Martin Johnson created YourBigPic.com to uncover opportunities for lasting and measured business change through engaged collaboration. YourBigPic provides training and resources for meetings, the office and workshops. In 2012 Martin launched BigPicZap, which provides intuitive collaboration over the web using the same engaging approach. 

Collaboration is about working together to achieve a goal… a shared goal that leads to lasting and measured business change.

In its most basic form, it’s one person thinking (then talking) through their point in a way the other person ‘gets’ so they can move the thinking forward. Understanding the end goal and working within the same thinking framework is essential. The brain loves to make things easier, so once they see other people are able to understand the frame is set and the collaboration begins.

Some forward-thinking businesses have been built on this principle and in the case of one such innovative example, www.YourBigPic.com, they’ve built a range of resources for meetings, the office workshops and an online tool. The beauty is that the approach is the same, so the ‘get it’ moment is never too far away. When things get hard you need a safe place to head back to. Collaboration!

When piecing together the thinking journey in this range of environments, the promise of clarity remains – no matter what the conversation. People new to the problem want a quick way to get up to speed: we’re talking structured thinking. In order for others to fully collaborate, that thinking needs to tumble out onto the table.

Patterns that hover at just the right level to be practical yet flexible can fit a whole range of businesses. Each word and symbol must be carefully selected to make sense to all would-be collaborators. Anything which jars or requires skilled explanation is ruthlessly removed from the framework to be replaced by a simple visual reference with a one-word text tag.

In Big Picture terms there is a washed-out template to be written over using a 3-step path, Go Engage Grasp & Collaborate using 8 instantly recognisable symbols. When the collaboration begins these simple references become the playing field anyone can be a part of of. Collaboration shouldn’t accept barriers between experience, department or who shouts loudest. If you believe everyone has an voice and the ability to contribute, the playing field must be level and accessible by all.

Simplicity is the key “which is not a simple thing,” as Charlie Chaplin said. You need to understand the matter very well. If you don’t your efforts will be ‘simplistic’ rather than simple. Put another way, simplicity before understanding is worthless. You need to know for whose sake the simplicity is being designed. For Big Picture it’s to support collaboration for all those in the team.

Once Big Picture proved the patterns the brain needed to collaborate, they could pin down physical resources then the online tool. As a result, irrespective of where you start the conversation flows and the sharing of current thinking sparks new collaboration. Its vision is to create a daily huddle point for successful businesses everywhere. The technical hardware to project, point at and huddle around is a complementary opportunity which SMART Boards can play a key role in.

Check out more information here.

Guest post by Martin Johnson from YourBigPic.com