Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Tag: visual

  • What do all of our clients have in common?

    What do all of our clients have in common?

    Our clients come from a wide variety of sectors and specialisms, yet they all have one thing in common; the desire to engage people with their work in as impactful, memorable, informative and visual way as possible.

    Helping people easily and clearly see the value and benefit of an organisation and its work (via rich pictures, graphic recording or whiteboard animation) serves a number of purposes:

    • For team members: ENGAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION. It helps them understand how the work they do day in and day out contributes to the organisations goals.
    • For leaders in the organisation: STRATEGY AND DIRECTION. It helps them to consider the bigger organisational picture in the decisions they make and the priorities they set for themselves and their teams.
    • For customers: UNDERSTANDING AND ENGAGEMENT. It helps them to see how the organisation operates, how it aligns with their values and how it will provide them with the product or service they require.

    Our clients use our images and animations as both standalone resources and often as part of a wider internal or external communication initiative.

    Another experience our clients have in common is that the more they use our illustrations and animations across their organisations, the better the shared understanding of their organisation becomes. This enables more effective conversations and meetings and, in turn, increases action and productivity – all of which are vital to achieving the organisations aims and objectives.

    You can read more about our clients experiences of working with Crackerjack Visual Thinking on our home page.

    To discuss how Crackerjack Visual Thinking could help your organisation engage people with your story and vision, please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation discussion.

    John Ashton – Founder of Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • As the UK ‘unlocks’, it’s more important than ever to communicate a clear vision for your business

    As the UK ‘unlocks’, it’s more important than ever to communicate a clear vision for your business

    As the countries of the UK emerge from the latest lockdown and progress through their COVID roadmaps, many businesses are opening up for the first time in months and/or having to adapt to how their customers want to do business now that they are used to working in a virtual, working from home, socially distanced, culturally changed (?) world.

    The key question for me is how many of those businesses have taken the time to review their business vision (which maps out the fundamental way in which they operate and details what they are striving to achieve)?

    It’s easy to understand why, in the scramble to get income flowing again, many businesses will not take even an hour to review their vision. But they could well be missing out on identifying fundamental issues that could eventually lead to their businesses being uncompetitive in the new post-pandemic world.

    Realising that you are targeting the wrong customers, using the wrong channels to deliver products or services and using physical office/shop space in an inefficient way are examples of how taking the time to review your business vision can help guard against running your business in the same way as normal – when the ‘old normal’ potentially no longer exists!

    So please, take time to review your vision and make sure it is fit for the future (and not the future as you saw it 18 months ago).

    All the best,

    John
    Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    If you would like to discuss your organisations vision including how to develop and communicate it impactfully, please contact me and visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

  • Achieving your organisation’s Vision: Develop your People

    In this blog episode, I talk about how aligning the skills, knowledge and behaviours of your people to your Vision is vital in enabling your Vision to be achieved.

    To discuss achieving your organisations vision in more detail, please do get in touch using the options below.

    Get in touch…

    Phone: +44 (0)115 6483381

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  • Achieving your organisation’s Vision: Develop your Vision

    In this blog episode, I talk about how visualising your organisations Vision can improve communication, understanding and business performance.

    To discuss achieving your organisations vision in more detail, please do get in touch using the options below.

    Get in touch…

    Phone: +44 (0)115 6483381

    ← Back

    Thank you for your response. ✨

  • Meetings don’t need to stop: they just need to be virtual, visual and engaging!

    Just a quick note to say that meetings don’t need to stop during these challenging times! Work needs to continue for social and economic reasons – it just needs to be done in a different way.

    There are many great on-line ways for teams to meet virtually and talk.

    However, please remember that virtual meetings need the same (if not more) planning than your ‘normal’ face to face meetings! Here’s a quick checklist:

    • Be clear on the purpose and outcomes you desire for your meeting

    • Plan the flow of your meeting, weaving together inputs (not too many!), activities, feedback mechanisms and action planning to create a clear path towards the meeting outcomes.

    • Check and re-check the on-line meeting platform you will be using for the meeting. Check that all your participants can access the meeting platform and have the log-on details required.

