Napkinology™
People Sharing Ideas to Improve
“Napkinology™ is a perspective-sharing, reality-driven, idea-generating, creatively-constructive, collaborative way to bring people and their ideas together.” —Fran Kick
If you’ve ever sat through a brainstorming ideation process only to walk away thinking “well now what!?” Napkinology is for you and your organization.
Designed so you can make things happen with insightful, pragmatic, next-step actions that your organization can utilize, synthesize, and analyze—both qualitatively and quantitatively. An active-research methodology that turns a messy mayhem of opinions and brainstormed ideas into a systematically organic process of collaborative focus.
The ultimate way to kick off your annual planning process. Turn a once-a-year, make a list of things to do, negatively laborious event into an ongoing positive process that will bring everyone in your organization to the table—sharing what your organization needs to keep doing, stop doing, and pursue doing. The entire experience will help springboard an ongoing follow-up and improvement process that will track the ideas generated and keep the lines of communication open for future ideas to improve.
Napkinology™ a better way to start sharing ideas, create collaboration, and bring your entire organization together to sustain the ongoing integration of inspiration and implementation.
Read this case-study article entitled: Napkinology: Re-invigorating the Annual Planning Process
White Napkins: Compelling stats can be used to spark the brainstorming of ideas. These data points serve as black-and-white, hear-and-now, reality references that are currently in play for the organization. They could be quantitative or qualitative and serve as a way to both document and drive the conversation of ideas.
Green Napkins: Ideas that we need to keep doing. Things that might not get the attention they deserve, yet represent hidden gems that deserve to shine more brightly and are important to our success. These ideas are things that might play to an organization’s strengths and even differentiate the way a company is positively perceived in the marketplace.
Red Napkins: Represent things that we as an organization might consider stop doing. Perhaps an idea who’s time has come and gone and no longer serves our organization. Sometimes challenging something with a simple question like: “Why do we still do this?” can inspire something new in its place.
Purple Napkins: New ideas to pursue. These might be thoughts in response to a “white napkin” reality or anything to improve what we currently do and how we do it. While not something currently being done, certainly a purple napkin idea is worth exploring now so an organization can improve.
Orange Napkins: These ideas might be outside the scope of our current vision, mission, and values, yet longer term could impact success in the future. While not the kind of here-and-now ideas that appear on purple napkins, these forward-looking, way-out-there ideas might be important to consider down the road to better position an organization on the leading edge of change in the future.
OHIO LIBRARY COUNCIL CONVENTION AND EXPO (2013) This interactive keynote program included participants interacting with over 135 convention take-home ideas that were shared, compared, evaluated and ranked by the audience right then and there during the keynote. In addition to Fran’s message to take what they learned and KICK IT IN, convention attendees participated in a back-of-the-napkin planning process—Napkinology™—to help the OLC improve what they do as a professional association. 558 back-of-the-napkin brainstorming ideas were generated to keep doing, stop doing, or pursue doing in the future. A hands-on example of something everyone in the audience could bring back to their organization and use themselves.
OHIO LIBRARY COUNCIL BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING (2013) Fran Kick followed up his closing keynote session to the Ohio Library Council 2013 Convention and Expo by facilitating an interactive OLC Board Meeting. The Ohio Library Association Board of Directors read through, sorted, and organized all of the 558 back-of-the-napkin brainstorming ideas which were generated during Fran Kick’s convention keynote. Association members shared ideas to keep doing, stop doing, or pursue doing in the future. This high-energy back-of-the-napkin planning process—Napkinology™—was followed up to help the OLC improve what they do as an association.
FULL-LENGTH WASHINGTON-CENTERVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY CASE STUDY (2012) Fran Kick consulted with the Washington-Centerville Public Library to create and facilitate a series of facilitated sessions involving every member of the organization in 2012. During this full-length 19-minute video, see and hear what various co-workers at all levels of the organization experienced during this creative back-of-the-napkin brainstorming planning process.
UPDATE: See how the Washington-Centerville Public Library took the back-of-the-napkin planning process—Napkinology™—and created an intranet blog-like way for everyone in their organization to contribute, share, and add to ideas all year long.
Napkinology™ creates a way for people and ideas to be shared via a casual, non-threatening, fun, facilitated approach with corporate or educational organizations. The perfect way to generate ideas across the organization for strategic planning, retreat programming, or refreshing your annual planning process.
“This is the most participation in the annual planning process I have ever seen.”
Napkinology™ Participating Employee