One page of my visual notes from Dan Roam’s excellent workshop in SF – the pilot for The Back of the Napkin. I appreciate that Dan’s putting visual thinking front and center in the business world. It helps me keep MY day job, too. See the rest of the visual notes here.
Producing TEDx Austin felt like birthing some kind of gigantic baby. I think I can speak for the entire team – Nancy Giordano, Jen Spencer, Kelley Burrus, Shannon Mehner, Chris Justice, Mary Baird-Wilcox and Stacy Weitzner – when I say that it would be impossible to capture the experience in one word. There were triumphs, frustrations, elation, teamwork, tough decisions, and absolute overjoy at what we were putting together. And through it all was the undeniable knowledge that Austin, TX needed and deserved a killer TEDx. That our little town is growing up, transforming into a big city with a big heart, a big brain and ideas that are big beyond belief. I have to give thanks to my graphics team, composed of Honoria Starbuck and Austin Kleon, but if I started thanking all of the other heads and hands that were involved, you would probably stop reading this blog post. (We all know that in this day and age, people want pictures.)
Some personal highlights for me:
Onward to TEDx Austin 2011.
On Feb. 3rd, I held another VizThink Austin community meeting for our ever-growing group of visual thinkers and visual learners. The rare and brilliant bird Austin Kleon hosted, taking the group on a comedic and informative journey about visual thinking for writers. A powerful topic considering that few people are aware of the symbiotic relationship between words and pictures. (Don’t let the blinking cursor get you!) Austin has attended virtually every VizThink session since the beginning, so it was high time he hosted one himself. He’s a natural visual communicator as well as a writer and you’ll see how he combines the two in his forthcoming book with Harper Collins, Newspaper Blackout Poems. And, since I know people love free content, you can also see video modules from the session itself. Attendance was impressive considering the dangerous….um…drizzle (Austinites panic when driving in the rain) and it was another excellent evening with our impressive community of minds. So if you’re reading this post and you want to join the VizThink entourage, contact me. I am always open to another inquiring mind.
The way humans gain the lion’s share of what we know is through a slow process of gathering informational knowledge – accumulated layers of additive information based on years of exposure and experience. For example, my knowledge of Spanish is informational knowledge. I learned it through years of listening to Spanish speakers and eventually formalized it by taking multiple semesters at university, building up bits of knowledge to get a fairly complete understanding of the language. And along this learning path, I had an anticipated outcome – fluency. I would eventually know enough verbs, conjugations, vocabulary, etc. to present myself as a Spanish speaker. But nowhere along that learning curve did I create something rather than just accumulate it. Spanish was already there; it was just a matter of me methodically crawling through it, adding to my increasingly large pile of information.
And this is how most of us approach problem-solving – by applying informational knowledge. We think of a problem (or perhaps create one!), get a sense of its magnitude, reference relevant information we know and then apply it as a solution. And there are many situations in which this is a perfectly appropriate plan of attack: you see someone choking in a restaurant, you hurriedly scan your knowledge from the past, you perform the Heimlich. Brilliant. But the shadow side to this type of problem solving is that it confines you to the boundaries of the smaller pieces of the pie chart above – the realm of what you know and the realm of what you know that you don’t know. So if you know the Heimlich (even half-assed), you try it. And if you know that you don’t know the Heimlich, you’re likely going to seek out someone who does and ask them to solve the problem. But it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to spontaneously invent a new move and liberate a choking gentleman from his hambone. That’s just not the way informational knowledge works. And if you impress yourself by actually inventing a new anti-choking technique, well, surprise. You’ve just entered the realm of transformational knowledge.
Transformational knowledge is knowledge that can seem to appear out of the ether. It emerges almost as a flash – a eureka moment – and appears most often when we’re either under duress or in a child-like state of learning. But since most of us eschew being “child-like” – we do take ourselves rather seriously – rarely do we get access to the biggest piece of the pie chart. We spend almost all of our time vacillating between the two dinky realms of either ‘what we know’ or ‘what we know that we don’t know.’ So it’s not shocking that when we’re tackling problems – business or personal – we find our way to the same results. How innovative can we really be when we’re treading and retreading the same ground? But don’t misunderstand; we’re not at fault – we can hardly be held responsible for what we don’t know that we don’t know. But we can be responsible for actively trying to get access to that space. To that big, mysterious piece of the pie that’s hoarding almost all of the creative solutions.
Knowledge games, as set forth in our book, are powerful because they’re designed to help us move out of the familiar and predictable and into the uncertain and unknown – where creation actually lives. We’re including games and meeting processes in which the rules aren’t rigid, you can veer away from a directed outcome and you’ll often be surprised at how it all turns out. We’re giving you tools to create, not repackage. And this is important because, as Einstein understood, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
Eureka.
