Reflection – Visualisation

Challenge

I work for a Charity in the UK set up by local government to manage a range of buildings and services on its  behalf. These services include 9 museums, 64 sports facilities, 28 community centres, 32 community libraries, 4  music venues, 1 arts venue and a team of employees and volunteers to host several international sport and  cultural events in the city each year. In addition to the management of these facilities and events, the charity  has several teams who work to engage the most deprived people in the city to ensure they live richer lives  through sport, learning and cultural activity. Whilst the local government funds up to 70% of the charity’s  activities – our teams must work to bring in the additional 30% through a range of income streams including  ticket and membership sales, partnership funding and charitable initiatives.

I joined the charity a few years back at a time of service reform where many of the long-serving managers had  taken voluntary redundancy and early retirement packages. This left a more streamlined operating model –  largely made up of middle-managers, team leaders and supervisors who were fairly inexperienced and needed  some immediate leadership and management development to build their capability and confidence to deliver  the results set out in our strategy.

As a learning and development professional it was part of my new role to identify their learning needs and  design, deliver and evaluate a programme that built capability – across this diverse audience.

Selection

Initially I spent time with senior managers from each of the different services, understanding their perception  of what the learning needs of their middle-managers were. I then set up structured focus groups with a  selection of team leaders, supervisors and managers from each of the service areas to get their perspective.

Still at the ‘What is?’ question, sitting between Step 6 – Identify Insights and Step 7 – Establish Design Criteria  from the ‘Steps for Designing for Growth’, as learned on this course, my manager arranged a 15 minute slot for  me to present my insights to the board of directors and to gain agreement on the next steps.

Given this relatively short time slot I persuaded my manager to let me use a couple of PowerPoint slides to  visualise my findings and recommendations. I was certain that given this short time slot, that visualisation  would be the most impactful way to present my insights and recommendations and get to a decision within  the same time slot.

Application

I revealed my identified insights, in layers on the PowerPoint Visualisation using a colour coded approach.

First, I revealed the bottom layer, service by service – sharing the unique learning needs identified by  attendees at each of the specific service area focus groups.

I then revealed the blue icons to share the common learning needs identified by attendees from across all  service area specific focus groups.

I then revealed the orange icons to share the common learning needs described by senior managers in my  initial discussions.

I then used animation to turn some of icons red. These highlighted areas that through further investigation  with some of the support services in corporate office as well as insights gleaned by performance reporting,  were learning needs that needed addressed across a wider audience. These were learning needs for not only  middle managers but also senior teams and justified being separate projects that would eventually form part  of the further development solution for the identified group.

Insight

The insight presented in the visualisation allowed me to articulate my findings in a quick and easy way. I was  able to recommend that we consider turning the common learning needs into a modular programme of  blended activities delivered over one-year period. I was also able to recommend that we use the unique  learning needs as individual projects for participants, where they were assigned a senior mentor from within or  across services or a coach to support them in the delivery of their projects over the duration of the  programme.

The approach allowed the board, not generally known for making decisions quickly, to think visually and to  immediately approve my progression onto what I now know as steps 7 to 12 of the ‘Steps to Designing for  Growth’.

Approach

The approach initially requested by my manager was for me to write a report on my findings which she would  email to the senior team asking for feedback. My concern was that this would have taken much more time,  would not have provided the opportunity to answer questions and most importantly it would not have  achieved the same immediate sense of agreement and consensus provided by visualisation. I used visualisation  again at the Learning Launch step further down the line, which cements for me what I know to be a tried and  tested means of engaging and influencing key stakeholders.

In addition to visualisation, I also enjoyed learning about the part that Storytelling plays in design thinking. As  storytelling is not a strong skill for me, I am keen to learn more as I believe that this alongside visualisation will  prove invaluable for future work.

