Visual Meetings

Use eye-popping visual tools to energize your people!

Just as social networking has reclaimed the Internet for human interactivity and co-creation, the visual meetings movement is reclaiming creativity, productivity, and playful exchange for serious work in groups.

Visual Meetings explains how anyone can implement powerful visual tools, and how these tools are being used in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to facilitate both face-to-face and virtual group work. This dynamic and richly illustrated resource gives meeting leaders, presenters, and consultants a slew of exciting tricks and tools, including

• Graphic recording, visual planning, story boarding, graphic templates, idea mapping, etc.
• Creative ways to energize team building, sales presentations, staff meetings, strategy sessions, brainstorming, and more
• Getting beyond paper and whiteboards to engage new media platforms
• Understanding emerging visual language for leading groups

Unlocking formerly untapped creative resources for business success, Visual Meetings will help you and your team communicate ideas more effectively and engagingly.

Introduction xi
The Power of Visual Meetings

I: Just Imagine

What if Meetings Were Really Fun AND Productive? 1

1. Visualization is Worth 80 IQ Points 3
Tapping Energy, Intelligence, & Creativity

2. Everybody Knows Graphic Language 19
It’s Gesture with a Pen

3. Four Easy Ways to Get Started 37
Personal Visualization, Napkins & Flipcharts, Graphic Templates, & Getting Others to Draw

II: Engaging Groups & Building Rapport

Why Visual Listening is So Compelling (and Easy!) 51

4. Getting People Involved 53
Using Pictures to Interact

5. Presentation without PowerPoint 69
Simple Drawings & Graphic Templates

6. Consulting & Selling with Graphics 81
Drawing Out Customer Interests

7. Hands-On Information 89
Sticky Notes & Dot Voting

8. Using Images & Interaction 97
Collage & Picture Cards

III: Graphics for Visual Thinking

Mapping Ideas & Finding Key Patterns 107

9. Group Graphics 109
Seven Ways to Write on the Wall

10. Problem Solving 133
Getting Unstuck & Thinking around Corners

11. Storyboarding & Idea Mapping 147
How Innovators & Designers Work

12. Visual Planning 157
Using Graphic Templates to See the Big Picture

13. Multiple Meetings & Gallery Walks 173
Making Sense of Things over Space & Time

14. Digital Capture 183
Extending Your Meeting with Visual Documentation

15. Visualizing at a Distance 189
Using Tablets in Web Meetings

IV: Graphics for Enacting Plans

Visuals for Teams, Projects, & Getting Results 195

16. Supporting Team Performance 197
Visualizing Goals, Roles, & Action Plans

17. Decision-Making Meetings 205
Aligning on Agreements & Getting Commitments

18. Project Management Meetings 209
Mapping Progress with Pictures

19. Facilitating Innovation & Change 215
Playing with Prototypes

20. Training & Workshops 223
Leveraging Action Learning

V: Seeing It All Come Together

Tools for the Seriously Hooked 229

21. The Path to Visual Competency 231
Learning from the Groups You Lead

22. The Future is Visible Now! 237
Seeds of a Real Revolution in Meetings

23. Resources & Networks 247
Grove Tools, Web Resources, Bibliography

Index 255

Praise for Visual Meetings

“David Sibbet is the father of visual facilitation. This book finally lets us see meetings as he sees them—as eye-opening opportunities to discover what people really think. David’s approach to visually recording and visually facilitating meetings will help you become a better meeting leader and participant, see a whole new side of business—and a whole new side of yourself.” –Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin

“I have experienced the transformative power of David’s pioneering visual methods and tools. Open this book and you will get a clear vision of collaboration in the future—groups inspired and energized, tapping into their collective wisdom to create sustainable solutions: the global brain at work.” –Meryem Le Saget, Meryem Le Saget Consulting, Paris

“David Sibbet is a genius. Buy this book, and study it, not only for better meetings, but for better organizations, better teams, and a better future.” –Alan M. Webber, co-founder of Fast Company magazine

“This amazing book shows you how visualization can bring clarity to the growing complexity around us.” –Bob Johansen, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for the Future

“This book is like David’s workshops—fun and fruitful. Time and again, I have seen the principles and processes described in this book yield a rich harvest among audiences in Singapore.” –Dawn Yip, Soulbreath Consulting Singapore

“Visual Meetings is an elegant and immensely practical guide to transforming group productivity. It provides novices with a fast start to making the most of scarce group time.” –Paul Saffo, Technology Forecaster Visiting Scholar, Stanford Media-X Network

“’What If Meetings Were Really Fun AND Productive?’ Can you imagine? Visual meetings master David Sibbet has done it—put all the competency, wisdom, language, technique, resources, tools, everything you need in one delightful book?” –Robert E. Horn, author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century

David Sibbet is a world leader in graphic facilitation and visual thinking for groups. He is the founder and president of The Grove Consultants International, a company whose leading-edge group-process tools and services for panoramic visualization, graphic facilitation, team leadership, and organizational transformation are used by consultants and organizations around the world. Eye-popping visual tools can energy your meetings!

When people work visually they have better ideas, make better decisions, and are more committed to producing results. A twenty-first century guide to using the latest visual thinking techniques with your groups and teams, Visual Meetings give you a bounty of tools and tricks to unlock creativity, collaboration, and breakthrough thinking.

• Use graphic recording, visual planning, storyboarding, idea mapping, and similar techniques
• Give better presentations without resorting to PowerPoint
• Consult and sell with graphics and visualization tools
• Get beyond paper and whiteboards to tablets, iPads, and other new media platforms
• Make all meetings more interesting and productive
• Improve both face-to-face and virtual group work
• And much more…