Graphic Facilitation as a Planning Tool

Some of us can’t take yes for an answer. We could teach Doubting Thomas a thing or two about circumspection. That said, is there a place for graphic facilitation in strategic planning?

In the year and a half that I’ve been working with groups using 4 feet wide rolls of paper, markers and chalk I have yet to leave a meeting without hearing positive comments about the graphics. I consider myself more of a draftsman than an artist, but I was lucky to have picked up markers from The Grove and some very ordinary chalk that give good results without a lot of fuss. But still I wonder: is it really meat or just sizzle?

The first architect I ever worked for could really draw. With a Scripto mechanical pencil containing a piece of 2B lead, he could create a perspective sketch that you could walk into, and do it as though he were tracing. He once said “People are fascinated by the ability to draw. Once you start drawing in a meeting, you can absolutely control the situation.” OK – is that good, or could it be not so good?

In the Spring of ’06 a couple of us worked with an academic department on their strategic plan, and we used wall graphics exclusively. Six months later I visited the Chair to inquire about what the lasting impact had been, and in the course of the conversation I queried him on the use of the graphics. His response was “It’s very powerful, but you’ll have to be judicious with it.”

That very evening, UNC-TV broadcast an interview with the artist Herb Jackson. (See this post also.) He talked about how we grow up with images in storybooks and such, and they are always shown to us as a “picture of” something. As we make our first drawings, we are always asked what they are pictures of. Jackson noted that music is an art form that is not hamstrung with that requirement, and that he spent much of his early life learning how to break from that constraint.

It would seem that as graphic facilitators we have to embrace that constraint, as our value is in representing what the group is feeling and saying in a way that makes it real through visibility. We carry images of our past, and we hold onto images of what we think the present is; both are constructed from things we have seen in the world. There is no “directly observable data” about our future. By providing the images, we can begin to make that third element of time competitive with those other two.

It would seem that relationships can be helped in the same way, whether they are among facts, ideas or people. A form of reality is created with which we can interact.

The following observation appeared in an AIA newsletter, attributed to Robert M. Beckley, FAIA, professor and Dean Emeritus at the University of Michigan: A designer’s communication skills – the ability to listen, speak, write and represent ideas – provide insights into how well he or she can function within a professional practice. The last, representing ideas, is what distinguishes architects from others. In the final analysis, architecture is our ability to turn ideas into representations. Whether the representation is in the form of a diagram, sketch, rendering, or physical or digital model, the architect’s ability to represent precedes the construction of reality.

Arguably, architects can be somewhat encumbered by the eventual need to produce construction. Graphic facilitators have both the privilege and the challenge of a much broader expanse of possibilities.