This extract originally published online at SimplyCommunicate.com here
Big pictures to engage people in strategy and change
by Hilary ScarlettToday's communications professionals are constantly looking for methods which really engage employees in the business - a prerequisite for high-performance, and for employee and customer retention. Developments in technology have become an area of focus and are providing new methods of communicating that quickly reach people around the globe. However, one highly effective approach that is being used more and more is a method that is thousands of years old - the use of narrative pictures.
Pictures, metaphor and story-telling are being used by organisations as a way of encouraging dialogue and increasing understanding between managers and their teams. At first glance they can seem very simple - a piece of paper with images, depicting a story. However, they can be used to convey complex messages and to demonstrate, for example, the links between market context and business strategy, between organisation-wide initiatives, between activities of the organisation and its impact on the environment.
This chapter looks at how organisations, ranging from not-for-profit to manufacturing and to investment banks, have used the process of creating a picture to align leadership teams' thinking and to help those leadership teams create understanding of their strategies and change programmes.
What are they?
Strategy maps, transformation maps, big pictures, rich pictures - there are lots of different names for them, but they are essentially large pictures (around A0 in size) used to convey information to audiences in an attractive and meaningful way. When used to their full potential, they do much more than convey facts about the organisation - they generate real discussion between the groups who are using them.
Some use words, some rely solely on images to convey messages. Using words means that they have the advantage of being self-explanatory but creating a picture without words - relying on just the images - means that the picture is much more intriguing and demanding: the viewer has to look hard at the picture, think about what the images mean and interpret what they see.
Some organisations use them as part of team meetings, with the manager leading the discussion, others use them at conferences and workshops where they stimulate debates around the room.
Why use them?
There are at least ten good reasons for using them.
They convey a lot of information quickly
As the saying goes, 'a picture tells a thousand words' and these big pictures do have the benefit of being able to contain a lot of information. They can provide the context for change, what the future looks like and the steps that the organisation and every employee needs to go through to achieve the vision. They can home in on customer needs or environmental challenges, health and safety issues or personal development.
One bank was particularly attracted to using a big picture as they had lengthy documents and word-based presentations that tried to inform employees about its change programme, the consequences of not changing, the elements of its change programme and what would be required of employees. They knew that it would be hard, if not impossible, to expect employees to read these lengthy documents and take the messages to heart. All these messages and documents and slides could be summarised in one big picture and, in addition, the layout of the picture could demonstrate the links between the external world and the company's response to it, the company's change programme and the ultimate goals.
They are more visually attractive than word-based documents
From early cavemen to our own childhood, we are all drawn towards pictures. We like to explore them and try to make sense of them. Many big pictures use colour which makes them particularly vibrant and attractive. One member of a diversity team who had created a big picture to raise awareness of the importance of diversity, put her big picture up on the wall and said colleagues were constantly walking up to it to have a closer look - attracted by the look of the picture and intrigued to know what was in the picture and why. But colour is not essential: a skilful artist can make black and white pictures striking and attractive too as picture 1 shows.
They appeal to a wider range of senses and therefore learning styles
Because a picture appeals to people visually and aurally, it appeals to a wider range of learning styles: visual learners think in terms of pictures and learn best from visual displays. Auditory learners will benefit from listening to the story that accompanies the picture and from listening to the debate and dialogue amongst colleagues.
They encourage debate and dialogue
One of the greatest benefits of using a picture is that they encourage discussion. Whereas a slide-based presentation is often given in a darkened room with one person presenting while others listen, a picture needs to be put up on a wall in good light. Employees are encouraged to gather around the picture and explore it with their manager or facilitator. A manager using a picture well can draw people in, ask questions of the group and get them to talk about what they see in the picture and how it is relevant to them. A major benefit that many managers experience is that employees feel much more comfortable challenging what they see in the picture, rather than directly confronting their manager. This means that rather than tacitly disagreeing, employees are more likely to question openly what they see, raise the issues that concern them and therefore engage fully in the conversation. A picture is therefore much more likely to bring out real discussion and debate.
They enable co-creation
Because of the very process that needs to be gone through to create a picture (which we'll look at later in this chapter), they encourage co-creation. The initial development might be done by the Executive team with each contributing to what should be in the picture or by teams of employees who can look at early drafts, question what they see and suggest what the content should be and how it should be depicted. The important point is that employees at every level can be asked to contribute to the development of the picture. This means that not only is the picture more likely to resonate across the hierarchy and geographies, but also that there will be a feeling of ownership for the picture and its messages across the organisation.
They make clear links between major themes or initiatives
Because the picture is set up over a large 'canvas', employees can see how initiatives fit together or are sequenced. This is much more easily done on a large picture than in lots of pages of slides. Some pictures depict their change programmes as a journey and the picture can then show at what stage on the journey certain initiatives will be introduced. The black and white picture at the top of this article depicts the reasons for change on the bottom disk and the consequences if the organisation does not change, what the organisation hopes to achieve on the upper disk (customer focus, better global sharing of knowledge etc) and is surrounded by four other disks which depict each of the four change streams. You can see a person being pulled through a hole in the floor from the current world to the future. The person doing the pulling represents a change agent as this was who the picture was initially designed for.
They are open to all employees at every level and in every language to interpret and discuss
Pictures work particularly well in...This is an extract from The Gower Handbook of Internal Communication.
Originally published online at SimplyCommunicate.com here
Hilary Scarlett's work has spanned Europe, the US and Asia and concentrates on the development of people-focused change management programmes and employee communication. She is a director of Scarlett Associates and has worked in communications for over 20 years.
