For those of you still a little curious / taken aback by this whole visual thinking, allow me to point you over to Sunni Brown’s excellent article, “Why bother with visual thinking.”

Some of the testimonials on that page made the phrase “See it to believe it” ring around in my brain. Graphically presenting your company or organization’s strategic plan can be an excellent way to build awareness and buy-in from your staff, customers, suppliers, funding sources (e.g. banks, investors, donors). If you need to communicate with visual learners (and SO many of us are visual learners), then graphic facilitation or graphic recording is a tool that you should seriously consider incorporating into your strategic planning or marketing plan.

Visual language can be such a powerful tool for doing your own personal planning as well. Christina Merkley has opened up a whole field of graphic coaching with her Shift-It process. Starting next month I’ll be doing three workshops with Roaring Women, offering a visual planning process that I’m calling Va-VA VOOM! Visual Business Planning. Using templates that I’ve developed and tested with private clients in one-on-one sessions, I’ll be guiding groups of entrepreneurial women through an exploration of their personal and business values, their vision/goals, and mapping out how their current activities support those values and goals. You can sign up for that session at the Roaring Women Website. (August 10 in Nanaimo, Sept 8 in Duncan and Oct 26 in Victoria).