Team exercise: set the objectives for your impact narrative

Owned by Nicole Mc Neilly
Last updated: Aug 17, 2023
3 min read

Support from your colleagues will be critical throughout Phase three. As the project lead, read ahead to get your head around the different steps, then get your team on board to help draft your impact narrative.

You can set the objectives for your impact narrative in a workshop exercise or by yourself. However, the more people giving input, the better and easier Phase three can be.

About the workshop

Who is involved? Team work

Time: approximately two hours if you want to do it all in one go. Make sure you plan a break!

Preparation: make sure that your colleagues can see your original change pathway, a copy of the value lenses and strategic perspectives, and the list of stakeholders you developed and prioritised in Phase one. You should also make sure that they have access to the blank worksheets, either printed or digitally. If holding a physical meeting, make sure that there are pens (and post-it notes). Homework: ask your colleagues to come to the workshop with examples where they like how information has been presented or where a narrative has been built that stayed with them for a long time after reading it. These could take many forms, from reports to books, graphic novels or social media posts. Let your colleagues be creative - the more diversity the better.

Learning goals:

  • A better understanding of what your narrative should communicate to your readers and how you can engage them in the story by sharing what really matters to them.

  • A clear understanding of who you will be communicating an impact narrative to.

  • Understand what success looks like in Phase three.

  • Colleagues are inspired by new ways of presenting data.

Outputs: Agreed objectives, goals that you want to achieve - through creating your impact narrative.

Workshop content

Welcome your colleagues and do a quick ice-breaker if needed. Then get down to business with the following steps.

Step 1: inspiration presentations - go round the room.

This step depends on your colleagues doing their preparation task of finding an example where they think that information was presented really nicely.

Ask your colleagues to answer the following questions: 

  1. Why did you choose this example? (what made this stand out for them? Why did they remember this example?)

  2. What worked well in the example and what could be improved? 

  3. What could be learned from this exercise when creating your own impact story?

 

TIP:

  • Use the Empathy Map from Phase one to share your ideas or to prompt responses from your colleagues - what did the visualisation or narrative make you think and feel, see, hear or do?

Step 2: Discussion round.

Once you have shared your ideas, it would be useful to get feedback from each other.

  • Does everyone think the same way about what a good or bad visualisation is?

  • What have you learned that could be used for your impact narrative?

Write down any striking ideas or examples that have been shared. You can consult these later in your process to understand if you are meeting your colleagues expectations with regards to data publication.