Services

In service to building effective environmental organizations and catalyzing their work together, envision uses four tools:

  1. Design and facilitation of top-notch meetings
  2. Graphic recording to draw out your ideas
  3. Evaluation of how initiatives and programs are doing, and
  4. Teaching and coaching on working collectively and collaboratively and building strong organizations.

 


 
facilitation

We strive for meetings where you can honestly say it was the best one you’ve been to — maybe ever!

At envision, we have a knack for helping people engage in and contribute to important conversations. We nurture the diverse views that yield important insights and we focus on meeting process so you don’t have to – freeing you to participate fully. envision‘s meetings tap the collective wisdom in the room, and focus on what matters while reducing squabbling and minimizing tangents.

You’re raring to go next time, because the magic of the collective has emerged and has created outcomes that people support and are eager to implement. Indeed from now on, you’ll want a “process” person to take care of the process details and group dynamics.

Diverse techniques enable you achieve your desired outcomes.

envision selects relevant process(es) for your situation — whether it is “open space,” a “conversation or world café,” “appreciative inquiry,” “future search,” “visualization at the wall,” “round robin facilitation” or more standard plenary coupled with small group work. Or, for small groups, we can add a visual dimension by “graphically facilitating” key segments of your session. For techniques we might use, see the methods database of the International Association of Facilitators.

For examples of the types of meetings envision plans and leads, click here.

We can design your meeting, even if we don’t facilitate it.

Using our facilitation flair behind-the-scenes, we plan dynamite meeting processes and techniques that allow you to achieve your desired outcomes. As a coach or facilitator, we can work with you before a single meeting or between multiple ones. For specific tasks we might carry out, click here.

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graphic-recording-icon

We are jazzed to amplify the effectiveness of your meetings and events with visuals.

With some estimates that two-thirds of us think in pictures, we create colorful, compelling murals of your conversation, key note speeches and more – live time, as the session unfolds — to put everyone on the same page. See envision‘s graphic recording in action here!

envision creates murals to:

  • Flesh out scenarios and plan for the future
  • Map chronologies and/or locations
  • Identify connections
  • Show hierarchy and relationships

envision creates large scale murals or small scale picture notes of key points and essential messages during your event. By putting the problem on the paper and including all voices, the murals visually reinforce verbal messages and enable you to see previously unidentified connections and systems linkages. For information on uses and benefits of graphic recording, click here.

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We work to build your organization’s capacity so it is more effective now and in similar situations in the future.

As live long learners ourselves, envision gets the value of continually expanding our knowledge and polishing our skills — whether it’s a refresher or deep dive into a new topic. We teach and coach in what we know and practice – organizational effectiveness and collaborative solutions — and we set the atmosphere to catalyze participants’ brilliance.

We work with you to:

  • Prepare customized materials based on your needs, including handouts and/or workbooks
  • Instruct participants on relevant principles, concepts and theory coupling that with experiential exercises that allow participants to reflect and to apply new knowledge
  • Insure we involve all learning styles (by including techniques that tap our natural tendencies to think in pictures, and techniques that have you moving around to tap into kinesthetic modes of learning)
  • And, most importantly – laugh while we learn!
  • We deliver training and capacity building in diverse settings.

    Whether it’s “classroom based” learning, in-the-field sessions and one-on-one coaching, we want to support your best thinking. If you’re delivering the training instead of us, we’d be pleased to live time graphically record that session; leaving you with a rich, eye-catching mural that summarizes key concepts and reinforces learning.

    For a list of topics we teach about and coach in, please click here.

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    evaluation-icon

    Taking stock of how things are going is just good practice.

    We’re curious folk at envision and we want to know how or whether the effort we put into programs, events and initiatives is paying off. From regular debriefs and informal feedback to more comprehensive developmental, formative or summative evaluation, we look to find out what’s happening with your programs and initiatives.

    Using the tools of social science envision obtains information to improve what you’re working on.

    From helping you conceptualize an evaluation to collecting information to working with the results, we help you learn what’s working well and understand areas that might be improved upon. For the types of steps we might carry out for/with you, click here.

    Click here for factors to consider in hiring an evaluator.

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