The Art of Change™ Blog

As a practitioner of the Art of Change^TM, I explore through visuals so many journeys with leaders and organizations. When you get the picture so it works to truly convey the essence of what is at stake for an organization or group, it provides an accessible, lasting touchstone, which is at the heart of what I do at ActionCraft.

Recently, my oldest client partner, MDC Inc., commissioned me to celebrate in a single picture the career arc and impact of outgoing President David Dodson and the powerful outcomes of this 50-year-old economic justice organization. What was so cool was that I personally experienced since 1992 many of the soulful projects as I collaborated with David and his MDC team as a coach, designer, and visual storyteller. 

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Last week, I helped my brother’s firm, Gary Hubbell Consulting, capture the conversations from a one-hour Zoom meeting among over 40 non-profit practitioners focused on “Questions Leaders Should Ask Now.” After exploring the session highlights, I created a digital drawing that was shared immediately with every participant.

These were my objectives:

• Capture the prevailing context that leaders were experiencing that triggered renewal amidst unprecedented upheaval. Upon deep re-examination, most found it was nature that generated renewal. 
• Illustrate their need for new mental models about global healing and new ways for leaders to surface and answer a few essential questions in an ocean of paradoxical stressors.

In these tough times, your virtual meetings are more important than ever. Whether you’re doing online video meetings or simple conference calls, consider using visual captures of your virtual meetings to create memorable road-maps. Colorful summary visuals capture the tone and aspirations of the meetings and make the way forward clear. The finished images enable instant sharing and follow up.

Traditional meetings can easily get stale and ineffective. That’s because most gatherings don’t leverage our ability to process information visually. Did you know that humans process visual information 60 times faster than text? Fortunately, there’s an easy way to transform your next meeting: use the power of visual storytelling to keep people engaged and make your meeting more productive.

What is visual storytelling? It’s a process of graphically recording your meetings for better comprehension and awareness. Usually, a graphic facilitator — think “a business consultant who can draw” — joins your meeting and captures important points, imagery, and messages in a hand-drawn graphic.

In a fast-paced world, teams need to focus on a collective vision to be successful. Meetings are the typical way of bringing people together to take meaningful action, but the traditional meeting or conference just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Most meetings overwhelm people with data without giving them the tools to integrate that data into their strategy. Spreadsheets and long reports present information in a way that’s not easily retained, referenced, or shared. On top of all that, meetings fail to engage and energize people.

Graphic facilitation is a powerful way to help your team hear the story of their vision, see the story take shape, and take action to make it a reality. Here are the five ways that graphic facilitation makes your meetings fresh and meaningful.