Strategyzer Webinar: Audience Q&A with Holger Nils-Pohl

First question, how much do you prepare what you will draw before you go into a meeting? And do you practice the drawings ahead of time?

So that's actually a good question. So I don't practice the drawings explicitly for a meeting or workshop. So what I do is it depends on what I want to do. So if I want to present, for example, on a flip chart, let's draw a flip chart kind of setting, and I have a group listening to me. I would do first for myself a rough sketch in my sketchbook of the flip chart and then just replicating the drawing live. Because that's kind of practice, right. If I'm drawing, for example, if I'm preparing something for drawing on the iPad, I normally do sketches as well in my sketchbook. And sometimes I work with layers. So I have a hidden layer underneath my blank screen where my sketch is on. So I just can rely on my sketch on the layer underneath. And then I just draw fine on the canvas for people to see. That's kind of a cheating way to have nice drawings and don't think about proportionate stuff when you're drawing on the iPad. So, no, I don't practice explicitly for a meeting, but I prepare myself. So it's a little difference, but it's a huge difference, I think.

Awesome. Okay, when you're in the workshop environment, what's a good way to get participants to start using visuals or get them warmed up with visuals if they're not accustomed to that type of working?

Yeah, so normally I do a quick. If I want to have them drawing on pictures and papers and stuff, I do a short, kind of super short training session with them. So I call it get them sketching. So what I do is I take like four to five minutes to explain them. Like, if you just want to write something down, why not draw a nice container right. Where you can then write into. Or if you have an idea and you want to explain this just with writing, why don't you draw just an easygoing speech bubble? Or why not only drawing the easy one of the arrows, but perhaps you want to draw a bigger one for emphasizing something is very important. Or you might like, switch between different kind of bullet points that help you differentiate on your drawing. And then I would like to tell them, like, if you want to draw a stick figure, you can do it even easier than a stick figure when you're drawing these kind of circles and. Yeah. And shapes and these guys becoming people very easily. When you address the speech bubble as well. And if you then want to, for example, Say that this is a diverse team. You just change the shape of the head. So you're easy to go with very simple icons and drawings. And this would take like four minutes for me. But they have good understanding on, okay, what could I do if I can't draw? And of course the last and most important insight I give here is it's not about the drawing. Right. So I tell them that if your flip chart afterwards looks like a big mess, don't worry because it helps you to explain your idea. It's not about creating art like Picasso did. It's just helping you to get an idea across. So it's normally how I do get them sketching. And then there's one thing that might be interesting as well is when I am in a group or with a group on the flip chart and someone is speaking up with an idea, I just would give him the marker. So like, so could you just write or draw on top of my drawing what you think? Right. So take the pen and just correct what I did. And this normally encourage people to okay, I'll try it. I don't know if I can, but I try. So they grab the pen. So just giving or handing over the pen is like giving them the right to do it.

Awesome. That's awesome. So from a comfort standpoint, that's really cool as an exercise. Now when people start thinking about doing diagrams, are there any specific kinds of visuals that people should think about when they're trying to discuss certain concepts? Like are there some go to ways to explain the who, what, when, why, where, how of conversations.

So I think it's always difficult to give an idea of which kind of visual could help you in which kind of situation generally. So let me just try like so which pictures? What I normally do is I have like a three folded theory about this. So one thing is that you explain something that is changing in size or changing in shape or changing in. I don't know, yeah, something. So you have a change. This is for example, these are flowcharts and timelines and all this kind of stuff. Then you have the concept of the compare which is about. It's not changing actually. But you say this is X square and this is a round thing. Or you say like normally we have teams from the same division, but these guys doing multi diverse teams. So you just try to compare to explain an idea. And then you have the third thing which is connect. And connect is all about connections, relationships. So how do things relate to each other? How can I set them into relationship? Is it in an org chart. Can I draw just kind of a universe or solid network or whatever? And if you try to break down your ideas in these three kind of concepts, which are less than the why, who, when, where, etc, etc is only 3. You could try to just put your concept in these three levels and how they overlap to each other and can explain pretty much everything with it. But the answer is always not complete. I know that. Because your challenge to transfer that to a concrete situation is quite challenging. I know that. So there is actually no answer for something. It works all the time. It's more bound to the situation.

