‘Tis the season to be gaming. And many great games were played during a recent 2-day Gamestorming session with Turner Broadcasting Co. in Atlanta, GA. We were thrilled to be invited by the Strategy Development AYAKM group to host their offsite this year. The offsite was designed to support a work-flow transformation for a small but super-dynamo internal consulting team. (Repeat after me: Cartoon Network and Adult Swim rock.) This was arguably one of our most challenging gamestorms for a group because the burden of the thinking wasn’t carried by the games. (Although, technically, it rarely is.) But this team was asked to put on some serious deep-thinking caps so they could articulate not only a new vision for their high-performance team, but also a new method of orchestrating highly complex and multi-stakeholder projects. Thankfully, quick thinking and VISUAL thinking seemed second nature, so we moved through a ton of games in a short period of time and ultimately met the goal of the offsite. And now, after all that, I’m gonna go watch me some Robot Chicken.

You can view all the images on Flickr.

From .net magazine, my article “Why the Doodle Matters.”

You can read it on the .net website or download a PDF version of the article.

Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Sunni Brown owns an information design firm and is a speaker and co-author of “GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-breakers, Innovators and Changemakers.” She was recently named on Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business List and on the 10 Most Creative People on Twitter list. She spoke at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, California.

(CNN) – Humans have been doodling in snow, in sand and on cave walls for more than 30,000 years.

George Washington, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Vladimir Nabokov were doodlers. Bill Gates and Frank Gehry are among today’s active doodlers.

Yet most of us haven’t reflected on why we feel compelled to draw.

In fact, many parts of our society — including businesses, schools and colleges — frown on doodling and consider it a waste of time. While we can’t overcome cultural biases overnight, we can certainly ask a relevant question: Why is doodling so universal? What is doodling doing for us?

Virginia Scofield, an immunologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, knows from personal and professional experience what doodling does. After struggling with organic chemistry in college, she decided to try doodling the complexities of the subject rather than memorizing them from the textbook. Scofield happened upon what native doodlers have known for a long time: Doodling can improve cognitive performance. Because of her success in transforming her own learning process, Scofield incorporated doodling and visual note-taking into her university classroom for more than two decades, and she told me it notably improved the success rate of her students.

Scofield is not the only one who’s learned to be impressed by the Doodle. Jackie Andrade, a professor at the University of Plymouth,published a study finding a 29 percent increase in information retention gained by doodlers. She noted that, contrary to popular belief, doodling seems to prevent people from losing focus on boring or complex subject matter. It gives learners who may otherwise mentally check out an opportunity to check back in.

Other researchers exploring the impact of doodling and drawing have come to equally significant conclusions about this deceptively simple act. A recent article in Science argued that drawing in science education caters to individual learning preferences and motivates students to engage and explore content in a more meaningful way. And classroom research shows that not only do learners better understand concepts through simple drawing, but it sets the stage for innovative and divergent ways of thinking. For a nation with an ego wounded by our decreased scores on the Torrance Creativity Test, this unfettered access to creative thinking shouldn’t be underestimated.

Just ask Google, the only company on record with an official Chief Doodler on the payroll. Google’s culture is well known for its 80/20 “innovation time off” rule. And for many employees, that time is spent using simple visual language to doodle, sketch and prototype new business opportunities. Indeed, many companies seeking an edge are looking to applications of hand-drawn visual language as a prospective lifeboat. In a hyper-competitive marketplace, thinkers need all the mojo they can muster.

To the throngs of doodlers around the world, this evidence is likely just the beginning of our gentle “I told you so” moments. Learning that accommodates more than text-based or verbal information amplifies the effects of cognition and creativity. And when the Science article suggested that drawing should be recognized along with reading, writing and speaking as a key element in education, it was a hallelujah moment for doodlers around the world.

I’m one of them. I use doodling for a variety of reasons: I use it to get clarity around a concept, I use it to relax, I use it to communicate ideas with others and get their refinement of them, I use it to map complex systems for companies, I use it to run innovation games for business, I use it to get insight on something puzzling me.

See some examples of how doodles are used

So how do you get better at doodling? It’s a delightfully easy task. Learners can start with the Visual Alphabet, a series of six flows—the point, line, arc, angle, spiral and loop, and the six forms—the oval, eye, triangle, rectangle, house and cloud. With these 12 “letters,” prospective doodlers can articulate any visual representation of any concept they can imagine. All it takes is a commitment to learning this language, native to our brain’s visual cortex, and applying it to challenges either at work or at school. Rather than talking in circles about a complex subject, try doodling it using words and pictures. Show your teachers and colleagues another way to see information. The insights and aha moments will arrive naturally in the process.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Sunni Brown.

