Well Tom, you certainly have achieved evocative.

My first response was visceral, and revolved around ‘What are you thinking putting creatives in boxes?’ Stepping back from that I noticed my initial response saw no separation between self and work. It felt like I was being put in a box. So that sense of merging identity with what we do may be a key part of who the people are that comprise a visual thinking community?

When I thought about the role you are playing, in establishing the foundation of a visual thinking community, I had a ‘thank goodness there is someone around who understands structure’ response. After all, our visual voices emerge from our individual lenses.

I’m still not so hot on the boxes. But it got me thinking about why. I’m still formulating, but I’m thinking about how I think of the edges of what I do as amorphous and translucent. The focus of my work may be facilitating with photographs, but I might just as easily slip over into graphic facilitation, info graphics, marketing, or storytelling as the need arises to achieve the outcome I am seeking.

One of the main reasons I am excited about Viz Think is the potential for conversation in these overlapping and in between spaces. What we share, rather than what separates us.

I’ll keep thinking, and perhaps come up with some visual input for the conversation. I suspect it will look just slightly different…..

I have posted another round of ideas at:
http://christinemartell.com/2007/10/05/story-the-intersection-of-the-visual-and-verbal/

I’m with Christine on not wishing to create classes or categories. I’m also supportive of the need to define what we do as thought provokers and providers in a business environment.

For me the paucity of structured or consumable/deployable thinking processes in business gives rise to the kind of issues that I’m sure we all encounter. Frustration, lack of motivation in working cultures and lack of alignment at leadership level. Poor or non existent communication in the communities. All things that thinking visually can solve.

In my approach i’ve coined the phrase Structured Visual Thinking to suggest the need for some kind of framework for thinking and then very quickly trash the notion of any boundaries, whatever works its good, bring it on, be it a picture, a challenging axiom, a walk around a totem pole. It’s an amazing privilege to be allowed to work with leaders of a multinational company and have the trust of a team to challenge their paradigms and shift a collective mindset through co-creation.

Whilst it’s a human trait to want to define and categorize, and that does help, it’s also vital that as an industry we keep our work as open, fresh and as fluid as possible, crossing and removing boundaries, mashing up different techniques and surprising and delighting our collaborators and clients at every turn. Very helpful debate and thanks for the platform.

John

I appreciate the need to avoid the creation of inflexible classes or categories…and find myself balancing that with the need for figuring out where individuals belong within the community. Perhaps that isn’t a box or a category, but rather a description of how one relates to other elements of the visual thinking community and its practitioners….making it more about relationships, than niches. I think people often have a need to figure out how they fit in and how they belong, which implies and requires a modicum of categorization sometimes.

For example, at first I was dismayed at the circles and boxes of Tom Crawford’s depiction of an image of the community. It felt….well….boxed in. Then, I found the circle where I believe I live, and I realized that it felt good to know I had a place among all the other aspects of the community. I haven’t always felt that way among “just” professional facilitators or “just” graphic recorders or “just” public participation practitioners. I often feel like I’m on the edge of various professional communities. I’m still digesting Christine’s swirl, but even on it, I think I can identify where I belong. All good stuff.

I like John’s comments about working in a business environment and the magic that Structured Visual Thinking and similar approaches can offer. I work largely in environmental conflict resolution and large group facilitation. Visual techniques can make an enormous difference in helping identify issues, relationships, and clarifying assumptions – processes – timing and timelines. They also can be used to engage people in those processes so that they better own the results, instead of the organizational manager, or the facilitator, or the mediator.

When I consider what I define as visual thinking, the boundaries are surprisingly broad: from words and short phrases on large sticky notes that can be moved around and visually grouped to the breathtakingly beautiful artistry of talented graphic facilitators. If it helps the group experience the issues, discussion, and solution-generation in a multi-sensory way, I think it qualifies.

The challenge for me is to not only find visual methods to support my work, but to figure out how to use the visual work to engage the other senses as well.

Wow, people who talk/think and work like I do! Yes, we all enter the conversation in different ways, but it’s so exciting to not only find ourselves in the community as Ruth points out, but be able to look over and see the neighbors.

John, I love your ‘trash the notion of boundaries”. It’s so much how I experience the work as it is happening. There is a stretching of space that occurs as we flex between the visual and verbal and back again. All sorts of interesting things emerge in that space.

Ruth, I agree with the increased ownership being a key. I notice people claiming the visuals in a way they seldom claim words. And some of the multiple sensory input spontaneously occurs once you give permission for people to show up in ways beyond words.

Yes, what is that creates that ownership?

Access? Transparency? Charm? Simplicity? Co-creation? Relief that this method of distilling conversation is so refreshingly different to the groundhog day of traditional strategy sessions/away days designed to noodle on some topic or another? Argghh! another airless room with the oxygen depleting thrum of the light-pro and a pitiful power point deck thrust at the audience as important stimulus by some insensitive lecturer or consultant.

All of the above?

I do sense that we are moving fast into a very powerful space with all of this stuff and as Ruth knows I am a bit skeptical of the ‘industry’ that is being born around what gets called graphic recording and graphic facilitation. Not that it isn’t of weapons grade importance but that its a tough thing to classify and we should be very protective of the amazing skills and power of what it can do.

There are some stonking talents in this community and the category needs to safeguard and build a far better vocabulary for its place in the industry in my opinion. Institutions like this one have a very important role to play.

What interests me is where our competition comes from.

1. The consultants and so called business experts.
2. Clients thinking they can do this themselves.
3. Ignorance of the part that exceptionally skilled and objective practitioners can perform in transforming thinking.

Rock and roll

Where does the competition come from? The other side of that question is where do our potential partners come from? They may be the same folks…is this opportunity knocking?

I make myself a little dizzy thinking about “the competition” because I make the somewhat egotistical value judgment that “they” must think this stuff is easy, so they can simply tack it on to a resume or list of consulting services. When I think about what visual thinking is, it seems easy and obvious to me at times – in contrast to some of my clients who think it is brilliant magic. Then I realize that it is truly something special that requires some skill and creativity and…dare I say it?….knowledge and expertise. All of a sudden, it isn’t so easy, and I am immediately humbled to think about how much I don’t know and how much skill I have yet to develop. But then I jump back to my clients, and the fact that when I use visual thinking with them, it makes things easier. I think I just went full circle.

I think that is why it is difficult for me as a facilitator who works visually to explain what I do sometimes. I’m supposed to help make things easier for the client, but in the success of achieving that, it can look like doing that work is, in itself, easy – so anybody could just jump up with a colored marker and do it. Right?

If it is that easy…why do I need to spend time every day doodling and thinking and honing my own skills?