A toast, to continued creative collaboration!
Ah, the beginning of a new year! At ImageThink, we feel fortunate to use graphic recording to support incredible folks doing inspiring work and are already excited about what 2018 will bring. The start of a new year is a time for thinking big, setting aspirational goals, and pushing yourself to grow in new exciting ways. But as with any new year’s resolution, sometimes it can be hard to stay the course and hit your targets, whether in personal life or in business. Here are a couple of visual thinking exercises that our graphic recorders use for setting realistic new year’s goals… and for achieving them.
Make your own headline, with the newspaper template
Having trouble getting into an aspirational mindset? The newspaper template gives you an opportunity to envision a day in the future where you and your team make headlines with your achievements. Imagine your organization’s ultimate success, and write it down in the Headline space. It could be a radically innovative take on an existing service, a new way of working together, or even a quarterly revenue. Use the Tagline and Body sections to flesh out your idea. What allowed your future selves to achieve such a fantastic goal? Who did you partner with, what barriers did you overcome on your way there? In the Footnotes, imagine who wrote the article, or quotes from the press.
You’ll be surprised at what new ideas this exercise can spark!
Chart your course with a Journey Map
Journey maps are a great visual thinking and problem-solving tool. Not only will they help you identify your aspirations–they will make sure that the one you choose to focus on is relevant and attainable. When using the Journey Map template, begin with a challenge you faced in 2017. It can be as abstract as conflicting priorities, or as concrete as a lack of office space. Next, use that challenge to identify an ideal state for your organization. Finally, use the path to identify, in as granular a manner as possible, the steps you will need to take to move your team from the challenge state to the ideal state. You can either write directly onto the board, or on post it notes if you plan on re-arranging them chronologically.
Once your path is charted, you can start to consider both the resources you need to accomplish each task, and those you already have.
As you finish, assign owners and due dates to each step in your path. It will keep your team accountable, and keep your project moving forward.
