When doing change enabling work, you’ll often have to prepare and distribute knowledge. How often is what’s shared actually read, viewed or used? One factor may be the format or medium used to present the content. This blog presents some creative  ways you might package knowledge to make it appealing, and more importantly easy to digest and thus apply.

A selection

* Recipe metaphor

I like to employ creative ways of engaging with people in change to providing a meaningful experience while also addressing their well-being (physical, mental and emotional).  I redefined a ‘go-live preparation’ activity using the analogy of air travel.  In order to share the idea with other practitioners, I used the metaphor of a recipe to explain the essential elements and thus enable others to easily replicate and even adapt the idea for other contexts.

Sample ‘Fly away together – change activity’

* Game show presentation

When the opportunity arose to present a client case-study at a conference on ‘managing change (as a designed user experience)’, I gave the conference participants their own user experience with a game-show format. I packaged the knowledge of the case study into 12 mini packages (1 slide, 3-4 min of talking points) that become elements of the game-show. The audience chose from the 12 about the aspects of the case study they were most interested in. Call this an exercise in ‘ceding control to the group’!

Sample ‘Managing change as a designed user experience’ [45 min audio with video of the slide deck]

* Graphical timeline

Somebody has already down the work of curating a small collection of resumes to inspire doing things differently. A key idea is turning a chronology of activity into a graphical timeline.

Samples ‘7 Cool Resumes Found on Pinterest’

* Graphical rich report of survey results

Kea New Zealand exists to connect ‘talented Kiwis and Friends of New Zealand’ around the world. (I’m a Kiwi!) One of their activities is to survey expatriates to understand their choices about living away from NZ and engaging with NZ from a distance.  The 2015 report of this survey is visually rich in graphics, colour and icons. How more compelling is this to read and understand than pages of prose, plain tables and bullet points?

Sample ‘Kea Every Kiwi Counts 2015 Report’

* Advice about better practice in an info-graphic

There are often arguments that if you want to motivate people to change their behaviour you need to offer social proof; or use facts and figures; or use colourful images. Here is an example combining all of these.

Sample ‘Taking Breaks at Work’

Other advice includes provide a compelling narrative (aka story); or a large dose of humour that might trigger awareness of a reality we haven’t been prepared to face – we are laughing at ourselves!

Sample ‘How to lead a creative Life’

* Graphic recording of group conversation

One master of the art of graphic recording is Lynne Cazaly. She provides worthwhile and recommended learning and advice. Learn how to visually think and record the conversation of a group in real-time. Rather than read about this – experience it!

Sample ‘Video showing graphic recording by Lynne’ (1:45 min)

Recommended reading

These references in my collection have been a source of inspiration and practical guidance to me in creatively packaging knowledge.

Information Anxiety 2, by Richard Saul Wurman
Slide:ology – The art & science of creating great presentations, by Nancy Duarte
Really bad PowerPoint (and how to avoid it), by Seth Godin
The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam
Enchantment – The art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki

I hope this selection has got your creative juices humming. As a change agent we often create ‘knowledge products’ – let’s find and use ways to do this that gets better attention. What are examples of things you have created or seen?

Author

Helen Palmer is Founder and Principal Change Agent at Questo. Like Winnie the Pooh, she ‘sits and thinks’ … and imagines how people can make a better life for others and themselves in their work scape. She likes to share those thoughts with the possibility that they inspire and initiate meaningful change.