Presto Sketching

A book to help you think and communicate better with drawing

meetings

How adding a graphic recorder to your event makes it a game changer

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Ever walked out of an event thinking, “Well, that was great… but what actually happened?” You’re not alone. Words fly thick and fast, but they don’t always stick. That’s where a graphic recorder (a.k.a. live scribe or visual note-taker) comes in. Here are 6 benefits for having one around.

I’ve been graphic recording at public events, conferences, and meetings for about 15 years, and even with the advent of gen-AI, these 6 benefits still hold true. Actually, even while technology gives so much wow-factor, we still crave connection, and in many ways, these 6 benefits are more important for events than ever.

🧲 1. It makes people look up from their phones

When someone’s sketching the conversation live in big, bold strokes, it pulls attention in a way bullet-point slides just can’t. A visual note-taker brings the vibe of “something really interesting’s happening here”… and suddenly, people are leaning in instead of tuning out.

There’s nothing like seeing a big drawing come to life before your eyes (pictured: Axelle Vanquaillie)

Oh, and sometimes my clients are worried that graphic recording distracts from the speaker. What actually happens is quite the opposite! It’s like watching a documentary; seeing the action unfold while hearing the narration over the top is the perfect combo.

🧠 2. It helps brains actually remember things

Our brains are wired for stories and visuals, not just talking heads and dense jargon. A graphic recorder connects the dots with succinct phrases in attractive lettering, colour, layout, and metaphor, turning a wall of words into something you can see, remember, and talk about later.

And here’s something nobody talks about: a graphic recorder can make a so-so talk MUCH more appealing, since it helps to amplify the content.

🖼️ 3. It’s like getting a Polaroid photo for every event talk

By the end of your event, you’ve got a collection of boards that are like a set of giant hand-drawn Polaroid photos, or a ‘highlight reel’ of key insights. Each board is part artwork, part documentation, and 100% useful. You can take a photo and boom: your post-event wrap-up just got sorted.

The boards (or charts) also act as postcards of each talk, for your attendees to take with them and share (see #5). Of course each ‘postcard’ doesn’t capture all the detail of what’s in the talk. But just like a postcard, each particular piece in the postcard conjures up memories of that detail, to keep those fond memories around for longer.

Graphic recording boards making great souvenirs from a conference

🌐 4. It makes your event more inclusive

Not everyone processes information the same way. Visual note-taking supports people who think better in pictures, who don’t speak the main language fluently, or who need more than just facts and figures to feel knowledged-up on the topic of the talk, or quick actions to try out.

A lot of what a graphic recorder does is to summarise a speakers’ content (or a conversation) by listening, synthesising and translating that summary into a visual summary. So in a way, the graphic recorder is doing the heavy cognitive lifting for the audience, so that they don’t have to.

It’s a win for accessibility and inclusivity.

📣 5. Hello, shareability

Graphic recordings are super snackable content. One photo of a rich, colourful visual summary can do more on social than five paragraphs of text ever will. It’s a dream for your comms team. And of course your audience will love sharing it, too.

Graphic recording works super well at sponsor conference booths too!

🤝 6. It sparks conversations (and a few a-ha! moments)

When people see their own words or ideas pop up on the board, it builds validation, trust and momentum. It invites discussion, reflection, insight, even laughter. A live scribe doesn’t just record the moment; they shape it.

🧭 7. it’s great for strategy and decision-making

Wait! There are actually more than just 6 benefits. This benefit is actually my favourite. Workshops, planning sessions, roundtables, offsites… graphic recorders shine in these, and I see this play out in my own work all the time. They map out ideas in real time, reveal patterns hiding in the noise, and help groups focus better, and get aligned faster.

Think of them as visual GPS for complex conversations.

Even if it’s rough, graphic captures on a whiteboard help groups to focus and have a more productive conversation

🎉 8. It adds that “Wow, they thought of everything” feel

OK, yes, there’s yet another benefit. This one’s definitely for the event organisers. Having the process and product of a graphic recorder around is a little unexpected, a little delightful, a little premium, and always interesting. When people see a live scribe in action, it tells them your event is top-drawer, thoughtful, professional, and designed for deeper engagement, not just an information dump.

Bottom line? A graphic recorder doesn’t just make your event aesthetically nicer and more engaging. They make it stick.

If you want help with getting a visual note-taker at your event, I got you (links to my business website, Bright Pilots). If you want to learn more about how to draw for graphic recording, look no further than my Presto Sketching book.

