How to work a little more creatively

Storyboards are powerful thinking and communication tools in films and advertising ... and we can use them too. 

Just as film creatives map out the proposed scenes of a movie, we can be story boarders too!  

A creative tool I use often with teams to think and work more creatively is storyboarding. 

Six cells or scenes are a starting point or a summary of a bigger and deeper story. 

🔲 Capture one point or theme per cell. 
🔲 Use a storyboard to take notes. 
🔲 Deliver your presentation or pitch with a storyboard. 

Boring notes? Nope. 
Boring meeting? Nope. 
Boring presentation? Also nope. 

We love stories! They hook us in and keep us engaged, curious to what’s coming next. 

Our colleagues and clients need us to be a little more creative - not just to hold their engagement and attention but to get to the most creative and effective outcomes we can. 

For something more memorable, practical and sensible... storyboard it.

“We want this session to be interactive”

Yes. We do too! 

There’s only so much listening or just watching of slides we can handle. Meeting after meeting or an all-talk workshop can become a bit much ... after a full day of it, a week of it or six months of it!!

So, plan ahead for interaction. 

🌟Ask a question and for the response to be in the chat box or to share an emoji

🌟Ask a question via a poll and see the results 

🌟Share a story and ask for stories

🌟Use the Spotlight feature (in Zoom) to feature a few people at a time in panel style, group share or a fishbowl conversation 

🌟Hear several people’s stories and weave them together, finding common themes or threads 


If you’d like the session to be interactive, you can be sure the team, guests and participants will probably want it to be interactive too. 

🌟Allow the time. 
🌟Vary the activities. 
🌟Encourage ... and then let the interaction happen. 

Loosen the grip on controlling all of the information. There’s some magic waiting there to be made. 

Who engages first

In a meeting or conversation, who goes first? 

Should I be actively engaged, in anticipation that you may or may not be engaging? 

Or should you be so engaging that you capture and hold my attention? 

Or can we both pay just enough attention to get by? 

So who’s job is engagement? 

The crowd says, “it’s everyones job!”, yet we still kind of suck at it. Engagement levels continue to remain low in Organisations the world over. 

Paying attention is one thing; being interested and connected to a topic, project, people or idea over a period of time is something else.

It takes work, energy and ongoing attention. 

How do we engage with people more effectively? 

Some say 
- Tell more stories
- Show more empathy 
- Have more conversations
- Ask more questions
- Focus on what’s in it for them. 

And what else?

What’s your tip - how can we be more engaging in these times?

How to explain your ideas…

Product design company Zurb was in Melbourne recently at a session on ideation. These creative people spend their every waking hour creating; they're constantly designing products, websites and online services. 

But it's not always a smooth path... uncovering your awesome ideas so you can get your thinking 'out there' to people in the shape of a product or service. 

My visual notes reflect some of the hottest tips on ideation:

• Use stories (more engaging than boring zzzzz features and benefits)
• Set a time limit or 'time box' so brainstorming time is constrained 
• Get user feedback to inspire and generate new thinking
• Use a Sharpie marker to sketch out your thinking
• Keep your sketches 'lo fi' and rough
• Go for quality ideas not quantity

Then once you've got some ideas down, group them together in chunks or clusters so they're easier for people to see, understand and digest. 

Go ahead and encourage some wild ideas with the team this week! It's the actual process of coming up with ideas, the 'ideation', that gives structure to creative thinking.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "If I can't picture it, I can't understand it'. 

Visual Stories : a template

During my visit to New Zealand last week I enjoyed a couple of tasty dinners out with some of the great people from Agile Wellington Meetup and Boost New Media.

Over a glass of New Zealand Pinot Noir, I noticed how we shared story after story after story - personal stories, travel stories, food stories, funny stories, business stories ... laughter here and there, learning, sharing and connecting. 

Stories are certainly on the rise! Their value and impact when they are used to communicate key messages across teams and organisations is undeniable too! (You can read more about how to use stories in business in the book 'Hooked: How leaders connect, engage and inspire with storytelling', by my Thought Leadership colleagues Gabrielle Dolan & Yamini Naidu.)

 

While telling the stories is one aspect of great communication, recalling and revisiting them later on is another aspect that I think needs greater attention and focus.

In a client workshop recently, one of the senior leaders shared so many brilliant and inspiring stories throughout the day.  We heard sales stories, planning and project stories, tales of challenge and of achievement and so many other inspiring messages. You could see and feel how well the content, style and messages impacted on the team.

So that these powerful stories weren't 'lost', I visually captured them.


This is the type of output I captured for one of the team's sessions. Small circles or vignettes are great shapes to write some words and icons to remind the team of the key content from the stories being shared as we travel along throughout the workshop or meeting. 

Be sure to relax... you don't need all of the details covered in every story. I often say 'A small visual anchor can hold a weight of information'. You only need a small visual to remind you and others of the detail and content and how you felt about the story and its message. Given you didn't hear the leader's stories from last week, these visuals won't mean so much, but it's the style or design or approach I'm interested in you grasping. 

So... to make sure you don't 'lose the plot' when it comes to stories, I'm sharing my template.  It makes them Visual Stories and helps prolong their life beyond the telling in the here and now. 

Click to save it, print it out or sketch out your own series of circles (or other shapes) to collect the key points and learnings the next time you hear a great story you want to remember. Use one circle per story, or one circle for each key point or moral of the story.

In this way you can quickly review, revisit and retell these chunks of content and information.  

The end!