I have just embarked on taking Brandy Agerbeck’s course “Agerbeck Method” for visual thinking. This post will be a holding place for my products from the course. The course can be found HERE.

I want to ensure that I do not share the content of this course that Brandy has put together, yet at the same time, I want to share my outputs from activities so that my peers can see them and create conversations around the course.

Block 1 – Canvas

Day 1 – Success Factors

This is my sketch on my key success factors for the course based on Brandy’s initial class:

Below are my core materials. I love my Copic pens (C5,B05 and Y08 for the geeks out there!) and I also love my wallet from Rickshaw bags as it has space for two notebooks (or a notebook and phone) and a couple of pens (uniball and C5 Copic Ciao) as well as cards and notes. I also have an iPad pro but aim to do this course on paper.

Other things I noted here on this video – Nice creative way on using sticky notes to unload the image – I would normally use post its to build a visual, rather than cover it over with sticky notes and remove as the presentation goes on.

Day 2 – Objectives & Objective Collector

The following is my internal and external goals visual. In terms of a location to collect goals, I tend to use Trello as it is phone and computer app that is reasonably intuitive.

Day 3 – Practice makes progress

Here are the outputs from two activities. The first is juggling as a skill: practice, observation, goal setting, perseverance and more practice were key here:

The second is my future in visual practice. Routine, practice and permission to play seem to be 3 elements that I can take from previous things I have learnt.

In order to manage the inner critique piece, I would recommend the book “The Inner Game of Work” by Timothy Gallwey. Tim was a performance coach in tennis and other sports and looks a lot at the inner voice that stops us performing. He has also written books on stress, skiing and music.

Day 4 – Shift your thinking.

No visual products today, but these are my reflections from the course around shifting to landscape from portrait “The only thing that I see as portrait in my world is flip charts. Not sure why these ever got developed as they did (a possble PhD thesis in that topic available somewhere). Most of my visual coaching work is on A3 or A2 and it involves those being coached drawing the situations out a la systemic thinking / constellations or via rich pictures. Visual facilitation work often uses A0 in landscape (particularly for pre-printed templates) or just long lengths of rooms. A fair bit of this work uses four complete walls to map out organisational change (occasionally using variations of Nancy Duarte’s Dreamscape: Dream>Leap>Fights>Climb>Arrive). A few times I have just covered complete tables in paper and got people to work on them. I almost wonder if I should shift to portrait for a change?”

Day 5 – All at once

Again no specific visual products today. This class looked at tools for creating things horizontally. Brandy shared some great resources in a range of sizes. Here is my reply to her post “Yeah – Some website crafters. I have been mulling an update for mine and this is the perfect push to get out of procrastination land and update it with more of a visual spin. I have not refreshed it in over 8 years, so this is perfect timing. I absolutely love the Neuland flipchart. I had a play with one at UKViz (but I have no space for it :-( ). It would be great if people shared their sites here, so we can see the before and after! Mine is at bit.ly/AndiAgMe. Also in terms of horizontal notebooks, Studio Neat did a kickstarter a while back for this excellent horizontal pad that is slightly longer (more horizontal) than normal: https://www.studioneat.com/products/panobook”

Day 6 – Your terrain

The exercise today was to write / draw out a guided planning process with Brandy asking the questions and periods of music in-between the questions. What I found interesting about this was the changes in levels of apprehension I had as the activity developed. Initially it was low, and about half way through some anxiety crept in about finding enough space. I then mentally remembered “focus on the process, not the product” and I just got on with filling in the gaps. Clearly space / canvas management improves over time. I am pretty sure that if I had seen or heard the questions previously, the layout and size of texts would of been very different. The actual “thing” chosen was a revamp of this website.

Day 7 – Stack-fest!

Stackable cards and papers have been around in my life in a few ways:
1) Revision cards for exams at 16 years of age.
2) Concepts from my Diploma in Management / MBA so that I could use them in my training work.
3) Facilitation techniques, energisers and similar that I used to take with me to facilitation / training gigs.
4) During facilitation when listening to groups – particularly when doing “end client” work.
5) Mapping out organisational “strategy maps” to support my work with visual account planning. Basically reading annual reports, quarterly earnings and other texts and writing on the cards to help create a visual of a company later on.
6) Stacks of coaching questions. I initially collected questions when learning to coach and now use the technique to teach coaching skills in a range of activities.

Kit wise, I tend to use rectangle facilitation cards from Neuland. I have an excess of these, as I use three colours for my strategy map work. I very occasionally use Logovisual Thinking which is based around hexagons available in magnets and sticky notes (https://www.logovisual.com/lvt-method/what-is-lvt/). I am also a Post It fan, and use all sizes, for all sorts of stacking.