Here’s how your pen can break down walls

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In the last post, I showed you an effective way how to chart out a goal and how to get there, using the simple ‘Build a Bridge‘ visual framework. It included a way to plot out the different steps you’d need to take to reach that goal, and the distractions you’d have to watch out for.

You might have been thinking: “What about the things that get in the way of achieving that goal? How do I show those?” And well you should. We come up against barriers all the time, don’t we? I’m always a fan of not loading too much into one sketch to explain something, otherwise it loses clarity. So here’s another type of sketch that might come in handy for you or your team. This is the Goal Barriers visual framework. Take a look, and have a go at sketching it yourself:

It’s pretty simple, but as you’ll see it will communicate a lot. On the left is you. On the right, the target is your goal. That goal could be losing 10Kg, or launching a campaign at work… whatever is meaningful for you. The idea is that you can shoot your metaphorical arrow and hit your target. Now I’m going to add walls in the middle, getting in the way of you hitting that target with your arrow:

It can be incredibly insightful simply thinking and visualising exactly what barriers there are to your goal. Try it yourself, and try to be specific: draw a wall representing each barrier you can think of, and write what the barrier is above each wall. Is it lack of time? A special stakeholder who won’t get on board? Another project in the way, that needs to finish first?

Let’s take this a step further. Just like a wall is made up of bricks, each challenge is probably made up of smaller parts. Draw a few lines across each wall, like this:

We can now add a question below each wall about how we can break down that wall. For example, if the target is to lose 10Kg, and the first wall is “No time to exercise”, the question can be “How might I get some time to exercise?” Now – and here’s another useful thing about visualising barriers and cutting them down – you don’t have to remove the wall entirely, but just enough for the arrow to go over it.

Visualise what are some things you could do to start chipping away at those walls. You might even want to sketch those on the same piece of paper, too. Pretty soon, your walls could look like this, and you can then hit your target:

So go ahead and visualise (1) your target; (2) your barriers; and (3) how you’re going to knock those barriers down. Once they’re out of your head and onto paper, you’re one step closer to knocking them down in real life.

Was it good for you?

I’d be delighted to hear any feedback or questions you have about this Goal Barriers visual framework. Imagine if your whole team could do this together, and start busting down those barriers together?

See a clearer path to your goal with the Build a Bridge framework

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One of the best things about sketching is how it can help clarify your thinking. I’m sure you’ve had times where your head is swirling with thoughts, questions, worries and maybes… it could be about that important meeting tomorrow, or that prickly situation with stakeholders at work, or maybe something closer to home.

Whatever it is that’s keeping you up at night, getting your thoughts out of your head and onto paper is always a great idea. I want to show you a simple framework I’ve picked up along the way (I forget where I first saw it now) that has helped un-muddle my thinking a lot, and I hope it helps you too.

Visualising your goal with a simple bridge sketch

Take a look at the Build a Bridge framework sketch below, and why not grab a pen and some paper, and try drawing it yourself. It’s a really simple sketch, but I find it communicates a lot.

On the left side is you, and where you are right now. On the right side is your goal. That goal could be something quite tangible (like losing 10Kg, or launching a book by next July), or it could be more intangible (like a stronger team, or a healthier marriage).

Whatever your goal is, try to make it specific and realistic (hello SMART goal framework). You might want to even try drawing what that goal is, rather than a flag like I’ve done.

Next, draw a curved line from one side to the other. As you do that, visualise yourself reaching that goal. This is your bridge to your future. Now draw a few lines on the bridge, like this:

Those little lines across your bridge represent specific steps you can take to get to your goal. Think about these steps, and make notes above the lines about what each step could be. Don’t worry too much about the order and effort needed in each step; just get all those thoughts out as words on the paper, because you can worry about order and effort later on.

Next, draw a couple of crocodiles under your bridge. These are the things you’ll happily avoid now that you have a bridge to your goal (rather than swimming across, geddit?), but can still be distracting for you, as you try to reach that goal. Take a look at my crocs; they’re never going to win a Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, but they look enough like crocs to represent distraction.

Now, name each crocodile with a specific thing that could distract you from reaching your goal, like – oh, I don’t know – Toblerone chocolate, or too much scrolling on your phone at night rather than getting a good night’s sleep (guilty!).

“Ah, but what about the things that get in my way, Ben?” I hear you muse. It’s a good thing not to overburden one drawing with too many things. Plus, we’ll deal with barriers in another post…

And behold – this is a map to your future. Look at your drawing, and think: how can I get to each step across this bridge? Keep that drawing taped up in your bathroom, or on your fridge… anywhere where you’re likely to see it every day, as a reminder of what you want to achieve.

