Using visual meeting techniques to engage divisions and the broader community, the BC Divisions are building a stronger collective voice in their community. The work they do helps support physicians to improve clinical practices, offer comprehensive patient services and influence health service decision-making in their community.

In partnership with the BC Medical Association, the BC government through the Ministry of Health is now promoting an initiative called, “GP4Me.” The goal is that by 2015 everyone who desires a family doctor will have direct access to one.

As part of the initiative, the Langley Division of Family Practice (LDFP) recently hosted a seminar/workshop for over 60 seniors at the Langley Seniors Resource Centre. The event was called, “Connecting Langley’s Seniors to Primary Health Care Providers,” and Get the Picture’s Lisa Arora and Lisa Edwards had the honor of co-designing the visual elements for the program.

Our plan was to generate immediate interest and participation at the start of the meeting so we handed out individual “trading cards” and invited each audience member to draw a self-portrait. The cards were then used as tools to introduce each person to their tablemates as well as capture the roles of the people in the room.

We also created a Prezi presentation that re-purposed graphic recordings from earlier meetings, so participants could easily come up to speed on the division’s process for identifying gaps in the system related to priority populations.

This, along with mapping the conversation between LDFP and the seniors, initiated a robust dialogue and made way for a lot of growth and opportunity to improve health care in Langley. Participants received the maps of their conversation in a visual report afterwards so that they have a tool for spreading the dialogue throughout the community.

To read more about the GP4Me Initiative and how the LDFP are using Get the Picture graphic facilitation and visual recording to enhance their meetings, check out, “Connecting Langley’s Seniors to Primary Health Care Providers,” on page 15 of the July 2013 Langley Times.

The post Supporting System Changes in Healthcare Through Visual Recording appeared first on Get The Picture.

As the visual revolution gains momentum, more and more organizations are reaching out to learn visual thinking/meeting methods. They are training entire teams in these skills so that they can transform their own work process into a visual process.

Recently, Get the Picture, provided a customized visual facilitation workshop to Policy Horizons Canada, an organization within the federal public service. Policy Horizons Canada anticipates emerging policy challenges and opportunities in a rapidly changing and complex world. Through scanning and foresight, they monitor and explore social, economic, environmental, and technological changes in Canada and around the world and how they may interact in the future.

Given their business, they recognize the importance of using innovative methods to co-create knowledge that will inform choices. By developing the skills to design, lead and capture visual meeting processes they are able to engage people and examine mental models in a whole new way.

Horizons may have only started their visual learning journey, but they are becoming true visual leaders! Here’s why…!

They set high expectations – Their vision – that the entire team would develop visual communication skills.

They are using visuals actively – Around the Horizons office you’ll find team members building their visual vocabulary on daily basis in a number of ways. Here is what they are doing:

– Taking visual notes during regular meetings
– Partnering to visualize concepts and practice drawing icons (building their visual library)
– Constructing visual maps of project teams and visual agendas
– Creating additional visual starter toolkits for colleagues and sharing their new skills
– Browsing online galleries of visual recordings to learn from other styles.

They are using visuals during meetings to harvest mental models – Horizons has facilitated several workshops which provided a space for participants to share insights, learn, experiment and test new practices and ideas. Here are just a few:

Come Scan with Us is an initiative where participants from various departments and
agencies come together to discuss exciting changes happening in the world that might have policy implications for Canada, and beyond.  Each session introduces a different tool or methodology and they have been incorporating visuals into the process.

They have used visuals to map out processes and timelines for their current cycle of foresight projects. The communications team at Horizons hosted a five-part series called “What’s the Word on Comms Street” using visuals to help improve the staff’s understanding of communications.

They are contributing to the visual community – Horizons is always on the lookout for new opportunities to learn more about visual facilitation and explore new tools they can use in their visual practice. This July, some creative team members will continue their visual journey at the International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) Conference where they will explore the future of visualization and how visual practice may evolve.

The post Policy Horizons Canada Broadens its Visual Communication Skills appeared first on Get The Picture.