large group

visual facilitation

visual facilitation is not about only drawing. it is not a modern name for making a comic based on a situation. it is way more. it means working with a powerful combination of words, shapes and colours for recording and organising the communication and creation flows in conversations inside an organisation, a group or even in one’s own note-making for a deeper understanding and a more participatory access.

 

agile

i use visual facilitation for example when developing a concept with our customers and planning an event together. visual notes take good care that all details are transparent and we are all on the same page of what needs to be done during which of the steps of large group events.

 

BMH

 

i also find visual facilitation helpful for preparing instructions for people in a large group, in small groups or even individually. this gives them something to check with, whether they understood the instructions and what the consecutive steps should be and allows participants to relax deeper into the participation in an actual dialogue.

 

storytelling

visual facilitation allows you to put many things that belong together on one piece of paper, in a neat and clean way. below the example of a training schedule for a five-day event, including the every-day structure, topics addressed during each day, the two major focus forces and a symbol, explaining the dynamics of what the training refers to, in this case: increasing creativity in teams.

 

schedule

 

second example is a schedule of a one day event on mindfulness, including the WHAT, the HOW and the WHY of the session.

 

turbo koncentracja przy totalnym luzie

 

sharing my practice: what i use to organise my notes is a frame with two boxes: the lower, outer edge box includes the date, the upper inside box the setting (customer / event / theme). this helps me find in my notes what i am looking for easily.

 

fbb

 

 

if you want to see more examples of really diverse visual facilitation styles and some works of truly great visual practitioners, join me on a sentimental journey back to this july in berlin, on EUVIZ – european conference for visual thinkers, practitioners and facilitators. a rich HARVESTING archive you can find here.

now it’s your turn. just grab a pen and paper, listen to someone talk about a matter that intrigues you and – go visualise!

 

euviz

 

 

strategic conversations with open space

open space was a initiating element of a long-term strategy for change in the leadership culture of a corporation in the FMCG sector.  the CEO, supported by the HR and other strategic departments agreed, that they do not want to introduce a model or any other kind of a ready solution they would implement in the whole company. they wanted to ask their people what works for them in their own leadership and the of their seniors and what they would need to work successfully in their teams and as a whole. 300 managers, including the whole board of the organisation were invited to spend a whole day discussing in small groups issues they find burning for the organisation and ones they are willing to share the responsibility for.

before we started the tension was high. the head of the HR department approached me with a lot of worry, whether the issues people will bring in will be sufficient and whether they will be appropriate. i guess we all know the moment, in situations where you decide to open up the discussions on strategic and hot topics, because you deeply believe the way of involving everybody in creating the fundament for it is the right thing, but just before it starts you get cold feet and want to call the whole thing off. holding the space it those moments i hold very precious.

 

set-up

 

after the introduction people did not wait even three second but jumped to their feet to write down their issues. they were cueing to the microphone for 40 minutes straight and raised exactly 100 issues, which made us run out of polish alphabet (which we used to mark the break-out spaces) and have to go for letters with diacritics, like “ą” and “ę”.
post-its

 

as we were doing the set-up one of the technicians brought in a large ladder, to help us hang up the title of the event. once we were done and cleaning up the space they wanted to take the ladder, to which i asked: “do not remove it, please. it will make for great pictures of the perfect circle.” and it did come in quite handy. the hired photographer spent basically the whole introduction to the open space occupying the very top of it.

 

circle

(you have to admit this really does not look like 300 people, now does it? this is why i like the circle so much. it is simple and elegant, and so much more)

 

very fast we all were able to see how well the method resonates with the crowd. people would bring up brave issues like: “what do i do if i am a boss of a team, in which i have better experts than myself? how do i fill the role of being a good boss?” or “how to be a good boss with people i personally do not like?”

 

bulletin board

 

people were great and bold about advertising their sessions. here a session on “how to delegate and not abdicate” with an add on of “great conversation! going strong already since 12:05”.

 

how to delegate

 

card-board boxes as walls allowed participants to be flexible on the size and setting of the group.

 

boxes

 

a report of over a 100 pages was produced the same day and sent as an e-documentation to all participants the very next morning.

 

sponsor
but the work was not done. together with a great colleague of mine, gilbert brenson lazan, we facilitated a harvesting session  for the HR department, using ToP elements. this resulted in a list of action recommendation for the board, one of them being an in-house leadership academy.

 

 

ps. if you are more a fan of videos – here a report from an OST event for an innovation hub – TECHNOPARK in gliwice, silesia, poland.

 

 

third recording – 14. august 2014 – babia góra, poland

babia

 

 

this one has been taken hiking up the highest peak of beskids, on the polish-slovak boarder, on a sunny summer day. you can certainly hear me walking up the mountain… but you can also hear the beautiful birds and rivers.

this time the recording is in english….

 

 

a word to the parts:

– “territory one” is searching for the definition

 

 

 

– “territory two” is on how territory is created based on our values. it is the first social metaphor* i present here.

 

 

 

– “territory three” is a short and sweet one on the pain of coming up with new insights

 

* social metaphors
here i work with both, the dictionary understanding of a metaphor (a metaphor as a phrase that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object) as well a situation, in which one incident triggers an exploration of what’s behind and on the meta level, and so helps one understand a broader context, also work through challenges in a creative and non-linear way.