Video Quick Draws -- Where's the Value?

Finally took the leap into doing those video drawings that everyone is asking for. I was resistant to doing them for a long time, which is odd since I have a degree in Film/Video Production. It took one persistent client who, despite my generous offers to refer the work to highly recommended colleagues, insisted that they actually wanted my drawings. Mine.

My background and interests are more focused in group process design as a visual facilitator than they are in illustration and rendering. Many of my colleagues come from an arts or graphic design background. I do not. My pull to the work of visual facilitation was from a process perspective. My strengths are in  designing and integrating visual and creative methods into group process. So, when approached to do the videos, I thought that my skills as an illustrator were not worthy of video draw projects. But this client could not be convinced to look elsewhere, so I took on the project.

The short story: I loved it! Turns out my skills as a creative writer, facilitator and storyteller were 90% of the process. In the course of six weeks, I took my client through an iterative, collaborative and co-creative process that resulted in a three minute video quick draw that they recently shared with the public in this Triple Pundit article:

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The client was very happy with the end result. We are working on more videos and they have recommended me to their colleagues. That is all wonderful. They talk about how much they love the video and our process. However, I believe that the real value they got is not actually in that three minute video. That is what they wanted, that is what they paid for, but what they really got was: Clarity!

During our first storyboard meeting, I had a wall of index cards lined up sequentially to the second draft script they had. In that 45 minute meeting, we, together, realized the focus of the video, the key message, and the arc of the story. That clarity came from seeing the sequence of images, having the script drawn out for them. That clarity will last longer than the video's value. That clarity is what they really got for their money, though it looks like I sold them a video.

What Visual Facilitation Really Is ...

I CAN BEND TIME AND SPACE:
Last week, I was in a room, standing next to a huge piece of blank paper, with a bunch of markers. 125 people came in the room and had a session for 90 minutes. At the end, a man comes up to me standing next to the no-longer blank piece of paper and says, "How long did that take you to do?"
Now, my mind was blank, unlike the paper. I said, "Well, this was done in real time." But the real answer was, "It took me 45 years." (My age.)

What Visual Facilitation Really Looks Like

Process Over Product - The Real Super Powers of Visual Facilitation

David Sibbet presented recently at the International Forum of Visual Practitioners, the professional association of people who draw images and words in real-time while people talk. At this conference we had 85+ practitioners there from the newest practitioners, picking up pens and walking to the wall for the first time, to some of the pioneers in the field. There was mind-boggling, gorgeous work on the walls. No doubt. In MY OPINION, the most powerful chart in that room, after three days of visual productivity was this one:


Later when the plenary room was papered with the multitude of glorious and colorful charts generated from the conference, I did a double take in seeing this one again. My initial thought was, "What the hell is that?" It looked messy compared to some of the well executed illustrations that sat to either side of it. It is. However, this chart was, for me, the most powerful chart of the entire conference. In my opinion, this chart visually facilitated my experience and understanding of the conversation that accompanied it more than anything else in the room. Then I was reminded of the wise words I have heard David say many times about our work as Visual Facilitators: It is the process, not the product.

I think that our clients often miss this and I think many of us practitioners miss this as well. We get distracted by the beauty of the product and forget to take deeper consideration of the value it may or may not add to the process.

You don't need help

Recently I was not able to work with a client in the room, so they wanted me to create some templates and maps that they could use in my absence. This is fabulous! This is a client that has only ever though the markers should be in my hands. Good news for my business, as this increases capacity. Better news for the world with more visual facilitation taking place.

Many visual practitioners will tell you that at almost every meeting, while hanging paper or moving charts, someone steps up and wants to help you. How lovely is that? I always appreciate the generosity of spirit and willingness to collaborate that seems to be a part of having creative engagement in the room. Well, the fact is, it is easier to hang a chart by yourself, if you know how. You wouldn't know how unless someone showed you. Every visual practitioner was shown or witnessed the more effective ways to handle those big sheets of paper in the beginning of their career. The process is not usually instinctive. Once we see it we say, "Of course!"

After I finished the large charts for my client, I wrapped them in a tube to pass off. It occurred to me that I would not be there to hang them. I imagined the cumbersome antics that might happen, involving multiple people and loud paper wrinkling. I didn't want to give my client a five paragraph essay on "How to Hang a Chart." Instead, I created a visual step-by-step.

I offer it to you and the world, demystifying how one person alone can effectively hang a huge piece of paper.

How Do I Listen?

How Do I Listen?

I am a professional listener. I get paid to listen and respond to what groups and individuals say. The ability to listen in a way that is valuable for people is not that I reflect back everything l have heard, like a human audio recorder. What they pay me for is how I respond to what is said and what I reflect back. A question I often get, usually in corporate environments, is, "How did you know what to capture? Did you study our business processes? You got all the important stuff. How did you know how to do that?"

My candid short answer: I try not to pay too much attention.

Seems flip, and I usually don't say this, but it is in fact, the very truth. What does that mean? Well, unlike a machine that will record every word that is said, no human is likely able to capture and keep up with that, unless you are a court reporter. Capturing everything is not necessarily valuable to a group. When your friend tells you about a conversation they had last week, they tell you the highlights, the interesting points, the sense of the conversation. They do not proceed to iterate everything that was said, in the way it was said. That would be tedious, and probably not give you the sense of what happened in the way that your friend wants you to know.

