Reflecting on facilitation sessions

Over the last weekend I completed two strategic planning sessions with non-profit boards, the Family Violence Project and Intrepid Theatre. I have piles and piles of charts to put the finishing touches on, but before I do that I wanted to do some reflection on how these sessions went. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Graphic Facilitation, journey

Graphic facilitation and visual language is fan-diddly-tastic (as Flanders would say) but there’s something tickling at the back of my brain. My dad told me recently of an anecdote from my school years - in grade 6 or something like that, apparently I constructed a three-dimensional mind map. I was trying to make a regular mind map but kept having trouble connecting things that seemed to need to be far apart on the page. So I used three pages instead of 1, and then rang string from one idea bubble (it was taped on) to another idea on a different page. In some places the idea was two pages away so I actually punched a hole in the middle page to join a page on the top and one on the bottom. Apparently my teacher asked to keep this project. Who knows where it is now.

Being a kinesthetic person, I’ve been really enjoying the movement and sense of touch associated with graphic facilitation. The size of the paper, the relationship between space and color and meaning; these things sing to me. But lately I’ve been trying to think of ways to expand my tools to encompass various layers of meaning. Ideas that have popped into my head include using tinker-toys to create 3D mind maps again; revisiting my paper-and-string model; and the idea of filters. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: development, strategic model

… and I know you’re out there!

Fiona Prince is organizing a Roaring Women chapter that covers the Duncan-Nanaimo area (and surrounds). There are a couple of upcoming speakers that look fantastic: Carol Keane talking about Non-Violent Communication and Catherine Novac (she’s @Wordspring for you Twitter folks) talking about Social Media Marketing.

Possibly, later in the summer, yours truly may make an appearance talking about personal strategic planning which will naturally involve graphics - but this time the colorful markers will be in YOUR hands. Isn’t it about time you put yourself in the picture?

Tags: Events

Somebody asked me today about what is the value an organization would get from doing strategic planning, especially this “fun” visual planning that I’m offering. GOOD QUESTION MEL! Thanks!

First of all, strategic planning is a really important exercise to any group of people who are responsible for taking action towards a goal. It’s especially important if you’re doing so in an environment of limited resource, with potentially conflicting opinions on the team about where you want to end up and how you’re going to get there. When a team agrees on a common goal and common values, they are infinitely more effective in their actions than if members of the team are trying to steer the group in different directions. Focused communication (not just idle wondering and watercooler gossip) is required to get people to agree that they want the same thing and how they’re going to go after it. That’s what strategic planning is, in a nutshell. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: questions, Strategic Planning, value

Yesterday morning, I worked with Paul and Sheila in a Visual Life Planning session at my office. Paul and Sheila are warm, loving people who have travelled far and wide, and each of them is committed to leading a fully evolved and self-actualized life. They’ve been looking for a way to pull together the various strings and patterns of their careers into a sustainable vision of balanced success. Paul and Sheila have kindly allowed me to include their chart from their Visual Life Planning session (Click on the image to see a bigger version).

The chart has space left in it still for Paul and Sheila to add new ideas or epiphanies as time goes by, or possibly for their family members to draw themselves into the picture.

It was a fantastic session - thanks Paul and Sheila for trusting me with this integral work!

Response from Paul and Sheila:

Just wanted to thank you for giving so much of yourself, your time and expertise yesterday as you helped us navigate our ideas, dreams, and passion for service. It was delightful working with you and getting to know you better. I am particularly grateful for the time you took with me to speak directly to me and “give me permission” to follow what I feel called and inspired to do. I am at this very moment sitting under a tree in my back yard enjoying the sun and doing some research on childhood trauma. I intend to become a trauma specialist and help heal the deep pain that childhood trauma brings. The meeting with you yesterday helped me commit myself to this cause.  ~Sheila

Tags: Graphic Facilitation, portfolio

Last Monday I recorded the strategic planning retreat for the South Island Partnership, a collaborative effort between Camosun College and five school districts in the area. Their mandate is to develop and operate programs that help students transition between secondary and post-secondary training. The session was facilitated by Mitchell Temkin of Associatus Consulting. The South Island Partnership was kind enough to allow me to include these graphics on my blog.

Tags: Graphic Recording, portfolio

I’ve completed three graphic facilitation/recording engagements in the past two weeks, and my ears are starting to pop from the vertical gain on this learning curve. Along with the lessons learned in on-the-fly visual listening, I’m starting to develop quite the little collection of paraphernalia for photographing my charts. In the past month I’ve acquired a new digital camera, a tripod, a floodlight (which isn’t helping me), a large selection of new markers, and a few extra gray hairs from fiddling about with software to edit and improve completed charts.