It works super well for businesses too. Here’s a variation of the bridge drawing, this time with a building representing an organisation:

I’ve drawn the steps as financial quarters, but these could be anything that represents meaningful progress for your organisation. Why not give this a go in your next project planning meeting, or company strategy meeting?

How was it for you?

Try drawing this visual framework yourself, for a goal of your own. Or, you might like to try it at your next project kick-off meeting, as a way to help everyone get a clear, shared understanding of the project’s goal and major stages, before digging into the detail. If this is useful for you, either for yourself as an individual, or at work, why not drop me a line and let me know?

Until next post, happy sketching!

5 MORE tips for better whiteboarding awesomeness

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My last post about whiteboard tips seemed to really strike a chord with a lot of readers, so here for your further whiteboard mastering pleasure are 5 MORE tips. If you missed out on the first 5, don’t worry; you can read them here.

There’s no harm in saying again that writing and drawing on a whiteboard is not only a great way to visually reflect what’s being said in the meeting, it’s a great way to command the meeting. By that I don’t mean making YOU the centre of attention; I mean making the IDEA, or the QUESTION, or the DECISION the centre of attention.

So, here are 5 more ways you can rock the whiteboard, to make sure everyone in the meeting focuses on what really matters.

1: Plan the structure  of your whiteboard space

It’s really easy to let a meeting take your hand all over the whiteboard. Before you know it, you’ve scrawled willy-nilly all over it like a bee on Red Bull, darting from flower to flower. This might feel good, in a Beautiful Mind aren’t-we-brilliant kind of way, but it may not help everyone in the meeting to get more clarity, meaning, structure, and connection from what’s being discussed.

Instead, plan the spatial structure of what you’re going to write and draw on your whiteboard ahead of time. Using either a dashed line, or just your mind’s eye, mark out a set of smaller areas on the whiteboard, where each area will correspond to a particular part of the meeting or workshop, like this:

This will help everyone understand and remember the various parts of the meeting much better. Also, try to make the shapes photo-friendly, to make taking photos of them easier (see point #5 below).

2: Use colour to add meaning and emphasis

Now, I’m assuming you’ve done tip #2 of the last 5 tips for whiteboarding awesomeness, and you have several good-quality whiteboard markers in several colours at the ready. Choose one marker for the bulk of what you write and draw (hint: black), and then choose a colour or two to use with the black, to represent specific meaning(s).

In the example below, I’ve used red to emphasise some elements of an outcomes hierarchy that I would need the room of people to pay attention to:

In this example, the red emphasises 3 things at a glance: There’s a box in the bottom right corner that isn’t connected to anything (this could represent a project that isn’t contributing any outcomes); another project added to the left that we’ve forgotten about; and the highest-level outcome is in a warning-state somehow.

3: Breathe life into those boxes and arrows

If I had a dollar for every box and arrow I’ve ever drawn on a whiteboard, I could definitely buy an island right now, and I’m guessing you’d probably be on your way, too. Boxes and arrows are the bread-and-butter of whiteboard discussions, so why not give them a lot more life and meaning?

You’re probably used to sketching something like this on your whiteboard, or seen it done:

But what if you did something like this:

There are several extra things going on here:

The shape of the arrows adds more meaning – The middle arrow is in a spiral, indicating something that’s either iterative, or complex, or just plain dizzy. The top arrow arcs up and over, indicating a part of the process that soars over the rest, leading to a positive outcome.

The boxes have character – Simply adding a face to a box gives it life, character, and meaning. Depending on what you want to communicate, this sort of tip can be a powerful ally for helping people to remember certain concepts and ideas.

Colour is used to indicate meaning – Red is used for something unfavourable, while green is used for something – well – good!

4: Give them the pen

According to maestro visual communicator and author Dan Roam (and I’ve seen this in action myself), there are 3 types of people in the room when it comes to whiteboards:

  • The Black Pen People – they can’t WAIT to jump up and start drawing on that whiteboard (me!)
  • The Yellow Pen People – they’re happy to hang back a bit, and add to someone else’s work
  • The Red Pen People – they wait until the end, question it all, and might just jump up and re-draw it all

It’s really useful to know what sort of Pen People you have in your meeting, because you can use that to your advantage. For brevity, I’m going to focus on the Yellow Pen People, since they’re the ones who will give a lot of value to a meeting through visual communication, if nudged in the right way.

