Portion of graphic recording during a webinar by Lucid Meetings (great resource). I translated their approach into an online workshop to help teams identify and build on success factors.

Vision Excellerator Services

 

Your work is more than a job. It’s a calling. A passion. You’re trying to create change… more and faster, even as our world has been upended.

I can help you gain new insight, make better decisions, take effective action and achieve the results that are most important to you. I do that by helping you work productively online, see differently with visuals, think creatively through facilitation and move confidently with strategy.

From one-hour workshops to day-and-a-half retreats, I’ve helped leadership groups tackle important issues and identify steps forward.

You might assume online meetings aren’t as good as meeting in person. But I’ve found that well-planned virtual sessions can actually bring broader, more balanced and more useful discussion than in-person meetings. (Okay, you do miss out on those informal chats in the hall and that fun dinner, but I include activities to bring some lightness and relationship building even to the most serious meeting.)

My online meeting projects include:

  • Defining meeting objectives and activities to achieve them
  • Determining which virtual capabilities will support desired outcomes
  • Planning for roles and contingencies to allow flexibility for unforeseen developments (because it’s technology, so there will be surprises)

Online meetings also include visuals. I can provide facilitation or work with your facilitator.

“Visual thinking means taking advantage of our innate ability to see – both with our eyes and with our mind’s eye – in order to discover ideas that are otherwise invisible, develop those ideas quickly and intuitively, and then share those ideas with people in a way that they simply ‘get’”  – Dan Roam, The Back of the Napkin

I bring a range of visual approaches to help you and your team understand, address and communicate complex issues. They include:

  • Creating live discussion summaries at meetings or events using images and text
  • Designing templates to prompt and capture discussion
  • Developing infographics, illustrations and other materials to inform and persuade
  • Training your team to use simple visual techniques in online meetings and on their own

Leading organizations are using visual thinking at conferences, planning sessions, board meetings and other mission critical collaborations.

When the stakes are high, good facilitation can make the difference between meetings getting the results you need or falling short. Having an outside facilitator allows you and your team to participate fully rather than worrying about running the meeting. You also reduce the chance that someone internal has opinions on an issue and, however inadvertently, takes the discussion in a less-than-optimal direction.

I’ve guided groups making critical decisions in strategic planning, field collaborations, board meetings, program design, program evaluation and more. I can also partner with your current facilitator, focusing on the visual and online aspects, with or without co-leading discussion.

Facilitation includes visual activities. It can also include strategy consulting if you want to draw on my experience and expertise to get feedback on the ideas, recommendations and actions your group is developing.

Now more than ever, your big decisions need to combine new insight on where you are with better ideas on how you can get where you want to go. I can help you choose the best path forward by bringing information, objectivity and expertise to shape your overall direction or your plans for specific initiatives to influence people to change.

There’s much to be gained with outside help. I’m not buried in your day-to-day demands. I’m not limited by the way things work now. When you work with me, I’ll not only bring my own thoughts, but help you and your team pull up and look at the big picture.

With more than 20 years in nonprofit and business strategy and marketing, I have a proven approach to determining what it takes to succeed. I’ve shared my strategy expertise with clients in consulting engagements, as part of facilitation projects and in executive advisory work.

 

Find Out How I Can Help You Create Results.

There are lots of good facilitators and consultants, especially in and around Washington, DC. There aren’t very many, however, who combine strategy expertise and processes with visuals and facilitation… and can deliver it all online.

Please get in touch and let me know what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll set up a 30-minute session, preferably via Zoom, to talk about what approach we can use to help you reach your desired outcomes.