    • Don’t forget that just like face to face meetings, introductions, ice-breakers and energisers still need to be part of your meetings. Design virtual versions of these activities for use during your meeting.

    • Use pictures and diagrams to frame conversations, drive discussion and engage your participants. And I’m not talking about 80 page PowerPoint decks!!!

    We hope you find the above helpful.

    Crackerjack is able to offer an on-line meeting facilitation service should you need help running your virtual meetings and virtual events. Please do CONTACT US for more information if we can be of help.

    John Ashton – Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • How Crackerjack Visual Thinking helped ValueLicensing visualise their their organisational vision (in their words)…

    How Crackerjack Visual Thinking helped ValueLicensing visualise their their organisational vision (in their words)…

    David Hubbard | Managing Director | ValueLicensing

    “ValueLicensing wanted to find an effective way to communicate our vision and strategy to everyone within our business, in manner that would be both memorable and unambiguous. We reached out to John to see if he could help us visualise both this and key business messages to existing and new employees.

    John’s approach was to work closely with the directors and senior management team to understand who we are, what we do and why we do it. John facilitated a number of workshops during which he spent time listening and contributing to the sessions to allow him draft the first visualisation of the company strategy.

    The artwork produced was excellent and John was more than happy to make tweaks until we were happy with the finished product. The visualisation was communicated to the business and was received with positive feedback from across the team and we have referred his work to other organisations.

    John’s approach, professionalism, and quality of work are excellent and I personally recommend John and ‘Crackerjack Visual Thinking’ to anyone looking for ways to communicate more effectively across the business. Thank you John.”

  • Crackerjack to work with Dassault Systemes

    Crackerjack Visual Thinking is pleased to share that we’ll be working with Dassault Systemes on a new visualisation project involving live real time development of a visual to aid communication between Dassault and a key client.

    We’ll be creating the visual using Affinity Designer on an iPad Pro to enable quick development of ideas and sharing of the visual as it’s created.

    We look forward to working with this new client.

  • Latest client feedback about a rich picture created for the Strategic Consultancy team at AECOM Transportation (EMIA)

    We’re very pleased to be able share this feedback from Steve Walton, Associate Director for Strategic Consultancy at AECOM Transportation (EMIA) in relation to 2019 Business Plan rich picture Crackerjack created earlier this year:

    “Back in September 2018 AECOM’s Strategic Consultancy needed a way to visualise what we do. We wanted to find some way of explaining/demonstrating what we do, and more importantly – why we do it,  to any new members of our team, whether that be Graduates, or Apprentices or even more experienced personnel coming to work for us for the first time. Business process, whilst key to growth and success, is not always the most exciting of topics to learn or be told, even when you are actively supporting progress. However we felt that something a little more dynamic was required to maximise inclusion and understanding in what we do. So we worked with John and came up with a way of selling the story of what we do and why, but in a more engaging and interesting way.

    The idea behind our graphic was simple enough. It was to tell a story. The story was developed so that it aligned with the corporate objectives, and the tools we have available to us. The story forms a roadmap, explaining who we are as a team, what we are trying to achieve, our vison, our values and our clients – both current and future. The graphic provides us with the ability to demonstrate what we do, why we do it, who we do it for and the value it provides to AECOM. It helps people who maybe have not been in the business long, or even visitors to our team visualise the journey we take every day.

    John’s creativity to be able to visualise process and objective was critical here. John has an ability to see things which we sometimes cant, but which are always there. His approach was not one of direction, but simply to bring our story to life through his artwork. John’s work has been recognised by the wider business, and I believe this could be the start of a positive collaboration between AECOM and Crackerjack Visual Thinking.”

    To find out more about our work, please CONTACT US.

  • Creating a rich picture for the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk

    Crackerjack is looking forward to beginning work tomorrow on creating a rich picture for the Office of the Police and Crime Commisioner for Norfolk (OPCCN).

    The rich picture will visualise the story of the OPCCN and the role it plays in the Norfolk community. The target audience for the rich picture is broad and includes the public and key stakeholders in the work of the OPCCN.

    We hope to share the final rich picture with you in a few weeks time.

    To find out how Crackerjack can help you visualise your ideas, please CONTACT US.