Here are a few tricks I’ve learned, to help others who may be on their own journeys:

• Get GIMP - Graphic Image Manipulation Program. It’s a free, open-source program like Photoshop. Runs on PCs but I’m not sure about Macs.
• If you’re having trouble with uneven lighting of your charts, either move your chart, or try using a gradient over your image (in GIMP/Photoshop) where the gradient mode is “Dodge” and the opacity is about 50% or less. Other settings: foreground color should be white, gradient type should be linear. Start your gradient at the darkest point of your image and drag towards the lightest point. This lightens up dark corners from the way your chart is aligned in relationship to the light source. THEN you can adjust contrast or levels to achieve an overall effect.
• Get yourself a cheap wooden yardstick from Staples ($2 or so) to help create borders around your charts.
• Island Blueprint does scanning of charts, but at $8/sq foot you’ll probably want to wait until you have something incredibly important and permanent to scan. That’s $256 for a 4′x8′ chart. Owch.
• Use Google Image search and select “clip art” for type of image, then enter search terms that are likely to come up as themes or topics in your recording/facilitation work. Copy the images to a folder on your computer to start building a visual vocabulary.
• Crayola thick washable markers are great for doing chart work on easel-size paper if you’re dealing with a small group and want to do your visuals on a boardroom table instead of on the wall. (Of course we all know I’m a total marker junkie so this was just an excuse to buy more pretty markers).

I’m looking forward to sharing my latest set of charts with you!

Tags: journey, tools

When I learned about meeting graphics we were introduced to a broad range of chart types, featuring mostly templates from the Grove Consultants. Having pioneered the field, their line of templates is thorough, well-researched and tested, and well documented for leaders. The other thing they are is Expensive.

Returning to Victoria and starting out with my first couple of gigs, I didn’t have the money to invest in Grove products, and I wasn’t really certain how the whole graphic facilitation thing was going to fit with my existing practice in strategic planning. I adapted the concept of the OARRs and made a chart using a theatre metaphor for my first gig, leading the retreat for the BoD of a local theatre production company. The rest of that gig started with blank paper on which I captured brainstorming in a fairly loose way. I found myself organizing information in an organic, on-the-fly way and I was pleased with the results. But I still felt a debt of gratitude to all the templates and the work of other graphic facilitators that I’ve seen and learned from.

Today I delivered an intro strategic planning session with a new client, and I produced my own adaptation of the Grove “Big Waves Vision” chart on easel-chart paper. Because it was so heavily influenced by the Grove template, I put an attribution “Adapted from Grove Consultants ‘Big Wave Vision’ ” on the bottom of the page. This is the first time I’ve used a Grove model (with the waves and sun-circle), and it was extremely helpful in keeping a meeting on track, although there are still ways I would customize the headings for the client’s situation. I want to do my own thing, specifically oriented to the client’s exact situation. That’s why I’m not too keen on shelling out the dollars for a full-sized Grove chart. That, and the insane brokerage fees to get any Grove materials delivered to me up here in Canuckland.

On the blending/adapting side, I don’t think it’s possible to get seriously into graphic facilitation without a hefty dose of observing and adapting what you see on other practitioner’s portfolios. I’ll never draw an airplane or map out the flow of a conversation in the same way that another person would, and I’m not trying to turn myself into the next Sunni Brown or Christina Merkley. Their artistic styles are distinct and evolved from their own experiences and artistic “upbringing” (referring to one’s training explicitly but also how people responded to one’s drawing etc when you were growing up which influences your relationship to doing drawing etc now). My history with color and drawing is different and I see patterns in information differently, which is why my work will always be unique. However, I still pick up ideas from other graphic recorders especially, and learn from seeing their use of white space, various headings/font choices, etc.

I guess the point of this post comes down to trying to find a line in the sand between what is copying, and what is acceptable adaptation. Intellectual property should always be respected and credited, but when you take somebody’s example of a particular model or concept, and you add in your own thoughts/values/experiences to create a new experience for your client, how do you properly account for the evolution of the idea? If you borrow idea A from person X, and they adapted their idea A from person Q who had idea B, and based on these things you create idea C and take it to market… who gets the credit? Without boring the client with a historical overview, one should give proper credence, I think. The line in the sand is drawn with the baton of integrity, I suppose.

Tags: Graphic Facilitation, journey, templates

I make murals on bond paper that is about 42″ high and can be as long as 8′ although I usually stick to 6′. I use Mr. Sketch colored markers for the writing, and then add depth and emphasis with chalk pastels, which give an almost watercolor/airbrush effect when blended with a tissue.

What I think I need is somebody who knows about lighting and photography to come to my office (downtown Victoria) and help me figure out what combination of lighting, tripod, exposure, etc. will allow me to photograph these images so that the color remains true when I download the digital snaps onto my computer. I use GIMP (open-source twin of Photoshop) for adjusting levels, color balance, brightness, airbrushing details, etc. etc. The original photos are coming out quite dark which means when I lighten them up on the screen (by adjusting Levels or increasing brightness), I’m losing a lot of contrast and end up washing out colors in order to make the white look white instead of gray. If I boost contrast, I end up seeing lots of shadows on the paper.

Can you help? In exchange for this help, I’d love to work with you to answer any pressing questions of strategic business planning. If you’re particularly interested we can make a mural for depicting your present challenges and action plans.

Tags: help, photography

SNAP! Victoria attended the Business Leaders Summit on March 31 and covered the event in their May 2009 issue. Here’s the page with the lovely photos of the participants!

Tags: Business Leaders Summit