5. Tools – making use of best-practice

Left-right brain - orb showing a diagram of a brain with the left and right sides. The left side in black and white and the right side coloured - logo for pictorial visioning

Pictorial Visioning

Using visual images to work with our hopes for the future can prove very motivational – – – – – – – – – – … Read more
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Why-How Charting

Why-How charting is a means of thoroughly exploring the logic of how an entity works, and why it does what it is endeavouring to do. The … Read more
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Tree Diagram

The Tree Diagram is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools. The Tree Diagram is a tool to explore exactly what needs to be done … Read more
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Process Decision Programme Chart

The Process Decision Programme Chart (PDPC) is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools. The Process Decision Program Chart (PDPC) Is very similar in many … Read more
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Interrelationship Digraph

The Interrelationship Digraph is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools. It is frequently used to further explore the groups that develop out of the affinity … Read more
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Maturity Models

Maturity Models are useful devices for building ownership for improvement within a viable strategy of overall change. They basically consist of a number of dimensions … Read more
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Meeting by Design

Web-based meetings are often seen as an inferior alternative to physical meetings something to fill in the gaps when travel is too expensive or inconvenient.  … Read more
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Creativity Tools

Creativity templates have been constructed to stimulate and challenge the minds of the group to take different perspectives on a situation, and to see what … Read more
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SCAMPER

SCAMPER is a really useful tool (or more accurately, a checklist) for exploring creative possibilities and opportunities around a solution or situation. The word SCAMPER … Read more
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TRIZ

TRIZ is a powerful means of stimulating and focusing creativity, in all fields, based on a complete analysis of all human innovation. – – – … Read more
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Reversal

The creativity of the human mind is excellent at making progress back toward something it understands and fairly hopeless at making progress away from its … Read more
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Reframing Matrix

The Reframing Matrix is a technique for looking at the problem from different perspectives (planning, product, people and potential, rather than the more abstract perspectives … Read more
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Problem Restatement

Problem Restatement is a technique for looking at the problem from different perspectives (usually more abstract ones, rather than the stakeholder ones reflected in the … Read more
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Affinity Diagram

The Affinity Diagram is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools and is deceptively simple. It is a means for looking at patterns and … Read more
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SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a tool which enables groups or individuals gain a better understanding on the current situation in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities … Read more
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Hopes & Concerns

Hopes & Concerns is a tool which enables groups to outline and share their positive and negative feelings about an event from the outset. How … Read more
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Six Thinking Hats

Six Thinking Hats is a useful tool for taking different perspectives on a situation. It was developed by Edward deBono, and despite its apparent simplicity it … Read more
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Kipling List

The Kipling List is taken from a very short poem by Rudyard Kipling: “I had six serving men, they taught me all I knew, there … Read more
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Matrix Diagram & QFD

Matrix Diagrams are an excellent device for encouraging methodical exploration of all of the potential ways that one set of things can influence another, for … Read more
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Multi-Channel Templates

See: The concept of a multi-channel approach Multi-Channel Involvement is about using alternative forms of input to the meeting. The standard input to a meeting tends … Read more
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Impact/Ease Grid

The Impact/Ease grid is a four-box model (a 2×2 positioning chart) for plotting solutions (or ideas or strategies) to reflect the impact of taking them … Read more