Here’s how. On your whiteboard, draw things that let the Yellow Pen people easily see where they can add their bit to, give them the pen, and then ask them questions. Here are a few examples:

  • Sliding scales – Draw: a sliding scale, with an alternative at either end // Ask: “Is this a low-risk move or a high-risk move? Where do you think a circle should be on this risk scale?”
  • Fill in the gaps – Draw: a set of circles representing the set of whatever you’re talking about (e.g. projects) // Ask: “Are there any projects missing? Could you draw any more in?”
  • Make connections – Draw: a set of circles representing the set of whatever you’re talking about // Ask: “How are these connected? Could you draw lines in where you think the connections are?”

5: Capture those whiteboard drawings clean and fast

It stands to reason, the sooner you can get a good clean picture of the whiteboard into your team members’ (or stakeholders’) inboxes, the better. The more you use images that they’ve seen before to reinforce what was talked about or decided, the greater your influence will be.

Thankfully, there are some great (and free) smartphone apps out there that will take a great photo, clean it up and send it to your inbox in a jiffy. My current favourites:

You can read a whole lot more about capturing your whiteboard drawings in this Presto Sketching blog post: Capture photos of your sketches like a pro.

Well, there you have it! 5 more tips that I hope will really improve your whiteboarding skills, as well as the meetings and workshops that you and your team have. Let me know in if and how you put these tips into practice, and if they’ve improved your meetings.

5 tips for better whiteboarding awesomeness

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No-one likes boring aimless meetings, or long wordy slide decks, and a big way to make meetings much more engaging is to use a whiteboard. Writing and drawing on a whiteboard is a great way to visually reflect what’s being said in the meeting. In a way, the whiteboard becomes your second voice in the room.

No matter what you think your ability at the whiteboard is, here are 5 ways you can take your own whiteboarding skills from good to great.

1: SLOW DOWN

Drawing on a whiteboard is a lot like public speaking: if we rush it, we won’t sound very confident in our ideas, what we draw will look like an unruly mess, and others won’t be as confident in our ideas either. How often have you seen this sort of thing on the whiteboard, scratched your head and wondered what it was:

Just slow down. Slow. Down. Breathe. Spend just a few extra seconds as you draw, and be more deliberate with each line. It will inject so much more confidence in what you draw and what you say. And when you project more confidence, others will have more confidence in your ideas. And they’ll remember them longer, too. Try to aim for something that’s just a bit neater, like this:

2: Get decent whiteboard markers

There are a lot of really ordinary whiteboard markers out there, and they do you and your ideas no justice at all. Let the ink speak to the quality of your ideas, and get a set of decent markers that don’t run out by the end of the meeting. Chances are, there’s a newsagent or office supplies store near you that has a range of markers to choose from, for less than the price of a cup of coffee. My favourite tends to be a chisel-tip marker (rather than a bullet tip), so I get a chunkier line:

3: Practice your writing

This is related to tip #1: be a little more deliberate and neat with your writing. What you write is like your voice recorded on that whiteboard long after you’re not in the room, so it’s worth putting a bit of effort into your lettering.\

We’re not aiming for precise calligraphy with graceful ligatures and flourishes, of course! But just a bit of neatness goes a long way to projecting more of your character, and more of that confidence. Try practicing on the whiteboard before the meeting, in both lowercase and capitals:

4: Master outline text

Outline text is eye-catching and, used sparingly as a title or two on your whiteboard, will command attention and inject a little more life and energy into the meeting, for very little effort. It’s best to practice beforehand, if you’re not confident. The best way I know to get good at outline text is to draw each letter in capitals first (with plenty of breathing room between the letters), draw an outline around it, and then rub out the first line:

5: Master a small set of icons

Try to practice a small set of simple icon-like pictures that you’re likely to use over and over, from meeting to meeting. You might like to start with some like the ones below, that represent things like goal, problem, process, conversation, security, company, options, and so on.

These tips will really take what you draw on the whiteboard to the next level, and inject more confidence and life into what you have to say, so why not try them in your very next meeting?

Let me know if and how you’ve put these tips into practice, or maybe a share a killer tip of your own. Here’s to better whiteboarding, and better meetings!

Get your problems all MOPT up with this problem-solving method

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In the last post, we looked at an easy way to sketch out various aspects of a problem, according to three parts:

  • Rational – What do I understand about this? (objective, facts and data)
  • Emotional – How do I feel about this? (subjective, feelings and stories); and
  • Political – Who else is affected by this? (associative, connections and systems)

These three lenses give us a more structured way to approach and better understand a problem space.

Step 1: look for clues

So where does the MOPT come in? I’ll get to that. Firstly, you get the sheet you sketched before, where you jotted down notes and pictures about the rational, emotional and political parts of your problem. Then you go back over it, looking for clues that could give rise to ideas to solve that problem.

