Category: #thinkery

You’d know that I once appeared on a TV comedy show in a police line-up of bald men… This is one of my favourite icebreakers. It gets people talking about themselves, but heading straight for the quirks (We’ve all got them!) By recording a visual landscape of these offhand intros, it becomes much easier to…

How shall we do our research and product building? Shall we do it to the users? Or do it with them? I wonder how many ‘orgs’ start with the intention of doing it with users, but inevitably end up doing it to them? This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are…

Is it – A) – Our context is totally unique, therefore the solution required will be bespoke or B) Another organisation has had a similar problem, and figured out an effective solution. If only somebody out there was collecting these service “recipes” so others can remix them. Oh, they already are for the charity sector?…

It’s one thing to contact users who are using your product. But how do you contact those that should be using it, but for some reason aren’t? And what’s the reason they aren’t? This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Universal Credit: 25% of applicable people don’t apply. Or rather – a lot of those people started the process of applying, but never made it to the end. So why were they falling out of the process? You can read more about a discovery project to address this. This Thinkery was captured live during a…

“My bandwidth isn’t great today so I’m going to face mute…” This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Where do you get your confidence from? Practice? An inbuilt sense? Reassurance from others? And what leaks your confidence? I watched the highlights of a tennis match yesterday, and saw a young upstart blow away their mature opponent, but still need 6 match points just to get over the line. Don’t overthink it – you’ve…

Thinking again about communications, it’s easy to forget that your audience may only be open to certain modes of communication. So it’s probably a good idea to survey them and see which channels they prefer. This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

There are two sides to every communication. And one of those sides is usually pretty ropey. In tricky circumstances, I’ve been amazed at email’s ability to remove any trace of human soul. The result leaves the communication open to the addition of any, and every, piece of baggage that the reader is carrying. At least…

Who isn’t guilty of putting up a website and then completely forgetting about it. It takes so much effort to get a decent web presence over the line and usually it comes down to the creation of relevant, punchy content (or lack thereof). It’s easy to be completely oblivious to the fact that parts of…

If in doubt, tell a story. Even better – visualise the story. When I try to think through how to tell a story, I always take to paper first and sketch each bit out as my brain jumps around from wrong turns at the start of the journey, to reflections from the summit. And oh,…