Yeah, I think that's so true.

But I think this is a really.

Good simple framework to get people kind of started. Let's maybe wind down with some very kind of tactical elements that I know audiences are interested about. Let's talk about white space. Sometimes when we draw, you know, it's hard to understand how to organize the white space. Do you have any advice on how to do that when you're kind of talking and drawing?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what, what you saw today with me, for example, just like, let me take another color. So I started with the practice over here, right. I actually don't know exactly how much questions you will ask me because this will be like flexible on our time planning. Right. But when I don't know what's coming up, I normally start in the left upper corner because then I can work my way around to the right side of the page. And then when I'm starting in the left upper corner, I normally first work down with the next parts, which was the second question here. And then I go like back up again with the third and I'm working my way through the page here. If, let's say we would end our session just right now, I would have like a messy working with the white space, right. I have a lot of space left. What I then sometimes do is that I just use, for example, I mean, we had practice pictures, get them sketching, let's say like. So I would then choose for example a big picture, which is more kind of an emotional picture. An airplane in this case. And let's say like something unuseful, like everyone can do it. Right? Everyone can do it. You get the point. So I'm filling up the left white space with something big, for example, a key statement of the meeting or something. So just fill it up with. Some people say nonsense, but it always works quite nice to have a filling space, to have space afterwards I just erase this one in the records. People will see It I think what I do when I don't have enough space and I'm talking to people, I just mention it. So, like, oh, wow, I thought I just need one page. But we talked so much about. Or we had a deep conversation about this. I think I needed a second page. And so I'm always like talking people through. Normally, if you get practice in drawing, you get a feeling on how much space you need for it. For example, I know normally, let's take white space as a title as well here for the protocol. White space. I know exactly. Let's make it concrete. I know exactly that when I'm working on the iPad and I'm having a conversation or I'm trying to grab like live recording things, I know that I can put half an hour roughly on one screen. That's my. So if I'm drawing in the size you see me here drawing, it's like one and a half, like 30 minutes. If I have a flip chart, for example, this normally in a discussion, this normally holds up like 10 to 15 minutes. That's it, right? Then you need a next page. Sometimes you even need only five minutes to fill up a page. If it's like a hot discussion or something, or you really want to grab the insight there. And so I'm just going through. So for example, when I'm talking to people one on one, I'm using my sketchbook. Normally this is like I can use two pages between 20 minutes to 45 minutes. So over time, I learned how big I draw and how much space I have. But this is kind of a general idea on how I'm working with white space. It's actually not planned before, but it's a habit you learn over time. Let me just answer or do one last answer on that one. So if I know there is a key topic that I want to explore with the people, either when I don't know where we go, I will start in the left upper corner, or I start in the center and then working from the center outwards. So if I just take our white space topic to the right upper corner here, let's say you have a page. I like to start in the middle with the topic. Because what you then can do is you can spread your notes and your drawings around it a little bit like a mind map kind of thing. And sometimes it happens that in the end you end up with a not perfectly filled page, like for example, this. So it's not balanced at all, but it actually displays the way the conversation did work. Right? Sometimes you talk A lot about one topic and less about another, which might be an extra insight as well that you gather out of your nose of visual facilitation things.

That's awesome. I think that's still just like. As you're continuing through some of these audience questions, you're really providing some great, at least structure or foundations for ways that people can make use of it. So let's keep on that one. In some instances, when you're drawing with your sketchbook, you can be very connected to the audience because you're side by side with the person you're talking to. But how do you remain connected to the audience when you're standing up in front of a room and you're drawing on a flip chart or a huge whiteboard, how do you maintain that connectivity?