For this example, I’m going to change my initial problem to: I’m always late filling in my timesheet. Here you’ll see I’ve circled a few clues:

You might notice from my sheet that the two things I’ve circled in the rational space are like sub-problems, or problems within the larger problem. That’s good to highlight. You might also find connections that you hadn’t seen before. Notice the arrow in mine, where I’ve connected the fact that I don’t know how to classify all the things I do in the timesheet, with Sarah the Project Manager, who certainly does. This will lend itself nicely to an idea for a solution.

If you’re lucky, you might also find the odd valuable insight. One of the things I wrote in the political part of my sheet is that it’s hard for the business to track where time is spent. Afterward it occurred to me: if the business knows what projects we have on, and who is occupied on each project, then it should already have a pretty good idea of where people’s time has been spent, rather than starting each week blank.

Understanding MOPT

At the heart of this method is the now-famous innovation question: “How might we [solve this problem]?“. ‘How might we’ as an approach was invented by Procter and Gamble, and popularised by companies like IDEO and Google. I’m a big fan, because it’s a great way to have a positive mindset about any problem, and it moves ideas in more useful directions.

The things is, the ‘we’ in ‘How might we…’ is sometimes left out of that ideas-generation mindset. In other words: ‘we’ are the ones coming up with ideas, but ‘we’ may not be in the final solution. And that’s where MOPT comes in. MOPT stands for:

M = Me

You – either you individually, or the collective ‘you’ as the team taking on this challenge – might indeed be the one to solve the problem. Often those closest to the problem itself are the best qualified to solve it. For example, Kathy Bowles was a nurse (now at University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing) who was concerned that patients were five times more likely to be readmitted to hospital than those who received proper post-acute care when needed. This drove her to spearhead RightCare Solutions, where she and her team designed an end-to-end software solution simplifying the post-acute care referral process.

O = Others

Sometimes it’s clear that you (or those you work with) are not the ones to solve a challenge, but you can alert, support, and encourage others who certainly can, with some initial thinking about your perspective on the challenge.

P = Processes

When we try to come up with solutions to challenges, sometimes we think the solution lies in something completely new, ‘blue sky’, or radical, while the solution(s) may well lie in improving the humble day-to-day processes everyone takes for granted. Toyota has always made a name for itself with its focus on process optimisation. Its Toyota Way puts great emphasis on Lean principles of minimising waste (muda) and kaizen (continuous improvement).

T = Tools, technology and systems

This is often the first ‘idea territory’ that people reach for when generating ideas. Tools! Apps! A new website! Any solution you come up with will typically sit within a system of other solutions. It’s worth zooming out a bit, and noticing other adjacent parts of whatever system the challenge is a part of. Whatever you think of McDonalds, Ray Kroc – the man responsible for turning it into the global fast-food juggernaut it is today – can be credited with tons of great system improvement ideas. By focusing on systems improvement, he was able to streamline and scale not only how the kitchens and menu processing ran, but all other parts of the business including quality control, partner relations, and real estate tactics.

Step 2: draw up a MOPT table

Now that we have our heads around the idea of different territories of solutions, we can move on to step 2. We transfer our initial challenge over to a new piece of paper (or whiteboard, or area on an online innovation space like Miro), and draw up a table, with a row for each clue.

There are four other columns, for Me, Others, Processes and Tools:

Now, either by yourself or as a team, you can tackle each cell of the table separately, and come up with a range of ‘How might…’ questions, depending on the clue, e.g. “How might I improve this so that I can recall everything I do?” or “How might I solve this so that I don’t even need to recall everything I do?”

I really like this because straight away I’m going to get more ideas than I otherwise would have, because I’m setting up all these different cells to fill. And like all good brainstorming, not all the ideas need to be practical yet; it’s always good to go for quantity first, and see if some ideas lead to other ideas.

There’s not a lot of space in those little squares, so treat each cell as a placeholder for your thinking, a springboard to another piece of paper, or another part of the whiteboard. Here’s where I got to with mine:

Note how a couple of cells in my example above just didn’t apply, and that’s fine. Mixing written notes and pictures is also fine. What this does is it arranges our thinking spatially, rather than just as a list… or with no form at all. Once you fill your MOPT table, you can go back over it and pick out the ideas that are most resonant and relevant.

How was it for you?

Go on, give it a go, you might be surprised by the insight this reveals to you. If you do give it a try, let me know how it goes, and if you think it could be improved upon.