Strategy Map Stack laid out ready for use:

Day 8 – Anatomy of a  card

I really enjoyed today’s lesson. Firstly, it took me back to the time when I transitioned from my previous “life” as a mountain guide into working in corporate as a facilitator (1994). I was involved in an almighty culture change programme that trained 18,000 people in 18 months on a new strategic direction and a different way of working with internal and external colleagues. On this programme we had people from 16 countries attend to our location in Spain. One of the Turkish team, always had a set of different coloured index cards held on a really pretty cord around her neck. She had a range of cards in different colours (for different 1/2 day segments of the 2.5 day programme) and then a card for each content or activity section. She also had blank cards to enable making notes on the experiential “ropes course” activities that my team and myself were supporting that she would review. Even after a few weeks, when she knew all of the content pieces, she still kept wearing the index cards. It became her security blanket and a fashion item. Secondly, I really appreciated seeing different ways of structuring the cards. I particularly liked the flip charts “before” and builds in colours – a great idea. I occasionally place a hole in the corner of cards and use a brass tack to hold them together.

For the activity today, I thought about visuals for my website and for my different offerings. I had no cards, nor sheets of paper. I had to steal and rip up the mini notebook at the side of my bed in the hotel I am staying in. On each piece of my stack I gave it a title and then bottom left, a code for the type of offering and on the right, a code for the domain of offering.

My reflections were not on the process, but on the realisation that I had slowly drifted towards technology: iPad, EverNote and Trello, but it actually felt great to sit in the hotel patio and work on this over a beer in the warm Madrid evening. Long live pen and paper!

Day 9 – The 4 S’s

A great refresher class today. I will be leaving some cards in my work rucksack from now on! One of the books that I came across early on in my career, as a budding facilitator, was “Problem Solving with Post It Notes” by David Straker. This basically shows six “stack” activities:

• The Post-up—Provides methods for getting information into chunks
• The Swap Sort—Shows listing and organization methods
• The Top-down Tree—Works when the nature of the problem is unknown
• The Information Map—Maps messy problems and complex relationships
• The Action Map—Plans actions or maps an existing process

The realisation, now, nearly 20 years later, is that index cards do the same job! Duhhh. Another stack process I have come across is “20/20 Vision” in the book “Innovation Games” by Luke Hohmann (visit https://www.innovationgames.com/the-innovation-games/ for an overview).

Day 10 – Review & Reflection on first chunk of the Agerbeck Method

The following is my product for the review and reflection of the first 10 days of the Agerbeck Method. I have created my own self-assessment diagram, rather than use that created by Brandy for the course (hoping that protects her IP).

Day 11 – Popcorn

An interesting lesson. I tend, when facilitating to do “pop corny’ lists I.e. concepts spread all over the page, but with no specific grouping. Thinking about it now, in most facilitation sessions, I kind of have a handle on what types of answers may come out, but up to now, have not really gone for a “pure” pop corn approach i.e. grouping concepts together. The switch should be relatively easy. What I tend to do is use colour wax blocks and colour over concepts that are connected, kind of like “high lighting”.

The other thing that I recognised from this class, is that I tend to use the same locations for headings. On flip charts: centred at the top or middle and in landscape, the same and top left. I think I may play around with shifting titles: sideways on the edges and centre bottom.

Link to wax blocks: http://www.stockmar.de/product_info-475-3202-en-stockmar_wax_blocks__16_colours.html
Example of wax blocks in use: https://instagram.com/p/BY8iFfmlwtw/

Day 12 – The Filter

In interesting session – Thinking about the work I do as a coach, I am really trying to strip away any filters that I have. I aim to really deepen my listening to be present to the person I am coaching, in order to “understand” their filters AND possibly reflect them back to them.

On the flip side, as a facilitator, I am definitely applying a range of filters at any one time. “relevant / not relevant”, “useful/not useful” and one filter I really keep top of mind is the structural dynamics of the meeting a la David Kantor (move,bystand,follow,approve) and the patterns that people develop within those. I often use others such as Jungian Type and Transactional Analysis if relevant.

In my sketch noting of business research (https://twitter.com/doodles4leaders/media?lang=en) I was trying to filter: core ideas, actionable insight, proof/scale of research or idea.

The new perspective for me is to raise my awareness of what is happening and use that to be more conscious in my choice of techniques, tools and visual elements.

Day 13 – The flag

NO PRODUCT TODAY. Answer to the questions:

I currently use very simple bullet points underlining or highlights. No sophistication whatsoever in terms of symbols, colours and so on.

