag: strategy

  • 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.

    #VisualThinking #CustomerEngagement #ComplexitySimplified #SolutionSelling #DigitalTransformation #TechMarketing #EnterpriseSoftware #StrategicAlignment #IndustrialSoftware #SystemsThinking #EngineeringDesign #CustomerSuccess #InnovationConsulting #VisualConsulting

  • Great feedback from Domestic & General

    Great feedback from Domestic & General

    Really pleased to receive the following feedback from Mathew Scoines, Programme Director at Domestic & General, about a rich picture project recently completed for him:

    Crackerjack was brought into Domestic and General to help us visually represent an extremely complex new platform via an easily consumable and readable ‘rich picture’.  The process was led by John from Crackerjack who achieved this remit and delivered a service and outcome beyond our expectations.  The method by which Crackerjack engaged with us and elicited the information required to shape this visual output was extremely well crafted and fascinating to be part of.  

    John guided us patiently and professionally throughout the process and helped us articulate and break down the key aspects of our new platform solution supporting stakeholder and subject matter expert discussions to elicit the right information at the right level of detail.  John listened carefully and focussed on genuinely understanding our business and the context for this task.  This resulted in a rich picture which skilfully encapsulates a very complex solution and presents it in a format which is easily consumable by and useful to both seasoned experts in our business as well as the layperson.   

     I would recommend both the use of a rich picture to convey complexity in a form which is easy to read and understand and most certainly recommend Crackerjack as the organisation to help achieve this.

     We have commissioned Crackerjack now to take the rich picture and build a story based animation and narration around it – this is going extremely well and I have no doubt will turn out great with John’s guidance and expertise.

     Mathew Scoines

    Programme Director

    Domestic and General

  • Keep calm and focus on your vision

    Before I continue, I recognise and acknowledge that the current Coronavirus situation is really tough for many many people and livelihoods and jobs are at risk (putting aside the obvious health implications of the virus). I therefore write this post with that in mind and in the genuine belief that focusing on the future can provide some potential help during these difficult times.

    It’s natural and a necessity for people and organisations to be responding tactically at this time to ensure their businesses are able to operate in some way, shape or form during this pandemic. Completely understandable and a requirement of any responsible business.

    However, it can be easy for business owners to take their eyes off the long term vision of their business (I know I’ve done it!). It’s also easy to forget to learn from the current situation – there are many valuable lessons learnt already and to be learnt over the coming weeks. So here are some ideas I offer to help:

    • Take time at the end of each day to think about:
      • What went well and what could have gone better?
      • What processes could I change to make things work more smoothly?
      • How could technology help me do things more efficiently?
      • Are there any opportunities to use tech’ to help me work even more collaboratively with my team and customers (remotely/virtually)?
      • Has working from home/remotely actually improved mine/my teams productivity and effectiveness?
    • Every few days set aside time to think about:
      • Is there anything I’ve learnt over the last few days that would fundamentally change my long-term vision for my business?
      • Is there anything I’ve learnt over the last few days which will help make my business more resilient in the future?
      • Are there any new opportunities I’ve identified for the business which I can plan for or take action now to achieve?

    Taking the time to think about and act on the above will pay dividends for your business both now and after this situation comes to an end. You may even find that your vision for your business alters to a greater or lesser degree due to what we’re all experiencing at the moment. But it will need you to ‘look up not down’ during these tough times.

    Good luck and as always if Crackerjack can be of help do contact us.

    All the best,

    John

  • 1 hour to draw a global IT strategy for a CIO! #visualthinking #graphicrecording

    Today I’m off to spend 1 hour with the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Interflora’s owner FTD Companies. In that hour I’ll be capturing his vision for the companies global IT strategy using the trusty visual thinking tools of pens and paper. Ironic given that it’s an IT strategy!

    Screen Shot 2015-09-28 at 11.03.42

     

    Should be fun!

    John

  • #Visualising Interflora’s #strategy, developing an aerospace #explainer #animation and #graphicrecording an NHS event: all in a weeks work for www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

    Using visual thinking approaches to share complex information is increasingly recognised as an really effective element of organisational engagement initiatives across many sectors. The last week has proved this!

    I’ve been working at an event to visualise Interflora’s strategy, created a whiteboard style explainer video for a major aerospace organisation and graphic recorded at an NHS Neuro-Rehabilitation workshop (take a look at my Twitter feed @johnashtonuk to read some of the feedback about this).

    Neuro Rehab Graphic Recording
    Graphic recording created live at NHS Neuro-Rehabilition event

    In all cases, visual thinking approaches have helped to turn ideas and thoughts into tangible visual reality across this broad range of organisations.

    To find more about how Crackerjack can help you engage your people through visual thinking approaches, please Contact Us.

    All the best,

    John

    John Ashton – Director

  • Running a 2017 Kick-Off event in January? If so, read this! #engage #communicate #visualthinking

    Are you running a kick-off meeting in early 2017 to get you and your team ready for the year ahead?

    Being clear about what you want to achieve in 2017 and how you are going to do this is vital to the success of your organisation.

    60 page PowerPoint presentations and over-long speeches are not the best way to engage with your people and communicate key messages!

    Getting your people really thinking, talking and identifying the actions they need to take to achieve the organisations goals in 2017 will provide you with a much better chance of success.

    To do this effectively we recommend the following steps:

    • Think about when and where you get your people together. If it’s going to be a face to face event, remember that the venue and room play and important role in how energised people feel and how engaged they are with the event.
    • Identify three or four clear organisational aims for 2017. Any more than this and people won’t have the time to really think about the role they play in achieving each of these.
    • Don’t just tell people the information! Help them discover it themselves through activities and discussion. Learning information rather than being simply told it is proven to be the most effective way to really understand and retain information. A graphic facilitation approach which combines facilitation with visual thinking techniques can be ideal for this type of activity.Graphic facilitation involvement
    • Think visually! Wherever possible and practicable, use images and diagrams to complement the other materials you will be sharing with your people. Rich pictures provide a great way of sharing complex information and graphic recording can capture the key thoughts, ideas and comments that emerge during your kick-off meeting.
    • Follow-up after the meeting. Be sure to set up channels that enable people to continue the conversations started at the event. Also ensure that you find a way to visually show the organisations progress against the 2017 goals.
    • Plan ahead! Toward the end of 2017, arrange another event to celebrate success and gather learning’s from the work undertaken in 2017. These can then be used to inform your plans and kick-off meeting for 2018.

    We hope this advice is helpful to you. If you would like to discuss any of the above ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • A typical #exec team conversation when they try #drawing their new #strategic #vision out on paper! #visualthinking #engage #communicate

    exec-draw-conversation-01

  • 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