Who has never wondered how to reduce their workload? But who has never found a solution to the question, which is not episodic or ridiculous in terms of real benefits?
My colleague Oliver Kozak brought his scientific and systemic approach to present how continuous improvement can help us to really reduce worlkload.
The objective is to free up enough time to be able to start improving, in order to free up even more time up to 40% to be able to improve continuously and ultimately create much more value at work (by moving from the Spend-It-All team model to the Time-Investor team model). How to get there concretely? By improving in three areas: (your) work processes, team efficiency, and organisation development. Important: you have to go slowly, step by step, with persistence day after day, be patient, and get support.
I read in the train this Leandro Herrero’s article on the three models of change and to better remember it I sketched it.
In a nutshell, the article rightly says that traditional change management, the destination model, is often just a one–off. The journey model is about learning and experience. And the building model is about creating a long term culture with change-ability in the organisation DNA.
My colleague Valeria Croce asked me to record visually two fantastic sessions she organised on “Trust” with renowned speakers. I reproduce here, to accompany my visual notes, the essential passages of the articles that Valeria wrote after the sessions, as a report.
Resilient teams: how trust underpins care and performance in teams
To trust each other at work is even more important in the context of hybrid or remote work, with limited human interaction and the difficulty to reach out to new people!
Chris Tamdjidi shared with us the evidence and learnings he collected through the years working with teams inside and outside the Commission, focussing on the important role of trust in teamwork. He observed that:
It is difficult to build a culture of collaboration: while most teams have established processes to perform tasks, they don’t have established processes to improve how they work together,
During Covid he observed an increase in individual productivity, but a decrease in collaborative productivity: it takes more effort to connect with others and collaborate in a remote setting.
We risk to work in micro-silos, narrow connections because of remote working – we maintain the relationships we already have, it takes efforts to build new ones.
This is why it is important to build team habits that help strengthen collaboration, team resilience and trust, especially in a hybrid environment. These habits are: Habits of attention; of connection; and of positivity.
Why being trusted (or distrusted) matters
Trust is critical to create an environment where colleagues collaborate, share knowledge, engage and contribute to the achievement of the shared purpose. Yet, trust-based relationships require time to be built. What can we do to start building trust from the very beginning of a new collaborative project with colleagues from outside our team or unit?
Hilary Sutcliffe and Vanja Skoric shared lessons they learned working for over 130 civil society projects.In a nutshell, they identify four areas, where most barriers to trust and collaboration can be found, namely:
Prior experiences and assumptions
Skills and procedures
Culture and incentives
Process concerns
Three aspects that are crucial to overcome barriers are: A (truly) shared purpose; a trustworthy process (based on seven drivers of trustworthiness: openness, integrity, competence, inclusion, respect and fairness); and a visible impact.
Three drawings to illustrate in an offbeat way, and probably memorable way, the participants’ conversations during a session on knowledge management.
The session hosted by Huy-Hien Bui and Fania Pallikarakis, whose full title is “Knowledge Management and Collaboration in international organisations: Edge or Curse?”, was held as part of the Friends of Career Development Roundtable (FoCDR) workshop in Brussels on 17 June 2022.
On 5 May, Amy Lenzo (*) gave an online masterclass on “Hosting and harvesting online VS physical” to the community of practitioners of the Art of Hosting at the European Commission (**). My takeaways (actually apply to any online session):
“It’s not a question of technology, it’s a question of relationships”
90% of your experience, skills, practice as organiser of physical events can be transposed into online events. Reassuring, isn’t it?
The quality of your presence, trust and how you hold space, are just as important online as in the physical world
Never host alone an online session, be part of an hosting team
The hosting team must consist of at least one process host and one tech host (for all technical aspects) or more for large groups
The use of the camera is mandatory for speakers, and highly recommended for all participants (with muted mikes)
To keep participants’ attention, speakers can only use the visible/audible part of their body language: their face and their voice. Then, it’s crucial to smile with the whole face and to have a catchy tone and rhythm of voice
Keep in mind that everything is amplified online: your voice, your unconscious bias, space and time.
This was also my first live graphic recording using the Procreate app (***). Only a few days after installing it on my tablet (it’s crazy, I know, but I like these challenges). My first learnings to start with Procreate:
Many years of experience with layers on Photoshop has helped me a lot. If you’re not familiar with layers, take time to learn how they work and to play with them
Select your fave brushes in advance. You can waste precious time looking for what you need during a live event. Mine were Technical pen, Acrylic and Wet Acrylic, and Hard Airbrush (I still have to learn how to have them available in one click)
Select your fave colours in advance for the same reason as for the tools (I still have to learn how to create my colour palette in advance)
Being forced to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic brought a lot of uncertainty, fear, big changes to our lives. Teleworking mindfully makes possible to live it better! This is the main message of an online session organised by my colleagues from the EC HR department.
Their presentation is based on the work of two extremely inspiring and inspired persons: the master of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who described five stages of grief. (it fills me with joy to see how “we” rediscover the Elisabeth’s work during this coronavirus crisis).
In this post, I explain what is a visual thinker and the benefits of using the visual approach for individuals, groups and managers. Originally, it was a document that I shared with my superiors and colleagues to help them better understand. Then I thought that everyone could benefit from it.