I purposefully use filters and flags for my visual account planning work, where a number of them are used:
Time to value: short, medium, long term
Value to US / THEM: Small, Medium & Large
Partners included: Significantly, Slightly & No
In these sessions we also group services / products in “buckets” to create stronger, deeper value propositions that add significant value to the customer and are naturally, a bigger sale. We do this through coloured dots.

Day 14 – The cluster & the buffer

What I noticed in my previous drawings – some reasonable clustering, Buffering and positioning within the page was not so great, so need to really improve this. Wondering how to create “live” practice activities.

Predilection to clustering / buffering – In facilitation work, in terms of moving, post its or facilitation cards I do this VERy regularly, but not so much in live drawing / sketchnoting and this is where it really needs to improve.

I did not try a Day 1 or 2 again, but jumped straight into drawing my fridge. I was very cognisant of making choices and I would not normally be thinking to that level about placement, buffers and clusters. I am not particularly happy with the attempt, but it is a start. I also need to figure out how to draw very different items for cauliflower, cabbages and broccoli ;-(

Day 15 – Messy vs Tidy

My preference in visual work is probably the messy end of tidy. I am certainly not very tidy nor particularly messy. My visual practice started with mind mapping, back in the last century whilst studying. I then went on to study and facilitate with systems thinking and particluarly rich pictures. Both of these are pretty messy. In my facilitation work, that does need tidy visuals: time lines, project plans and so on, I really like the use of canvas / visual type templates to support that area of my work, as they provide “tidiness”.

The reflection I have here, is that I think, and I may be wrong, but in work that I intend to share, then I should consider what level of tidiness vs messiness is appropriate for the visual and audience.

Day 16 – The banner

Day 17 – 10 Micro cues

In an interesting class. As a facilitator and coach I think some of these are noticed semi-consciously:  levelling up, diving deep, consequence, sequence and conclusion. As I do not live record meetings etc yet, I have not been able to develop this in terms of using them to create the visual piece. In my visual note taking of business research, I scan read articles looking for the same cues but in written form and these do influence how a put together a sketchnote on the paper/ article. At the moment, no micro cue ideas come to mind, but I will keep my ears and eyes open for them.

Day 18 – Micro cues exercise

Overall this was an interesting exercise. I seem pretty comfortable with a reasonable amount of the words. The challenge for me will be to use this practically i.e. how do I best use these micro cues to help craft visuals in terms of use of canvas and imagery & wording that they help create. I guess it is practice, practice, practice and reflect on that practice.

Day 19 – Macro Cues

A really interesting session. Two things particularly were useful – The example of creating the two “person” framework To help two groups come together. and your perspectives on templates. This also made me reflect on the fact that simple structure can be very powerful and there is no need to complicate it.

In terms of macro structures, 2 x 2 grids for a whole range of uses are very common in my work. Fundamentally they are a variation of left <-> right split. I also use “trees” occasionally.

I think templates definitely have their place from a thinking / facilitation perspective, but they can at the same time be too constraining. I while back I started collecting “canvas” type templates and mention this at the start of the blog post: http://masterfacilitator.com/canvas-collection/. For me it is about choosing the right tool / technique for the situation / outcome desired

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Day 20 – Review & reflection on second chunk of the Agerbeck Method

Key actions and insights from this section:

• Study and look at how negative space can be used
• Raise competence at sorting and particularly grouping.
• Practice a whole range of banners, rather than sticking with the two or three that I tend to lean on.
• Raise my awareness in visual practice & facilitation of micro cues and use them more to shape my work.
• Expand my macro cue repertoire and use them to build “muscle memory”.
• Just generally think more about structures in my work.

Day 21 – Word + Images = Love

The things that stood out are:

• The value we bring is listening and distilling, rather than regurgitating and that we are active creators.
• Visual is greater than imagery. So not just text and not just images.

Before I saw this class, I had an interesting experience this week. I along with two colleagues, we went to pitch, in Germany, for a leadership development project. The three of us decided that we would do different styles of intro. One of out team prepped a really nice career story, the second took a range of nuts, fruit and sweets and used this as a kinaesthetic intro. I choose to prep a visual profile on one piece of flip-chart paper. The profile had, on reflection (after this class), a good balance of words and visuals and it certainly seemed to make an impact.

During the meeting I was asked to write up very quickly some feedback from the six client team members about what they liked about their previous leadership programme. I realised that I could carry on the visual theme and so started to make “bikablo” style icons of what they liked. I realised also, as I was doing this that A) They might not recognise the image for what I thought it meant and B) considered that if we needed to refer back, then the words would also help, so I started to add in their words for each visual element. The feedback was positive, but I still wonder if I could have gone beyond visual popcorn in the little time we had.

