Concurrent with this effort and to continue our focus on communication, we decided to maintain the Vision e-mail address as an electronic suggestion box for the staff. The people who write either receive direct e-mail replies or their questions get answered in a column from the Archivist that runs in every Staff Bulletin. To date, Vision has received hundreds of questions, comments, and suggestions from the staff and John has written more than forty Staff Bulletin columns in response. Vision continues to be a good way for staff, regardless of grade or location, to express their concerns directly to upper management. Helpful as the staff meetings and Vision mail were, we needed a way to get more focused input on what strategies we should use to implement our mission of ready access to essential evidence.
Hexagons are a wonderful brainstorming tool.
When a group has exhausted all of its ideas, you cluster the hexagons by putting related ideas together. Topics and themes that repeatedly show up can reveal significant priorities to be addressed. First, we assembled a Strategic Directions Team of twenty staff from technicians to managers and the office heads to be the facilitators for these sessions. The team received training in facilitation, the principles of dialogue, and use of hexagons. Next we issued a special edition of the Staff Bulletin that explained the information gathering session process to the staff.