Tag: wao

Surprisingly, the concept of working openly is new for some people. Maybe it’s because we were told at school to cover our work – don’t let others peek. Or maybe it’s the shame of failure dictates that we should only share perfect outcomes that progressed according to plan (which makes for a very boring story). I learn most from the openness of others – therefore my work should be open.

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 series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

“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 got this…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

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 a letter has the flow of cursive script to give it a human feel…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

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 your website simply don’t work. How many inbound communications did you get through your website last month? *Shudder*

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

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, I mustn’t forget to include that tasty morsel…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

At the end of the 10 week product definition course run by We Are Open co-op, it became time for each charity to create a wrap-up deck of all they had been learnt along the way (with lots of live drawn images to bedazzle the audience too!). And of course, in order to decide the running order of the presentations we spun the wheel of destiny. Only fate can save you now…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.

Isn’t it so frustrating to be taken outside your digital comfort zone? Luckily, all the questions you’ll ever need to ask have already been asked before – on the Internet. Now, if only you knew what the questions were and how to phrase them in order to search for that missing knowledge. Each software package has it’s own language – but once you know how to say hello, thank you, and I would like to buy a ham and cheese sandwich please, then you’re already half way there…

This Thinkery was captured live during a series of workshops by We Are Open, for Catalyst.