Worth a Thousand Words

Tim Corey provides graphic facilitation services to lots of people, including Costco. So when Carmen was there recently, speaking to assembled executives at the company, he was there to “record” her talk.

This is so cool we wanted to cry and dance and do stuff that mattered. The idea of “illustrating” a meeting hits a very primal cord, particularly with me. Who hasn’t doodled during a meeting? Who hasn’t drawn the picture of the teacher as an evil gorgon from somewhere bad? There’s a visceral, Cave of Lascaux sort of thing going on here that I absolutely love. Tim’s joining facilitation with rapid-delivery visual markers of the big ideas that emerge from strategic planning. I can only image the sort of imprint this leaves. You can see more examples of Tim’s work on his Flickr page. Awesome.

One obvious way to work this sort of graphical representation into your own process is to call up Tim and hire him. But just as our “Upstream” poster demonstrates, you can also do it yourself, on a white board or poster paper, with your people, today. I suggest that you do so, posthaste. It’s a new year, after all.