papershine

As part of OTAC’s involvement with the Good to Great Project, I have been helping an organization create management training tools. One of their star managers, Amber, is leaving later this month. This day planner graphic represents one way of summarizing the main functions of Amber’s work, running the Specialized Foster Care program. This is not a literal schedule, but a representation of her major functions, including some of the stuff that just pops up.
The graphic is intended as an interactive tool. The tasks of the day should spark conversations. Ideally, Amber will be able to talk through it with her replacement. If that doesn’t happen, the graphic will become an important link in the information chain, providing a tool for much-needed continuity. Amber can explain it through with her manager, who can use it as a training tool. There’s tons of space around the margins for adding notes and there’s also a blank planner page, for all the stuff that didn’t make it onto this busy day.
Next step: a month planner that captures some of ther recurring functions and reporting duties the program coordintor is responsible for.

Click the graphic below to see an expanded, legible version.

Here’s a smattering of other graphics left over from the ELP Gathering.
Helen and Amanda frequently use ‘trailers’ to spark conversation and gather information. A trailer is a long line on the wall that uses icons to represent a continuum between positive and negative. People score their opinions of the topic at hand by posting sticky dots along the line. We used a trailer to discover how people perceived their meetings as an introduction to the Positive and Productive Meetings portion of the presentation. Here’s what a good meeting might look like.

The bad meeting is considerably more violent. Notice that some meetings were bad enough to be scored off the line and on the poor guy getting throttled. I like the enthusiasm of the fellow doing karaoke in the meeting.

After the whole groups rated their meetings along the line (more bad than good, sorry to say) I recorded the group’s ideas about what made some meetings good and some so terrible. Amanda facilitated as I recorded.

This illustration was used at the end of the Gathering to see how we did as a group at minding the ground rules established on the first day. The ground rules were recorded to the Gathering poster and visible throughout the sessions. The ‘failed ground rules’ icon had the moon rising to indicate the sessions lasting too long.

On the last day Ruth Gorman and Amanda George led a session on person centered teams. One of the exercises invloved designing a poster or logo for a an enterprise that represented the work groups’ values. My group made up a logo for a fictious company that supported people with disabilities to live in their family homes.

During last week’s ELP Gathering I presented a small section of Helen Sanderson’s work on Positive and Productive Meetings. My section was based on a graphic I had done for her paper, depicting the PPM process.

This presented challenges. I had to find a way to express a very visual and active process to a hundred people. I use graphics as my primary teaching tool now, but generally with groups no larger than 35. This was a big jump in scale and I worried about visibility and resolution- how much information would be available to everyone. Another challenge was how to keep the attention of this many people after lunch in a room scattered with laptops and blessed with free wireless. This was day four of the conference, the last afternoon for many people. Attention spans would be short and eyelids would be heavy with sleep.

A slide projector would cover more wall space than a paper graphic, but would lack the energy. Despite the size, PowerPoint slides have limited information resolution. I opted for bigger paper hung higher. I teetered precariously on two chairs to draw the graphic. I think it’s harder to ignore the trainer when he’s in mortal peril as he draws pictures and gesticulates meaningfully.

I drew in the background green arrow with pastels in advance and almost knocked myself out with the fixative fumes. In pencil I laid out the general size and location of the ten steps. Standing on the chairs was a bit precarious at first, but once I got comfortable I forgot where I was. I appreciated being higher and able to see the faces of the people in the back. As I drew I referred frequently to the original graphic to make sure I got sequence and visual symbols right. The audience had copies of the graphic as well and I engaged them by asking what the characters were talking about or other details. When doing a graphic like this, with a narrative flow, depicting a human process, I try to add small details. I believe a good graphic will invite the eye in and encourage it to stay with the story. If someone asks, “Why are they talking about books and soccer at the meeting?” the graphic has done it’s job of inviting inquiry.

What worked:
Shared the process in some detail by building the graphic in real time with participants
Received good attention and eye contact
People talked with me and asked questions
Didn’t fall to my doom

Would change:
I wish I spent more time on the drawing. In reality, the quality of the drawing matters little; it’s the way visuals engage learners that really make them work. Still, I always want the drawings to be the best they can. I rushed unnecessarily.
I should have practiced large. There simply wasn’t time, but that usually helps a great deal. Drawing feels very different when using big gestures and the whole body. I probably should have practiced standing on chairs too.