Update (21 May 2024): If French isn’t a problem for you, then you might enjoy listening to this podcast where I try to answer some questions about visual thinking. What is sketchnoting, visual note taking? What benefits can this visual practice bring you in a professional environment or in your private life? What does this have to do with well-being and meditation? Where to start with sketchnoting?
What do I mean by visual thinker?
As a visual thinker, I use a visual approach mainly during live events to allow you and your participants to anchor information, find patterns, make your ideas visible, establish connections and relationships between your ideas, and to ultimately make sense out of chaos or complexity. It also activates the emotional intelligence of people, not just the rational one. It consists mainly of combining hand-made graphic elements with texts and visual metaphors. Different techniques allow me to meet different needs and obtain different results.
What are my visual techniques?
Graphic Facilitation and Graphic Co-creation
I use Graphic Facilitation and Graphic Co-creation as thinking tools for better discussions due to a different meeting setup. Both help people to find solutions, to innovate, to brainstorm, to reach consensus, to make decisions. Compared to the other techniques described below, the level of involvement of participants is high to very high in these two first techniques.
Example where researchers have had difficulty to agree on what is the meaning of “innovation”. Thanks to the visual elements they created with me on the paper they were able to “see” this difficulty. This awareness allowed them to redirect their discussion in a more constructive and clear way:
Example of using a hand-made visual template (also called canvas or harvesting sheet) to put participants in a different mental state and mood, conducive to better conversations and exchanges:
I use Graphic Recording to visually capture live the main message of conferences, meetings, or training. This helps participants to “see” their thoughts, to consider the topic being presented and discussed from another angle, and to better retain information and learning. Depending on the circumstances, I work on a large mural or on flip-charts.
The use of sketchnotes is quite similar to graphic recording in the sense that I also visually capture live what happens during an event. The difference lies in the paper size which is that of my notebook. Here participants don’t see my visuals directly (unless a camera projects my work on a big screen). I also use sketchnotes on many other occasions “just for me”, at work and at home. Whether it’s to organise my thoughts, to sketch a work planning or a process, for a to-do list or a grocery list, to plan my vacation, etc. Anyone can benefit from the practice of sketchnotes, and I guide those who wish during small learning sessions.
Visual communication
I use Visual Communication with hand-drawn illustrations to attract people’s attention incredibly. It gives more impact to your message, which is better understood and memorised by your audience. This is the technique with the lowest involvement level of the participants.
Example of visual communication with the story of the EC’s DG HR represented as a river. The handmade visual supported the Director-General’s speech and captured the attention of her audience.
Visuals as a Working tool
On a smaller scale, I use visuals in my daily routine as a working tool to offer more efficiency to my colleagues. It helps to clearly represent complex processes, workflows, etc; to capture, modelize and structure association of ideas, also for problem solving and project management.
What are the benefits of visual thinking?
I’m not going to review the benefits that neuroscience has long proven with hand-drawn visuals. I will simply mention the benefits that come from my direct and personal experience.
Benefits for an individual (at least for me)
I grasp complexity better than reading a linear text
It stimulates my imagination and creativity
It helps me better retain information and learning
I am more present and focused
It’s a pathway to heightened my self-awareness, my understanding of others, and have a deeper connection with the world around me. It opens my mind to other perspectives
It’s a source of well-being and a meditation channel
I have more fun working on serious, tedious, complex topics
Benefits for a group or a team
Visual thinking brings a new energy to the room that boosts collaboration and engagement (people realise this is not an ordinary event)
The large format graphic helps participants to work together more
effectively because:
they can “see” their ideas and what others are saying too
everyone can contribute, feel heard
the process and its progress is visible
The large format graphic creates also a neutral space that encourages
the debate about ideas while it reduces interpersonal conflicts
It helps the participants stay focused on the discussion (less distracted)
An individual can isolate himself from the group and
think in front of the large format graphic
It brings more clarity and less ambiguity
It generates collective and emotional intelligence by unlocking collective creativity
It improves collective understanding of concepts and sharing of agreements. The group can get on the same page
It transcends language barriers, eases conflicts, and dispels misunderstandings
It allows to achieve emotional and deeply relevant results
The meeting report is created on the go.
It will hold the participants accountable for what they have said and
decided
It will help them to remember and share their work with others
Benefits for managers and the organisation
Visual thinking is a powerful and effective tool
It gives the image of a modern and positive leadership
It contributes to better decision making and better shared decision making, both achieved much more effectively
It enables to tap into the collective, creative and emotional intelligences of a group in order to:
Deal with complex issues
Collect information to make informed decisions
Meetings are with fewer interpersonal conflicts and more debate about ideas
It leads to greater buy-in for visions, strategies, actions plans, decisions; to better commitment to these and better appropriation for a sustainable change
It generates greater accountability for what is said and decided
It denotes a transparent communication
It materialises the recognition to individual contributions and group consensus
It leads to more motivated teams
It brings fun into otherwise boring jobs, tasks, and meetings
Some years ago, Robert Madelin was appointed Director-General of DG INFSO and he requested major changes in the way the DG ran its intranet. To explain to him that we didn’t have enough time to apply all of them, given our available resources, I made our case to him with a quickly sketched story on paper, instead of a Powerpoint and Excel figures. Robert accepted our proposition because I was disruptive. I approached him with unconventional thinking. When I went to his office with a drawing, he said, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ And when he looked closely, it helped him think differently about the problem. This for me was the opportunity to make my case and he accepted my explanation.
