Tag: Drawing

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How to reduce workload?

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.

My visual notes of Oliver’s presentation.

How to reduce workload? sketchnotes
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Trust: an essential ingredient for teamwork

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

Resilient teams: how trust underpins care and performance in teams - Sketchnotes

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

Why being trusted matters? - Sketchnotes

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.

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Knowledge Management and Collaboration in international organisations: Edge or Curse?

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.

KM and collaboration workshop - Sketchnotes
KM and collaboration workshop - Sketchnotes
KM and collaboration workshop - Sketchnotes
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Communicating Cohesion Policy on Planet Pandemia One year on

In the article that I co-wrote with my colleague and manager Agnès Monfret, we explain how we adapted our way of communicating internally and externally when the pandemic hit our habits, our ways of working and thinking.

Once again, the use of handmade drawings greatly supported the messages, and brought that touch of humanity necessary in a world of communication and collaboration that has become entirely digital.

The original article was published on TerritoriALL, the EPSON magazine (page66). Thank you Agnès for this collaboration and for the work done together.

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Teleworking mindfully

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).

Teleworking mindfully, sketchnotes
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To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing

In this second post on the same topic, I will deepen my answer to the question “How to start with an empty blank page when taking live visual notes?”

In my previous post “How to use space in graphic notes“, I explain what you can do to prepare yourself before an event to feel more comfortable with the practice of taking visual notes.

Much before the drawing skills, the logistic, and before any other practical aspect, what will really influence the outcome of your work is the quality of your presence and the quality of your listening.

Presence and listening

Quality of your presence

You really need to be fully present when taking live visual notes at an event. Firstly, this means that you have to be connected as much as possible with all of “you”, with who and with what you are. Simplifying it a little bit, you need to access both sides of your brain and let them work together. Or – I prefer to say it like that – let the two sides of your brain “make love” in you. You need also to be connected with the surrounding world. This last point seems obvious but if your focus is on the choice of the marker’s color or on your space consumption on the paper sheet….you risk to not being connected with what is happening around you, and with what is said.

What is said? What is really said and what do I hear?

Quality of your listening

Like with traditional text notes, how you listen and to what you listen will bring you to very different results. Except that with visuals, the difference will be felt even more than with just text.

I recommend the following material from experts to know more about “Listening”:

4 Levels of Scribing

Listening is good for you: Four steps to mastering active listening

A better presence and a better listening

The quality of both your presence and your listening will greatly influence your ability to take visual notes and, finally, your outcomes. Therefore it is worth to prepare yourself a minimum before you start. Some minutes before you jump on your markers, take the time to do some exercises of meditation, or mindfulness, or yoga, or relaxation. Whatever can help you is welcome. And if nothing comes to you, just try to close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply, and have at least 10 of these breaths.

Last but not least…

The more you will practice, the better!

My last recommendation is to start to practice as soon as possible, then to practice and to practice again.

I would like to conclude with two quotes. First is this Pablo Picasso’s answer to the question whether ideas come to him “by chance or by design”:

“I don’t have a clue. Ideas are simply starting points. I can rarely set them down as they come to my mind. As soon as I start to work, others well up in my pen. To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.”

Then – to keep you from believing that the Picasso’s reference implies that we treat art here – this Mike Rohde‘s quote applicable to all visual notes in general:

“Sketchnotes are about capturing and sharing ideas, not art. Even bad drawings can convey good ideas.”

Related post: “How to use space in graphic notes”

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