Here’s the finished version of the Gathering Map. To the left are the roles, to the right the ground rules and across the bottom the pupose, in keeping with the tenets of Positive and Productive Meetings. This poster hung throughout the five day event. My favorite ground rule is the one about not obsessing, indicated here by a figure thinking obsessively about money with the big red ‘no don’t do it’ circle through his thoughts.

Here is the first of many posters I hope to add to papershine from the Gathering going on this week here in Portland. Used as a reference poster, this was a great late night project. We used the same icons on posters throughout the Gathering to indicate who was chairing, recording and keeping time during the various breakout sessions. This poster is about 42″ by 70″.

Clearly, still some to learn about retouching the weird yellow tones of digital photos.

The Gathering is an annual meeting/conference for members of the Learning Community, a professional group that trains people on Essential Lifestyle Planning. It takes place in Portland every summer and my employer OTAC helps host the conference. This is a pupose poster I created for the event that is also being used as a logo on name badges and the like. Last night Kristin and I made a paper cut-out collage style version of the same image that’s seven feet long and eighteen inches high. If I get access to a digital camera during the event next week, I’ll take a picture of that one and post it as well. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

Edward Tufte visited Portland earlier this week and delivered a lecture on ‘Envisioning Information’ to a capacity crowd of roughly four hundred people. He spoke at length about data graphics, good presentations and how PowerPoint kills astronauts. His summary of the communication failures between NASA and Boeing during the Columbia disaster are particularly poignant today, as we are reassured by NASA that the Discovery, now docked at the International Space Station, is doing fine, despite similar problems with flying chunks of foam.
Towards the end of the day, Tufte offered some practical advice on giving presentations. While there was nothing especially new under that sun, I was pleased to hear him mention Strunk & White, the authors of The Elements of Style, the only book on writing worth reading. It’s a manifesto for clear communication. It’s also surprisingly funny.
Strunk, White and Tufte share a respect for their audiences that’s no longer in fashion. So much of today’s media holds its audience in obvious contempt. Advertisements, disc jockeys and news programs pander and insult. Movie theaters charge nine dollars for the pleasure of watching massive, jittery advertisments and music videos before the feature presentation. To their way of thinking, the audience will always be there, soda-swilling cattle in uncomfortable chairs. Odd then that the movie industry complains so frequently and loudly about their diminishing market share. Of course piracy is an issue; movie going has become so unpleasant and costly that people will risk federal prosecution to avoid the theater.
I believe that most great teachers and presenters have a great and profound respect for the audiences. Tufte said it clearly, “Audiences are precious.” Be grateful for their time and attention and engage them actively and vigorously. Always seek to elevate. Always be honest, even when you don’t have the slightest idea what the answer might be. Give respect and it will flow back to you. No matter the audience and no matter how expert I might think I am about the material I’m teaching, I always learn so much from the people I am teaching. To me, that is fundamental to respect: I am not here to give you my ‘wisdom’; we are here to share our ideas and learning.

Edward Tufte’s web site
Elements of Style

One weekend late in June I spent two days with the Youth Commission of Clark County, Washington, graphically recording their conversations about The Spot. The Spot is a youth-directed economic development project that is part hang-out, part retail venture, part recreation center for the young people of Clark County. Organized by Dane Anderson and Beth Houston of Clark County’s Youth House and facilitated by Seattle based consultant Leslie Smith, the event was a no holds barred brainstorming session about what The Spot could look like.
In hopes of inspiring their imaginations and signalling our intentions to work visually, I made this purpose poster that hung at the entrance of the room we used. Click on the image to see a larger version and my proposal for a climbing-wall art gallery.

My primary responsibility throughout the two days was to record the ideas visually in real time. By the end of the weekend, the walls were completely decked in paper. Before the brainstorming got up to speed, Dane introduced the event and invited a handful of County Commissioners and other community leaders to speak. The graphic below reflects those opening statements.

After the Youth Commissioners had finished their brainstorming, we posted all the graphics and had them vote on their top priorities. Each commissioner got five sticky dots to post wherever they saw fit. The results demonstrated a nice mix of philosophical concerns- youth run businesses and healthy foods- and fun stuff- a skate park and a performance stage. Here’s a photograph of democracy in action.

The two day event was a great success. Recording the conversations visually created a energy in the room and helped to generate and maintain momentum. When the young people broke up into small groups to develop their ideas, they all worked visually, sketching out the details or drawing schematics of proposed buildings. By keeping the graphics posted visibly around the room, we could see our progress and recall our conversations. They made it focused and fun.