Transcriber: Mohand Habchi Reviewer: Francesca Blasi
So, I don't know about you but I've got a lot on my mind.
I wake up in the morning and I turn off my alarm,
and I check my email and my Twitter feed,
and my Facebook wall,
and then I listen to a podcast as I make my breakfast.
And then I go to my email and I see there's an email from a client,
and it's got two attachments.
There's an agenda for upcoming meeting,
and the Powerpoint that they're sharing during the meeting.
(Laughter)
I don' t know about you but I get overwhelmed
and often before 10 AM.
What I need to do is step back
and scan that information,
look at it from different perspectives.
I need to wrestle that information,
and wrangle that information until I understand it.
I need to shape my thinking.
So today I've got three chunks of information to share with you.
The first is I'd like to contrast two types of thinking.
If you're part of 66% of the population,
you maybe ready and raring
for these visual, spatial and kinesthetic tools.
If you're part of the 37%,
you may feel much more comfortable with the text in your life,
but these tools may help stretch your thinking.
So, the second thing I'd like to share with you,
is the power in your own hand to shape your own thinking.
And third, I'd like to scale up to a big idea worth sharing
about how to get groups of people to share their thinking together.
You're ready to roll? Audience: Yeah! (Applause)
Awesome.
Alright. There're two types of people in the world:
Those who like defining two types of people,
and those who can't be bothered.
(Laughter)
I am the typing type.
But here's a model I find beautifully simple and very useful.
Linda Kreger Silverman, is a psychologist who studied thousands of students,
and she identified two types of thinkers:
auditory sequential thinkers,
and visual spatial thinkers.
Auditory sequential thinkers,
they think in words.
They learn step by step.
They're great at following instructions,
and they have a great relationship to time.
Visual spatial thinkers think in images.
They learn all at once.
They make up their own ways of solving problems,
and they have a better relationship to space.
As I described these two types you may feel drawn to one or the other.
It's no surprise that I am way over here.
And this is why I loved science labs and art classes when I was growing up.
And I think in the seventeen years of my formal education,
I don't think I ever finished an assigned book cover to cover.
So, auditory sequential people,
are really great at seeing details.
And visual spatial people,
are really great at seeing the connections between things,
and the whole picture.
Auditory sequential people are great in analysis.
Visual spatial people are good with synthesis.
And so now, we're going to talk about the breakdown of preferences.
So she found that 25% of people were strongly auditory sequential.
12% lean towards auditory sequential.
30% lean towards visual spatial.
And 33%, we're solidly visual spatial.
So if you look at this, and you look at our traditional classrooms,
they're geared towards the 37% of auditory sequential thinkers.
So what's the 66% to do?
So, I don't want to keep us in these two buckets for very long,
let's look at the space in between.
So how do we become the snazzy green people,
who know when to use visual spatial and kinesthetic tools
to help us navigate the complexity and the overwhelm
of all these inputs
that are linear text based in auditory coming at us?
To that end, I'd like show you how you can shape you own thinking.
So imagine, you've got this giant project in front of you.
So if you're ready for five steps onto how to shape your own thinking
raise your hand.
Awesome!
Alright. Step number one, is chunk.
Point to that giant pile of information and find one important piece,
find one chunk.
Now, if you like to read,
you are maybe somebody who likes underlining or highlighting.
Now the problem with that,
is the one thing you're interested in
is still surrounded by all the stuff you're not interested in.
So I'm a big fan of finding an important chunk,
pulling it out, isolating it,
and plopping it down onto a new surface.
This could be a post-it note, an index card or a fresh sheet of paper.
So my mind was broken wide open in 6th grade,
when Mrs. Andrews taught us how to write papers
using index cards.
(Laughter)
I mean I can still clearly picture myself,
sitting in a library where I wrote down
that the common cold for rabbits was called snuffles.
And we learned how to put each idea on its own card
with its own citation.
So now, I live with thousands of index cards,
with quotes and notes and ideas and sketches on them.
This allows me and can allow you to do step number two,
which is sorting and grouping.
So now you've taken this giant pile of information,
and you've only pulled out the most important chunks.
You leave the rest behind.
Now take two of these chunks,
put similar chunks together,
and push dissimilar chunks apart.
Already you can start to see patterns.
And you can already see that some of these groupings
are smaller and more tackle-able.
So one way I do this,
when I'm feeling overwhelmed,
is I make tangible to-do-list.
So I put each one of my tasks on its own post-it-note
color coded by project.
And I take the most immediate tasks
and I light them up of the top of flip chart.
Now I take the very next task,
I hold onto it while I do it.
So I don't fall down the rabbit hole.
When I'm done I don't throw it away,
I exit out, and I put it on the right side of the flip chart.
So with this one system,
I've sorted and grouped in three different ways.
By project, by immediacy, and what's to do and be done.
That is sorting and grouping.
So step number three, is connecting.
So, show the relationship between two chunks or two groups
in any way that makes meaning to you.
So you've a ton of choices on how you can do this.
So this is my family tree done in a traditional way.
This is how my family tree feels to me.
And here you can see which family members I have a great relationship with.
(Laughter)
And which branches of my family tree are a total mystery to me.
So you have the opportunity to make these connections
in any way that makes meaning to you.
Ready for step number four?
Alright.
Step number four is scale.
And this works into two different ways.
First, is the relative size of the information
as you put it down on your sheet of paper.
It's natural to make main concepts bigger and supporting ideas smaller.
The second way to use scale and expand your thinking,
is the size of the canvas you work with.
So, day after day, think of how many of these you've seen.
Right? You've seen this piece of paper before?
Familiar? Alright.
Here's one simple shift in thinking.
It's a little harder to make a list when you're looking at a landscape.