Oh, yeah, that's tricky. So I say stay connected for this topic. So what you have to train is that you can fill up the space while drawing by talking to the people on the topic. So the most important thing is if I stand in front, let me just draw a short figure of mine here. If I'm standing in front of a flip chart and I draw on it, I always try to talk all the time. So I don't stop talking while I draw because it's like feeling very inconvenient. People think like, will he talk? Should we raise a question? Or what is he doing there? So I either talk about the topic or I tell people what I draw. So I say, like, okay, let's first let me draw a bubble and we put the things in, in here or something like that. So I'm talking about the drawing. That is one thing that's true for whiteboard, for flip chart and anything. And then if you let me draw the flip chart, this is an on top view. Like I would be a bird, right? The bird view. And here is like, these are the heads of the Orients. So what I do is I stand here with my nose and I draw from the side. So that's what I do very often as well with the whiteboard. This adds some complexity to your drawing because you don't see your drawing very well. And you always think you're drawing straight lines, but they are totally crappy and sidetracked because you have a very hard time to see the right perspective from this point of view, right? Because you have this angle here, which doesn't help, but it helps you to still connect to the audience. You look at them and what I see is that they appreciate that you take the effort by drawing in kind of an angle that's unconvenient for you, but enable them to see everything all the time and to have eye contact as well. This is something I recommend to train. So take a flip shot in your office and just do like 15, 20 minutes. Try to write and draw on a flip chart when you're standing right on the side of the flip chart. Same goes for whiteboard. There is a different thing. That's why I, for example, like to work with the iPad as well, which I do now, for example. Then I can face the people again because I only have my iPad in hand. Preferable having the iPad connected wireless with an Apple tv. And then I can just draw and talk to people and standing up front them in the group, laying the iPad on the table or something, I can draw and I can even project this one to the for a bigger audience as well. So If I have 100 people in the room and I go to a table of five and I'm showing them personally something about their question, all the other 95 people can see it on the project as well. So I always try to keep connected. And to be honest, this is like the higher level of facilitation. So this is something you have to train. It's not going easily or naturally normally.

Awesome. Okay, last question. At the end of the webinar, we obviously talked about the tools you use. And we did touch upon some ways that people can kind of flex their visual muscles from time to time. Let's end with just that as a kind of recap. What are some kind of quick ways every day for the five or 10 minutes, types of exercises that people can do to make sure that their creativity and their visual muscles are being exercised.

Exercise. Yeah. So what I always recommend is so, for example, so what you like, that's good. Visual muscle. Visual muscles. Muscle training, you call it, Right. How do you use muscle? Yep. C, L, E. Yep, that's correct training. So sometimes as you see, I just messed up with the, with the place here, but with the space I have left. And then I just do something, something to help me overcome that mistake. So first, first is that what helps is if you don't have an idea on what to draw. Like I like to just Google it, right? So Google something and then you find like pictures and you just try to draw them as icons or something. Right. This is quite easy. What I always recommend people, for example, a lot of people say, like, I like your style. Why don't you go to Twitter or Facebook and stalk, for example, me? Or if you like the drawings from someone else, the other guys, and just copy the drawings, right? So just look at the. On Twitter and Facebook, you look at the media that's online of the people, and you just take one or two a day and just copy it. Try to understand how did he draw this? And then you draw it. So a lot of people don't get or don't have this idea. So I hope this is helpful as well. I think stalking other drawing people is very helpful in getting better. Third, there are things like the Noun project, for example, with a lot of icons, a big library of icons. So they are quite nice to copy because they are so easy to draw. So these are all tips to like. You train your muscles, your visual muscles by doing it, doing every day, one or two drawings. So this is one thing. So there is another thing which I really like. And Judith Wimmer from Creaholic had this idea after workshop or a training with me. They do a nice thing in the company which I recommend as well. So they put a study or a post it with a word on it, and underneath you have an envelope and some as well and pencil and stuff. And everybody who's crossing the window with the word on it is drawing a short sketch of the word, putting it into the envelope. And at the end of the day they take all the drawings from the envelope and they have a little gallery of the visuals, right? And then they see like, how people like which ideas came up for this, for this special word. It's quite fun to have people then standing around and talking about the nice idea the other colleagues had. So this is something very practical I can recommend to you. So.