Note: This post was inspired by Landmark Education, a forum that applies the notions of informational vs. transformational knowledge in the areas of human consciousness and performance.
Nothing like seeing a prospective cover for your book makes you feel inclined to start churning chapters out! (I hope it’s having the same effect on my co-authors.) Ladies and gentleman, I’m thrilled to show you for the first time the cover for the magnum opus that Dave Gray, James Macanufo and I have been working on for what seems like the last eight years. Please click on the link to see the blog for the book. (O’Reilly may partner with us to create a more formal site, but in the meantime, all the action is happening at Knowledge Games.) The purpose of the book is to give people games to help them access solutions to business problems that–if they follow traditional problem-solving methods–they may not otherwise access. It’s going to be awesome if I do say so myself.
A most interesting project came through Somnio, an Austin-based sales and marketing company that was hired by HP to support a sales training. Somnio specializes in unique sales and marketing solutions, so their idea was that BrightSpot create twitpics – pictures that could be periodically tweeted to the participants of a sales training to (1) keep them interested, (2) reinforce the content, and (3) use an empathetic Twitter persona to relate to the experience that many of the participants were probably having. Somnio wanted a visual narrative that reflected the (probable) emotional ride of the employees and they wanted it to look like handwritten notes coming out of someone’s notebook. So Erik Kuntz, BrightSpot’s principal illustrator, took on that project and did, as always, a superb job. (And consequently, created a new Brightspot offering – TWEETNOTES.) Did I just invent a new word? Doubtful. But I love the output.
Dave Gray, James Macanufo and I are working on a book with O’Reilly, Inc. and I’ve decided to blog about some of the content as I create it. So what you see above is a graphic archive from a visual-thinking version of Show and Tell. Most people think Show and Tell is for kids but that shows how little they know. The game below is S&T for grown-ups.
OBJECT: To get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a project, restructuring, shift in the company’s vision, team dynamic, etc.
HOW TO PLAY:
WINNING STRATEGY: Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic. If you hear a string of items that are described in concerned or fearful terms, that’s likely a signal that the employees’ needs aren’t being met in some way. As the team lead, encourage and applaud honesty during the stories and write down every point an employee makes that seems important to him or her. Keep the rest of the group quiet while someone is showing and telling.
If you feel intimidated by drawing a representation of a show item in the white space, get over it: attempt to draw it anyway and let the group tease you about your efforts. Show and Tell can be a vulnerable activity for employees—particularly the introverted type—so show some team spirit by being vulnerable yourself.
As the world largely knows by now, there are many great things about Zappos. But what most people don’t realize is the extent to which that quest for greatness permeates their DNA. Some C-level folks talk a good game about customer and employee happiness, but Tony Hsieh (CEO) can credibly say that he’s obsessed with it. When I partnered with Zappos to graphically record their Culture and Key Books class, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the quality of the conversations and the commitment to what I would almost refer to as ‘employee enlightment.’ And Tony is personally studying the science of happiness – a subject that emerges throughout the PowerPoint we’re working on – not only to pursue his own bliss but also to create joy and good experiences for his staff and customers. It’s a rare sight to behold an intelligent and driven CEO who also takes time to create warm fuzzies. Good for them.
Congregation Beth Israel is a synagogue that follows Reform Judaic traditions and it’s one of the oldest Jewish places to worship in Austin – founded in 1876. (In case you’re thinking this: “Texas doesn’t have a Jewish population”, just know that I’m thinking this: “Be gone with your stereotypes!”) CBI has a very active Board – actually the largest Board I’ve ever worked with – and they asked me to partner with them during their Summer Strategy Summit. Keri Pearlson, the Board member who invited me was so enthusiastic about the work I do that I decided to graphically record for them at a rate only Moses could appreciate. 
So we worked together on a significant part of the agenda – the vision and what they could do to achieve it. So what you’re seeing above is the result of a collaboration with 21 Board members that involved facilitation, marker-voting and breakout group discussions. A delightful group to work with and I wish them all the best. And I really loved the moment when someone said, “Texas has greater political diversity in its Jewish population than most of us are accustomed to, which gives us more opportunities to rise to challenges.” What a lovely way to phrase that. View the Flickr images here.
So I’m co-authoring a book with Dave Gray and James Macanufo (its personality and purpose are under wraps right now). But I’ve been working on the aesthetics of the visuals all day, trying to establish a look that’s accessible, and so far all I’ve accomplished is a temporary loss of mojo. This is largely due to the fact that I have too many options available for drawing. I could:
The trouble is that each of these methods has its blessings and its curses. So now everything feels like one big f-bomb. Which suggests to me that it’s time for a milkshake.
