papershine

A fun little icon from a recent meeting graphic.

Last night I facilitated a meeting with the board of the Haywood Road Market in West Asheville. This was a follow-up to our May meeting, the first time this particular board had gotten together as a collective. Back then there was great excitement for the work ahead and some trepidation about roles and responsibilities. Since then the board has made great strides with their various initiatives. Nowadays, some of the excitement has been drained away by the rigors of committee work and a huge time commitment to the food co-op.

We approached the meeting with a very general agenda. The roles issue from May’s meeting was on the docket, but proved to be a non-issue. The check-in went much longer than I intended, but it really seemed to be what the board needed. It gave them a chance to step back and look at their work. They were all pleasantly surprised to see how far they had come in such a short time. It is easy to lose sight of the good you’re doing when you’re too busy doing good.

I tried to focus on using more graphics and less text in the recording of this meeting. Facilitating and recording together can be challenging, though I think it encourages the facilitator to listen more and talk less. The end result, seen above right, gave the board members something concrete to look at and share, to show their work. The graphic is much more compelling than any bulleted list.

We used the graphics from the May meeting to get us back up to speed. It was amazing how much of the previous conversation came back to all of us as we looked over my old doodles.

I am in the midst of developing a series of graphic templates for Positive and Productive Meetings. This is the first one to be piloted, a framework that uses icons to guide people through a PPM style agenda. I used it to help chair a company wide meeting for the Unturned Stone. The meeting was held in Pilot Mountain State Park where the trail crew works. There weren’t any walls to hang paper from, but it wasn’t too windy. The agenda guided us through the meeting and provided a gentle rustling sound in the background.