Or, tear the piece of paper in half
and then you've got two smaller landscapes
that are less precious with their torn edges.
So because I'm hyper spatial,
the idea of creating this auditory linear talk
was really daunting.
So this is the pin board I used to create this talk.
It allowed me to take my beloved index cards,
and move them around and shuffle them around,
until I understood the shape of my talk and the order of my ideas.
Conversely, I wanted to challenge myself
to distill the talk down to a very tiny space.
In this case three one-inch buttons.
You've got the linear people, the spatial people,
and the snazziest in between.
So, this itty-bitty canvas allowed me to distill and clarify my thinking.
So, how could you be served by working with scale?
How could you be served by a giant whiteboard,
or what if you try to take a complicated issue
and fit it onto a postage stamp?
So, now we're onto the final step,
this is where you step back and you look at what you now know
having done the first four steps.
So what do you know understand
after you've chunked, sorted and grouped,
connected and you scale.
The fifth step is to grasp.
So what new conclusion can you make?
What do you now understand having done the first four steps?
So the beautiful thing is
that you always have these five powers in your own hand.
And all of you need are paper and pen to make them happen.
So now that I'm giving that power on your own hand,
I'd love to share with you an idea
that I think is worth spreading.
So you are going to help me spread it? Audience: Yeah!
Awesome. Alright.
So, let's look back at our guys.
The blue guy is a reader, he loves libraries.
The yellow guy likes to get his hands on stuff
and he loves laboratories.
So knowing that each thinking style has its own strength,
how do we create LibLabs?
So do we create these new environments
where people can meet in the middle to make new meaning.
How do we better understand each other
when we combine the auditory text based and sequential folks,
with the visual spatial and kinesthetic folks.
I see it as these LibLabs.
And they can be as informal
as sitting down in your kitchen table with your kids or your spouse,
and writing and drawing together.
Or they can be more formal,
like the new maker space being piloted at Harold Washington public library,
our beautiful main branch here in Chicago.
So even though I am way hyper visual spatial,
I love libraries.
I may not read books, but I like to touch them
and flip them around.
So, I'm thrilled by this project,
because I know that libraries and librarians
are an astounding resource.
And how can we make new use of these important public spaces?
As I see it, LibLabs of any form, whether the formal or informal,
whether they're in your classroom, your home or your work place,
have three basic components.
And thankfully, two of them are totally free.
The first component is permission.
So here you see on the left my entire childhood drawn.
I was extremely fortunate
that I had teachers who allowed me to change my assignments
into more hands-on tasks.
They let me synthesize and visualize my learning.
And they gave me a ton of leeway because they could see I was learning.
In fact in High School, I actually was in super synthesis mode,
and I handed in one sentence essay on Hamlet.
And thankfully Mr. Lewis was okay with it because he got it.
So thankfully these permissions have let me grow into the adult I am.
And so 13 years later, with the exact same focus,
I work as a graphic facilitator.
So I map out people's conversations as they're talking.
And I am certain
that my success is due to these permissions given to me.
The fact that I was allowed to work in the way
that I work best.
So you can give two types of permission.
Let's say you're a manager and you want your team
to summarize the findings from a customer survey.
You could let them use visual, spatial and kinesthetic tools
to work out their ideas,
but ask them to produce a written report.
But what if you let the deliverable be open-ended?
What if instead of the report clogging your inbox,
they found the five most serial points,
and created a video
that was instantly understandable and engaging.
That's the kind of thing that can happen
when you give people permission to shape their thinking into new forms.
The second component is the one that costs a little money.
It's tools and environment.
This is because you need stuff to draw with and stuff to draw on.
But it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive.
In fact I encourage you not to be fancy or expensive.
Here's an example of an idea shaper station,
made out of wire shelves.
It holds super simple stuff,
and it takes up a very small footprint,
but the key is that it is always replenished.
So that anytime somebody has an amorphous idea strike,
they can grab materials to shape their own thinking.
So lastly, is a third component,
and like permission it's free because it's behavioral.
That is support.
Watch what you criticize and watch what you reward.
Now because I'm graphic facilitator and I've got this very public role drawing,
people come up to me and they tell me their stories.
Someone can tell me exactly how old they were,
what they were drawing,
and who told them that I couldn't draw.
And just like that, the drawing switch is flipped off.
Not only is it sad but it's dangerous.
Let's imagine you're running a strategy session,
and you get your smart and capable team,
and you're asking them to create the perfect future ecosystem
for your organization.
You give them flip charts and markers to work with,
and they comeback with these two flip charts.
So on the left, you have a very beautiful flip chart.
And here's what happens,
"Oh, who has such nice penmanship?"
And, "Oh my hand writing's terrible."
Or, "Who made such nice flowers?"
Who cares?
Because fundamentally what you have here is a list of what you already know.
This flip chart excites me.
Even though it's messy as hack,
there is some real thinking going on.
You can see people are working out their ideas.
So I would take this flip chart any day of the week,
because I always want to reward substance over style.
Because drawing is your most crucial, visual and special thinking skill.
And the word drawing is both a noun and a verb.
Here you see drawing as a noun, as a product.
And here you see drawing as a process.
And I would hate to see you losing opportunity
to really rock your visual and special thinking,
because you only saw drawing as this product,
this thing, and that thing had to be perfect.
So by flipping your drawing switch back on,
you get to access your most important thinking tool.
Drawing.
So let's encourage tons of messy drawings.
Let's reward people for taking risks and working together.
When they work together, to connect and sort and group,
to grasp their work in totally new ways.
So let's join the forces of the blue analytical powerhouses
with the yellow spatial superstars,
and make and work in these LibLabs.
Because when we do we all become better problem solvers,
decision makers and critical thinkers
when we all shape our thinking.
(Applause)