Hey, it's not the middle of the week, but my Wednesday was too busy to post. I left home at 6:45 AM for a full day:
On the road for about an hour to have a breakfast meeting with a new local church pastor, part of my Together Tuesday initiative coming out of Catalyst 2008. A couple of weeks ago as I was returning from a meeting at one of our job sites, I took a different route home and passed by a church. I was impressed to contact the pastor, which I did when I got home. We set up a breakfast meeting for yesterday, and it was a good, God thing. He's relatively new to the area, and the church is doing well. We had a few similar interests and family situations, and it was good to fellowship together. He had a lot of interest in Catalyst so I left my summary with him and encouraged him to check into attending next year.
The monthly conference call with NACDB Advisory Board was next. I pulled over into a parking lot and our group of six spent the next hour reviewing recent developments in our business, making plans for our annual meeting in February, and looking ahead to 2009. Since I'm the secretary of the group, I took notes for later distribution.
Then it was back on the road to my noon meeting, about an hour away from my breakfast meeting. Taking advantage of technology, I had three mini-phone meetings with the office, an architect, and my editor. Safety note: I have a Bluetooth in-ear receiver for hands free talking!
Pulled into Boone for a design review meeting on a project with the church AVL team and Signature Sight and Sound, our AVL systems integrator on the project. 3 hours later, we had a major design modification, revised equipment list, and satisfied customers.
Since I was right around the corner from my son's house, I stopped by and dropped off a Christmas ornament for my new grandson. I knew they weren't there, but it was a great feeling just to pull into the drive of their new house and know that the work they were doing was going to make it a home.
Back on the road for a 2 hour drive to Huntersville, taking advantage of technology again to make a few calls.
At my home office, I did a quick review on a proposal for the next meeting, printed it out, and headed out to drop my son off at his youth group. My daughter arrived home on Christmas break as we were headed out the door.
The meeting at my next prospect went well: we submitted a feasibility study for them and had good dialog with the group. Some of the learnings from Church Unique are coming into play in this setting, and it will be interesting to see how they play out.
Back at home, and time to catch up on the paperwork of the day: Client Meeting Reviews for all my meetings of the day, both in person and on the phone. It's part of my 100% communication pledge: I type up our meeting comments for their review to make sure we all heard the same thing and are clear on next steps. I also typed up the NACDB conference call notes and a year-end summary.
I started and ended the day with a few WhiteBoard exercises: I'm finding the practice very beneficial in several ways. Currently, I have a flow chart of all the projects I'm working on - later today I'm going to translate them into the calendar for the rest of the month. Then I'll clean the board for a new day and a new thought process.
Ended the day with a quick read of a couple of chapters of a book I'm working through for our company's marketing/sales process. Called it a day at 11 PM.
That was a long, but satisfying, day.
Showing posts with label White board. Show all posts
Showing posts with label White board. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Whiteboard for Skeptics
According to author Dan Roam (The Back of the Napkin), there are three kinds of visual thinkers: people who can't wait to start drawing (the Black Pen people); those who are happy to add to someone else's work (the Yellow Pen people); and those who question it all - right up to the moment they pick up the Red Pen and redraw it all.
Hand me the pen!
Black pen people show no hesitation in putting the first marks on an empty page. They come across as immediate believers in the power of pictures as a problem-solving tool, and have little concern about their drawing skills - regardless of how primitive their illustrations may turn out to be. They jump at the chance to approach the whiteboard and draw images to describe what they're thinking. They enjoy visual metaphors and analogies for their ideas, and show great confidence in drawing simple images, both to summarize their ideas and then help work through those ideas.
I can't draw, but...
Yellow Pen people (or highlighters) are often very good at identifying the most important or interesting aspects of what someone else has drawn. These are the people who are happy to watch someone else working at the whiteboard - and after a few minutes will begin to make insightful comments - but who need to be gently prodded to stand and approach the board in order to add to it. Once at the board and with pen tentatively in hand, they always begin by saying "I can't draw, but..." and then proceed to create conceptual masterworks. These people tend to be more verbal, usually incorporate more words and labels into their sketches, and are more likely to make comparisons to ideas that require supporting verbal descriptions.
I'm not visual
Red Pen people are those least comfortable with the use of pictures in a problem-solving context - at least at first. They tend to be quiet while others are sketching away, and when they can be coaxed to comment, most often initially suggest a minor corrections of something already there. Quite often, the Red Pens have the most detailed grasp of the problem at hand - they just need to be coaxed into sharing it. When many images and ideas have been captured on the whiteboard, the Red Pen people will finally take a deep breath, reluctantly pick up the pen, and move to the board - where they redraw everything, often coming up with the clearest picture of them all.
