Drawing Together offers a visual language with five purposefully abstract symbols. Participants can only use these five symbols to express thoughts, ideas, and challenges. This constraint still gives sufficient opportunities for creativity. It might actually boost creativity. I always encourage participants to use different colors for the symbols. Draw a symbol in red, green, or orange to give it an extra dimension. Draw symbols in different shapes and sizes. Merge symbols. Use the same symbols multiple times. There are so many different ways to use the 5 symbols. Give some examples, and trust the creativity of the group to make use of the potential. 6. Share drawings with “Conversation Cafe” Figure B Google Jamboard not only supports all sorts of collaboration tools on a standard board; it also allows you to add up to 20 additional frames. Invite participants to combine the symbols to create the first draft of a story, working individually and without words, about “the journey” of working on a challenge or an innovation. 10 min.

The book Moominland Midwinter (Finnish Taikatalvi, Swedish Trollvinter) resonates with our project. Moomintroll awakens in the middle of his hibernation, and finds himself in a completely unknown, frozen environment. Moominland, usually full of life and colour, has suddenly become still, white and frozen. Together with his value creatures, most importantly Little My and Hemulen, Moomintroll learns to survive and enjoy the white winter-wonderland. They also find ways to help others in need, such as a frozen squirrel. Use as a template a progression from status quo, through call to novelty, discovery, validation, early adoption, and spread

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Chalkboard and dry erase boards on a wall still retain one key advantage over these virtual alternatives: Persistence. In a room, anything scribbled on a board remains in view, whether you choose to engage with it or not. That sort of ambient display on a board can be quite useful if you use these boards to engage with ideas over time. Instead of using verbal language as its medium for interaction, Drawing Together makes use of constrained visual language with five purposefully abstract symbols. Steps to facilitate Drawing Together

min) Form pairs, and interpret each other’s drawings. The person who has done the drawing does not speak at the start. First, have the other person interpret the drawing. Only once the other person has had the opportunity to share his/her interpretations, the original creator of the drawing can add more detail. After 5 minutes you switch roles. Christiaan Verwijs already shared his thoughts on Drawing Together a couple of years ago in this article. In the meantime, I gained new ideas, learned important lessons, and discovered powerful connections with other structures. I’ll share them in this blog post. Attribution: Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless. Inspired by David Sibbet ( The Grove) and Angeles Arrien (see Signs of Life).As remote work becomes increasingly common, turn to these drawing tools when you need to scribble and show people something that may be difficult to describe with words. Each of these drawing systems pairs well with the respective platform’s video-conferencing system, too: Freeform with FaceTime, Jamboard with Google Meet, and Whiteboard with Microsoft Teams. When you’re done with a drawing, you may export your board, either as an image (Google Jamboard and Microsoft Whiteboard) or PDF (Apple Freeform and Google Jamboard) for long-term reference. min) Introduce the purpose of Drawing Together. Get participants comfortable with both drawing and the language by drawing the five symbols one by one. A triangle represents a goal. A rectangle represents support. A spiral represents change or transformation. A star person represents a relationship and the circle represents wholeness. With a virtual session, make sure to have these symbols available in a shared workspace. min) Debrief important patterns with the whole group. What was it like to have your drawing interpreted by someone else? Whose interpretation was actually quite close to reality? What are some obvious patterns you noticed? The purpose of Generative Relationships STAR is to help a group understand how they work together and identify changes that they can make to improve group performance. All members of the group diagnose current relationship patterns and decide how to follow up with action steps together. The STAR compass tool becomes even more powerful when you use it frequently. After a first diagnosis, you can evaluate the progress you make as a group and see if things are actually improving.

With Jamboard, collaboration isn’t limited to a single board. You may add additional frames, such as the frames shown along the top of Figure B. In fact, you may add up to a total of 20 frames within a single Jamboard file. This capability may make it easier to group or sort ideas, such as notes associated with different aspects of a project. Freeform lets you leverage the capabilities of your Apple devices, as shown in Figure A. On an iPhone or iPad, you may use the camera to either take a photo or scan a document and add it as an item into your Freeform file. Collaboration tools on each of these three major platforms let you draw, type, add images and much more. Image: Andy Wolber/TechRepublic Remind participants that the drawing is not the object by saying, “Refined drawing skills are not required—get over your need for perfection! Childlike drawing looks playful and captures the imagination of others!”People who use a macOS system alongside an iPhone or iPad may choose to take a photo, scan a document or add a sketch using one of those nearby devices from within Freeform on macOS. The nearby device auto-switches to the selected mode as long as you have Bluetooth enabled and are signed in to the same Apple ID on both systems. Best business software Invite participants to tell a story about a challenge they face, or a common challenge, using only five symbols and no words Without knowing a thing about it, at that moment his velvet skin decided to start growing woollier. It decided to become, by and by, a coat of fur for winter use. That would take some time, but at least the decision was made. And that’s always a good thing. (Jansson 1958, 18)” Conversation Café encourages people to listen and understand each other’s perspectives on a profound, shared topic or challenge instead of trying to convince or persuade others to see it your way. Sitting in a circle with a simple set of agreements and a talking object, small groups engage in consecutive rounds of dialogue. Conversation Cafe invites people to listen to one another’s thoughts and reflect together on a shared challenge.