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Who has the Big Picture? : Todays leadership challenge
As leading organisations becomes ever more complex, sorting out the chaos is a high priority. The need for clarity of communication is ever more vital to delivering better service. Clarity is the key to unlocking the commitment and energy of teams and creates the trust needed to work together successfully. Good communication is at the very heart of this success. It is crucial for effective team work, is it the glue that binds people together in achieving common objectives. Yet understanding how that binding happens and creating it is one of the biggest challenges facing leaders today.
A picture is worth a thousand emails
Delta7’s radical re-working of the old adage "a picture speaks a thousand words" is transforming the way their clients communicate in their organisations. By translating current context, vision and strategy into large, colourful pictures provides a powerful catalyst for discussing the challenging and complex changes which organisations must negotiate successfully. It pulls together collective thinking to create shared understanding, consensus and ultimately breakthrough.
Recent Clients include:
Barclays, Shell, BAE Sytems, BUPA, DLO, NHS, KPMG, The Prudential, BT, HMC&E and Amerada-Hess.
What is Visual Dialogue?
Visual Dialogue is a leadership communication tool that uses picture, metaphor and story to supports the engagement process in a highly creative way, helping to create a shared vision and strategic direction. At its core Visual Dialogue is a process to help leaders create their "Big Picture". This gives them a useful tool to explain it to their team in a way that really engages and involves them in its evolution. It can then be use to give the whole organisation the Big Picture, helping people to understand their part in it, so everyone is working to a common purpose. The core benefit is, simply, that it promotes good communication throughout your organisation. This process creates the map of the journey of your organisation, making a "Big Picture" of the story you want to tell is an engaging way to start a conversation with your organisation.
What benefits does it bring?
Visual Dialogue improves communication. It does this by
• Capturing diverse strategic themes in one picture
• Helping people get to grip with large, complex problems
• Enabling complex ideas to be considered in a simple and powerful way
• Providing a common focus that brings people together
• Stimulating creative discussion in small groups
• Engaging the emotional as well as the rational
• Enlivening meetings through a dynamic creative process
• Leaving a readily accessible record of the issues can maintain momentum by being used back in the work place as a tangible reminder, on-site, of current issues and solution prompting further practical discussion.
How can it be used?
One use for this method is to help teams agree on a common perspective. A team is interviewed, and a picture is created that distills many aspects of the organisation's current reality that are not usually discussed openly. It is then used to engage them in conversation. Usually it allows discussion on difficult subjects, as the picture, often containing humorous details, becomes a focus of attention creating a safe space to voice concerns and ask burning questions.
Another application is as a bridge between team development and internal communication. From initial interviews with a team leader, a "Big Picture" emerges that is used personally by them to communicate their vision/strategy/values to their teams, engaging them in a rich and insightful discussion. The picture is then evolved and developed to be taken ogut into the organisation to engage everyone in discussion, moving the dialogue forward in a constructive and creative way. In short, this method catalyses rich, informal and meaningful dialogue.
Please contact us if you would like to see a demonstration of how this process can support change in your organisation.
Julian Burton, julian@delta7.com. 077 9000 7560
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