So when people are talking about business processes, steeped in their own esoteric language and ideas, how do I listen in order to capture what is most meaningful? I describe it this way: I listen to the sound of the conversation and also the words themselves. The sound of a conversation is like music. The cadence indicates to me what is most important to the person speaking at that moment. It helps me sort from the onslaught of content. I listen for what rises to the top and wants to be on the map.

Another way to describe how I listen comes to me from a painting teacher I had in college. In our instruction about composition, he suggested we look at paintings from a distance and with squinted eyes. This would allow us to see the composition of the image from a meta-view, without the distraction of the detail. This is exactly what is valuable as a professional listener. You want to hear the shape of the conversation, with access to the detail, but to first hear the meta-view. This guides the organization, the relationship between the line and shape in the dialogue that contributes to the overall composition of the conversation. So I listen by squinting my ears, which enables me to not get lost in the details of everything, and to hear the larger shape of what is being said.

Not all visual practitioners listen in this way, or describe how they listen in this way. How do you listen?

Picture More Effective Communication

My lovely collaborators at the Lightbox Collaborative invited me to blog. Fortunately I had editing goddess, Lauren Girardin from the collaborative help me to take my writing and give it some verve! You can read the Lightbox Collaborative blog here.

Below is my post:

Picture more effective internal communications

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April 12th, 2011 by Julie Gieseke

We are inherently visual creatures. We approach the world around us with eyes wide open, and speak about what we see in metaphors that paint a picture of our experiences. Visuals and language are interdependent ways of conveying information. So, what does our visual nature mean for effective communications?

Pictures can convey a lot of complex information, which is where we get that “worth a thousand words” adage. Pictures can also serve as a common reference point for a group, helping align everyone to the same process. This efficiency and unity can help the group move more quickly to deeper conversations and to the real work that needs to be done. In other words, pictures can be a powerful internal communications tool to align your team in preparation for external action.

Using visuals can be an effective way to brings groups together, to galvanize a team, and co-create big ideas. The power of communicating with pictures is at the core of visual facilitation – an approach that can breathe new life into your next team meeting.

But I’m no Van Gogh

People often assume that I’m an artist. But, I haven’t had any formal training. Why do they make that assumption?

As I work with groups, I track their conversations to create large-scale visual maps, drawn in real time, to facilitate a group toward their desired outcome. Besides the color and design of the shapes, they figure an artist must have been at work because the resulting images have meaning. Yet, the power of the images is actually due to the connections they themselves made with the images. The images represent their experience in that room that day, which is powerful, personal stuff. They made their own meaning. I just provided the pictures.

By watching something being drawn, the viewer’s memory becomes anchored in that moment. When they see the image again, they will recall that moment in a more visceral way.

Images engage

The most powerful quality about using visual tools is not the resulting picture your group creates together, but rather the enhanced engagement you gain from working together in a visual way. Working with ideas that can be touched, moved around, and seen together will result in more opportunities for individual insight, innovation, and involvement in the group process. The picture becomes an anchor for the content the group worked on, triggering sensory recall of the work that cannot be accessed in a Word document or bullet point summary of the session.

So bust out those markers and crayons to picture your way to greater team engagement and more effective internal communications. If your team had a shared picture of your common goals, what would it look like?

Julie Gieseke is a LightBox collaborator with a knack for responding creatively in the moment. She urges you to create your own pictures for impact.

Mapping for Me vs for the Collective

I recently attended an exceptional workshop through the Institute of Noetic Sciences. I was first introduced to IONS when I mapped their 2008 conference in Tucson. It is a great community of people that blends the science minded and the spiritually minded. They have their fingers in everything that is fascinating to me. They are on the edges of the gap between science and spirituality. That gap is the same one we often leap across when we bring "art" (visual facilitation and other creative engagement methods) into business environments.

The workshop last week was called "Engaging Fielding of Consciousness in a Living Universe | For Group Leaders." I could not resist. As a Visual Facilitator and having spoken to many people who do this kind of work, the visual reflections we create for groups are often the result of tapping into some content other than just what is being said. I won't go into more of that now, but save that for a future post. This workshop was lead by Duane Elgin and Christopher Bache. They were a perfect combination. Christopher provided specific practices to support and engage fields within group and Duane provided the visionary context and importance for this way of working at this time in our universe.

I was inspired by the leaders and the possibilities for working in this way with groups. I am attaching my notes from the weekend. I don't imagine they will do more than spark interest and curiosity for you. For me, they trigger memories of not only the content but the experience and field that was created by the fourteen people who were in that room at the Earth Rise Retreat Center last weekend. The notes are also a window into how I take notes for myself, rather than when I am being paid to produce a visual record for a broader audience. I enjoy being solely responsible for what I want to capture and how. I shared these notes with other workshop participants and they resonated to some extent for them, because the content is familiar. If I had been "working" this event, I am sure my notes would be very different. In part because I would have been working on a wall. I would have been listening to the collective and for the collective, rather than for me and my interests. I would have been sensing and hearing in a different way just by standing to the side, rather than sitting in the circle. I would have been more diligent to capture details that were not as pertinent for me alone.

I am curious to see other visual practitioner's personal sketchbook notes and the differences between what they capture for themselves and what they capture for everyone else...