Roam's conclusion of these different types of people?
What color is your pen?
Hand me the pen!
Black pen people show no hesitation in putting the first marks on an empty page. They come across as immediate believers in the power of pictures as a problem-solving tool, and have little concern about their drawing skills - regardless of how primitive their illustrations may turn out to be. They jump at the chance to approach the whiteboard and draw images to describe what they're thinking. They enjoy visual metaphors and analogies for their ideas, and show great confidence in drawing simple images, both to summarize their ideas and then help work through those ideas.
I can't draw, but...
Yellow Pen people (or highlighters) are often very good at identifying the most important or interesting aspects of what someone else has drawn. These are the people who are happy to watch someone else working at the whiteboard - and after a few minutes will begin to make insightful comments - but who need to be gently prodded to stand and approach the board in order to add to it. Once at the board and with pen tentatively in hand, they always begin by saying "I can't draw, but..." and then proceed to create conceptual masterworks. These people tend to be more verbal, usually incorporate more words and labels into their sketches, and are more likely to make comparisons to ideas that require supporting verbal descriptions.
I'm not visual
Red Pen people are those least comfortable with the use of pictures in a problem-solving context - at least at first. They tend to be quiet while others are sketching away, and when they can be coaxed to comment, most often initially suggest a minor corrections of something already there. Quite often, the Red Pens have the most detailed grasp of the problem at hand - they just need to be coaxed into sharing it. When many images and ideas have been captured on the whiteboard, the Red Pen people will finally take a deep breath, reluctantly pick up the pen, and move to the board - where they redraw everything, often coming up with the clearest picture of them all.
Roam's conclusion of these different types of people?
Regardless of visual thinking confidence or pen-color preference, everybody already has good visual thinking skills, and everybody can easily improve those skills. Visual thinking is an extraordinarily powerful way to solve problems, and though it may appear to be something new, the fact is that we already know how to do it.
What color is your pen?
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Your Visual Thinking Toolkit
The basic premise of Dan Roam's book The Back of the Napkin is that anyone can use a visual medium to powerfully communicate their message. Here are the main concepts - but I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book as soon as possible to fully understand, and implement, these powerful communication tools.
3 Basic Visual Thinking Tools
3 Basic Visual Thinking Tools
- Our eyes
- Our mind's eye
- Our hand-eye coordination
4 Steps of the Visual Thinking Process
- Look
- See
- Imagine
- Show
5 Questions to Help Open Your Mind's Eye
- Simple or Elaborate
- Qualitative or quantitative
- Vision or execution
- Individual or comparison
- Change or status quo
6 Ways We See and Show
- Who/what - portrait
- How much - chart
- Where - map
- When - timeline
- How - flowchart
- Why - plot
Tomorrow, I'm going to dive into how I'm using these concepts on a couple of brand new projects: a consulting project for a church in the Bronx, and a new presentation for the Church Solutions Conference in Phoenix next February. For now I've got to run - I'm sketching in my journal at Panera!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
The White Board Experiment
You've seen the UPS ads - the guy standing at a huge white board, drawing a simple figure that turns into something connected with UPS and what Brown can do for you. It's mesmerizing, isn't it? Simple ideas, simple drawings, conversational style - what more could there be?
There's more than meets the eye, though. It's all about the narrative, the story the guy is telling. (By the way, that's not an actor - it's really one of the creative team that dreamed up the series). There's something about the power of a simple drawing that communicates.
I've been intrigued by a book by Dan Roam entitled The Back of the Napkin. As anyone who has been around me knows, I'm no artist. But the same group of people also know that if we're having a conversation, it won't be long before I've pulled out a napkin, piece of paper, or a journal page and started sketching. It's like I'm translating my hand gestures onto the page. Which is all about where this is going...
...I've got a whiteboard experiment in the works. Not just any whiteboard, mind you, but a big one - no, make that several big ones. As in 4x8 big. I'm sketching a project on it. Stay tuned...
There's more than meets the eye, though. It's all about the narrative, the story the guy is telling. (By the way, that's not an actor - it's really one of the creative team that dreamed up the series). There's something about the power of a simple drawing that communicates.
I've been intrigued by a book by Dan Roam entitled The Back of the Napkin. As anyone who has been around me knows, I'm no artist. But the same group of people also know that if we're having a conversation, it won't be long before I've pulled out a napkin, piece of paper, or a journal page and started sketching. It's like I'm translating my hand gestures onto the page. Which is all about where this is going...
...I've got a whiteboard experiment in the works. Not just any whiteboard, mind you, but a big one - no, make that several big ones. As in 4x8 big. I'm sketching a project on it. Stay tuned...
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