Visual Stories Drive Change
This afternoon I’m off to my youngest son’s last-ever primary school sports day. If last year is anything to go by he’ll come home with a clutch of gold stickers for winning most of the races. He gets to compete in every event because it’s such a small school – fewer than 40 children in total, so they all do everything.
Yesterday I spent the morning meeting with the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo) of his new school, reviewing his needs and the provision that will be put in place when he starts at his brand new secondary school. After our discussions, we went on a tour of the school and I took photos. Photos of a ‘safe place’ inside he can go to – the sofa in the SENCo’s office. Photos of a ‘safe place’ outside he can go to – a wooden igloo, or a bench next to a pond. A video of the route he will take to his classroom when he gets off the minibus. Photos of his form room, the dining room, the front door and the key-code pad he will use to enter the school.
And when I got home I talked to him about the ideas we had shared and what I had learnt. I showed him the photos and videos. I told him that at his taster day this week, he will meet some twins who are starting at the school in September like him, and who will be travelling on the same mini-bus as him. We walked down to the bus stop together and discussed how we will walk with him for the first few times so that he can be sure he’ll catch the minibus, and how we will be there to meet him at the end of the day. I explained about the activity week they will be having in the 2nd week of term, and we went onto the website of the venue so he could see it for himself.
I did all this because it is already the end of June we need to start working on the transition and he is Autistic. His experience of Autism means that he has high levels of anxiety about the unknown. To the extent that he will refuse to do something new, even though he recognises he will probably enjoy it when he gets there. In fact, the first few years of his life were a constant battle to get him to do new things, to go out of the front door, and even to familiar activities.
And then we learnt about visual stories. Visual stories have changed our lives. The power of photos and pictures to paint the story so he can connect with the idea is incredible. My quickly snapped photos on my phone, the shaky video of his walking route will do more to alleviate his anxiety than hours of talking about how it’s going to be.
After 20 years of running software implementation projects, I’ve been involved with a lot of change projects. I’ve sat through meeting after meeting where we have talked about what will change, who will be affected and how it will be better after the change. And for those involved in the project, there is much enthusiasm. For those who are not part of the project, it causes anxiety. Different people have different levels of anxiety over change, and not everybody will have the extremes of somebody with Autism. How often did we make it visual? Rarely. Did we use visual stories to help people connect with the change? Not really – a few PowerPoint slides perhaps.
Change projects are difficult. We resist change and quite frankly we need all the help we can get to push these projects through. Next time you’d like your team to work a different way, sit in a different place, join a different team or adopt new processes and systems, see if you can think of how to share a visual story with them. If it will work for a child, I believe we can drive organisational change faster if we harness the power of visual stories.