Many of you know that Dave Gray and I are hosting a Gamestorming workshop at Duarte Design in July of this year. But did you also know you can get a sneak peek into the content? I spent about about 45 hours designing the curriculum and about 15 hours designing the slides to accompany it. (Dear Sunni, have you ever heard of overkill?) Alas, designing workshops is hard work! When people are spending money on a workshop you offer, one must take into consideration the following things: BEGINNER’S MIND, OBJECTIVES, CONTENT, FLOW/TIMING, SCRIPT, NUMBER OF LEARNERS, LEARNER’S JOB CONTEXT, LOGISTICS AND MATERIALS.) That’s a lot of juice. If you’re interested in seeing the general flow of the workshop in visual form, click here or on the image above. And if you’re interested in learning more about the workshop and registration, click here. Until then, may you be surrounded by flip charts, sticky notes and Mr. Sketchies, designing a world of your dreams.

**OUR FIRST PUBLIC GAMESTORMING WORKSHOP…
…is being generously hosted by Duarte Design on July 22, 2011 in Mountain View, CA,
and we want to see your shiny faces there.

For those of you who prefer moving pictures, click here to watch a video designed by XPLANE that describes the story and practice of Gamestorming. Or, if you’re already a dedicated visual thinker and innovator, you can click straight through to registration. The remainder of this post is for the skeptics, for people who think “game” is a four-letter word at work.

FIRST THINGS FIRST, WHAT IS GAMESTORMING?

• It’s a better way of doing business using simple visual thinking.
• It’s a set of game structures that make meetings work (using basic office supplies)!
• It’s a roll-up-your-sleeves innovation technique.

In other words, Gamestorming is your new business best friend. And it’s a Top 100 Business Book on Amazon, so I can’t be completely full of sh*t.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE TOPICS COVERED?

Some “How-Tos” you’ll learn and be able to take back to work:

• How to design meeting agendas that drive you to a desired outcome
• How to use simple visual language to increase comprehension and retention
• How to apply improvisational discovery to keep participants physically and mentally engaged
• How to map systems, visualize process problems and innovate as a team
• How to use visual meeting artifacts to give decisions forward momentum

WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE GAMESTORMING WORKSHOP?

If you nod in agreement to any of the descriptions below, this workshop is for you.

1. *My organization rarely runs effective meetings. We often leave meetings wondering what just happened and why we were asked to attend.
2. *People in my company talk about innovation but few people know any real techniques. We could improve in so many areas – team performance, strategic planning, customer service – if we knew how to visualize and manipulate complex information.
3. *I need to get good thinking from my people in a short period of time, but I don’t have the bandwidth to learn the nuances of meeting facilitation. Somebody help me.
4. *My employees live in organizational silos. It’s a constant struggle to get coordination and innovation across divisions.
5. *I want my company to be leading in the marketplace, not following. I need to learn the secret sauce of Silicon Valley pioneers.

Gamestorming gives you the secret sauce, my friends. We work with real people solving real problems at real companies (doing it faster and actually enjoying the process). If you need more cred, below is a short list of clients who have experienced Gamestorming and loved it. (You can also click here to see case studies.)

DISNEY / ZAPPOS / EBAY / GOOGLE / CIRQUE DU SOLEIL / AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY / TEDActive / DELL / SXSW

The Gamestorming Workshop is one day of your life. It’s at one of the coolest companies in Silicon Valley. You’ll have two dedicated Gamestormers at your disposal (including Yours Truly and the remarkable Dave Gray, Founder of XPLANE). And you’ll leave the workshop confident that you can design and lead a meeting that matters. For $675, that’s not too shabby.

Details:

LOCATION: Mountain View, CA at Duarte Design
DATE: July 22, 2011 (overflow day July 21)
TIME: 9 am – 5 pm
COST: $675 (includes breakfast, lunch, a copy of Gamestorming and all workshop materials)

**TO REGISTER, CLICK HERE.**

Naturally, when I describe the process of Gamestorming, it immediately begs the question: But what does it LOOK LIKE? It is visual thinking, after all. These images are of a recent graphically-facilitated session with combo client Razorfish and AT&T. It was a small group of 15 power-thinkers and it lasted two days with FANTASTIC results. And if you’re wondering if those results are automatic due to our process, the answer is no. Gamestorming dramatically enhances thinking, memory and creativity, but it can’t work its magic without buy-in from the participants. Great facilitators, of course, increase the odds of success and Bumper Carroll, hands down the funniest facilitator I’ve ever worked with, co-designed the agenda with me, adding his own brand of Second City improv. Together we offered powerful results for the client and a smart (and occasionally silly) time was had by all. Click on the photograph to see more on Flickr.

Gamestorming from XPLANE on Vimeo.

XPLANE is and will always be among my favorite companies, and my co-author Dave Gray is and will always be among my favorite people. The above video is one more reason why I joined forces with his genius. It explains the essence of our work described in the book Gamestorming. The visual meeting techniques within are about doing what comes naturally to all of us: exploring, discovering, and reorganizing knowledge so we can make something better, at work and in the world. Take three minutes to watch it and then do yourself a favor and re-learn how to solve problems at work. I rarely swear to God, but you’ll be glad you did. Swear to God. And tell us your experiences at gogamestorm.com.