Personal visual profile:

• Top is based around Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why”
• Arrow in the middle is my career timeline, ending with juggling facilitation, coaching snd training.
• Bottom left is key influences in how I do my work and bottom right is a series of visuals for different industries I have worked in.

List of things that worked well from the previous project:

Day 22 – Meet the VOS

I really like this visual continuum. I think I tend to be left of centre, particularly 1b to 4, with some occasional incursions further right. The exception is the visual doodle sketchnotes I have done, that have had more of the elements of 5 and a bit further. Generally I think that if I have more time i.e. when reading or watching something several times, I find it easier to shift rightwards.

Day 23 – Live vs Not Live

Key insights from this class for me

• “you are not a recording device”
• Vary forms of media that you listen to i.e. go beyond TED talks (concerntrated juice) to get different styles and pace.
• Making choices up front, frees up mental energy.
• It also reinforced the need to be more intentional about ALL choices.

Overall my work is 95% not live and live is generally for me, though I do aspire to head towards the live end of the spectrum professionally. With that though, I tend to be very short on time, even when not live AND a preference for getting on with it, means I do not spend too much time reading or re-reading content and tend to just get on with it.

Day 24 – The Retort

Key learning points for this class have been:

• What a retort is and how it functions – made me think of Whisky & Gin lol.
• Two sources for visual thinking: the “internal” and “external”. Interestingly I realised on reflection that as a coach, I tap into the internal far more, but when facilitating or sketch noting, I am very much in external mode.
• Usefulness of chunks: relevancy, relationality, generativeness.
• Accurate language is very helpful, assuming it is not too jargony.
• Memory pegs as a tool

This lesson also reminded me of the mind maps / summaries that I created when studying for my MBA back in the last century. I used to create shorthand, such as ldrship,mktg,strat,comms, dvn, mgmt and so on. It is succinct BUT only works for me, as I know the “code”.

Whilst I work part time in academia and in permanent university study for the last 7 years, I consider myself a “pracademic”, as in pragmatic academic.

Day 25 – Ways we listen

Key insights from today:

• There is no platonic ideal or perfect way of listening.

As a facilitator, the best thing I ever did to improve my listening, was to get trained as a coach. Great coaching requires a pretty deep level of listening.

Day 26 – Your shorthand

Day 27 – Pointers

Q1 – Overall I think penmanship is really important. Legibility in written text, I imagine has an impact on other aspects of visual, as the control required is high.
Q2 – I would score a four our ten on self assessment. Need to improve consistent output of own style.
Q3 – I have picked up a few things here: spacing and proportion are two critical areas to work on.
Q4 – Resource wise, I really like Heather Martinez’s (https://twitter.com/CorpGraffitiArt) work, but I must admit I have simply not put the hours of practice in, to maximise the benefit. There is a lot of inspiration out there. I particularly like Kelvy Bird (https://twitter.com/kelvy_bird) & Vanessa Randle’s (https://twitter.com/thinkingv) work. They blend their penmanship with visuals in a very sublime way.

Day 28 – Possibilities

Which choices do I use: Only lowercase versus uppercase, and generally I have always done everything in uppercase. I have never really concerned myself with this facet of my work with flip charts until very recently.

Which ones to develop: I would definitely like to improve my cursive, block and use of negative space. A quick win will be using colour.

What meaningful choices do you make: I generally don’t, so this is a great opportunity to improve. Currently personal #6 & #7 do not really exist. Happy to develop 1 to 5 for the time being.

Day 29 – Play

This play with text was done whilst pretty tired on a flight. Not very happy with it.

Day 30 – Review & reflection

Doing a written process here. Not very “visual thinking’ but I am pushed for time and want to creak on.

Self assessment of the previous days (out of 10):

• New language 7
• Meet the VOS 3
• Live versus not live 5
• The retort 5
• Ways we listen 8
• Your shorthand 6
• Pointers 3
• Possibilities 3
• Play 3
• Reflections
• I would like to move away from current style and create more fluid visuals. Currently they are very icon / popcorn like.
• I need to work on my lettering – both my basic / standard style and possibly develop one or two more creative options.
• I need to create more space for intentional practice.

I am going to place DAY 31 onwards onto a new post in order to make loading speed faster. Visit HERE to keep on exploring my journey with the Agerbeck Method.

The short URL for this post, in case you wish to share it with someone: bit.ly/AndiAgMe

The initial image on the page is Brandy’s Visual from her course site for The Agerbeck Method – https://courses.loosetooth.com/store