Everyone always does that thing that is most important to them at that exact moment. Stop doing that other thing and think about it for a minute. When you’re in a meeting and someone’s on their laptop while you’re talking and then asks a question that you already answered, what happened? At that moment that person placed a higher value on what was on their laptop than what you were saying. <sigh> Here’s how I changed that game —
I recently conducted a workshop on backlog prioritization techniques. My process started the same as we all do – I created a PowerPoint deck and started practicing. It was boring. So I gave myself my talk using my boring PowerPoint then deleted the deck. Onward! I sketchnoted my talk and printed out copies for participants.
Using an app called Tawe I imported my sketchnote and used the app to navigate around the page from idea to idea. The result was a personal creation that was warm, creative, and engaging. I presented by projecting my iPad on the big screen and talked to my sketchnote.
Benefits:
- There was not a laptop open during my presentation; the engaging format made my presentation the most important thing for the audience at that time
- People used my printed sketchnote to take notes. Giving them the visual framework made it fast and easy for them to only write down points that I had not sketched
- Since creating a sketchnote creates a visual map of the content that greatly improves recall, my depth of knowledge and understanding of the topic improved to the point where my sketchnote was my facilitation guide
- I had as many people come up to me after the workshop to ask about sketchnoting techniques as came to discuss prioritization
- I killed a PowerPoint deck!
Later, I went back and added a voiceover of my talk and saved the final version.