No Posters, How About a Process and Outcomes?

I was recently contacted by a potential client who had been referred to me. The client request: Could you draw five posters of the problem statements?

A few years ago I would have quickly come to the end of this conversation, thinking that what this client was looking for was a graphic designer or an illustrator or someone who could "draw." I might have managed to engage the client in this request after I got their expectations down to my comfort level regarding my ability to draw. This would have been a missed opportunity for me.

I no longer feel insecure about my drawing abilities, yet saying "yes, I can draw five posters" would have been a missed opportunity for this client. Yes, I can draw and my area of expertise and experience is as a process designer. I design processes that help groups of people work more effectively together to reach the outcomes they need to reach at the end of the day or the end of the meeting. What that looks like often includes drawing, but that is just the icing. Successful visual facilitation is mostly process with some nice looking products as an output.

That initial client inquiry, "Can you draw five posters of the problem statements" was the beginning of an hour long conversation where I mostly asked a lot of questions about what they were going to do with the posters, why they thought having a visual representation of the problem would be useful and what they were hoping to get out of a full day of people gathered to solve problems. What we ended up with was a process design that cost about the same as what I would have scoped for the number of hours and iterations we would have spent coming up with some cool looking posters of the problems.What they got instead was a process for 40 people to work through and tangible evidence of the solutions this group co-created.

Here is what we came up with:
Design a template for each group to work on as they dove into the five problem areas. This template would take them through a day long solution process inspired by design thinking. The template would track their progress, keep them on track and enable them to show how they their thinking and tell the story of their solution to the rest of the  group at the end of the day.

I think this was money well spent. For nearly the same amount of time and much less effort we focused on generating a solution for solution generation rather than investing a lot of time and money making the problems look pretty.
First I co-designed a template for each team to use throughout the day that included the problem statement on the left and the other two-thirds of the template guided the groups through a solution process:

On the day of the event, I supported the facilitation of the teams, though largely they were self-facilitated:

At the end of the days, each team presented their finished template:

 

During their report out, I created a synthesis map that captured the insights in presenting their solutions to the larger group:

 

No "posters" but an actual process and tangible outcomes from bringing together 40 people to create solutions to critical issues faced in the world. Money well spent. The client was pleased, not only in the output, but in discovering a new way of working together. Here is some of what they said about the process:

Visual Blog Post on Using Visuals in Strategic Planning

Get Visual with Strategy

My colleagues at Olive Grove Consulting invited me to post on their blog. Rather than write 500-800 words, I decided to draw my post. Drawing this post allowed me to get more information out there than I ever could have done in words! This month's focus is strategy.  I share some quick, easy tips for anyone working with organizations and strategy to make their work more visual. More visual means more engagement, more creative thinking, more systemic views and more clarity.

Here is a link to my visual post.Getting Visual with Strategy

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:

Refrigerant Revolution: A Cool Future Ahead for AC and a Warming Planet

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?