At See In Colors, we believe in the power of visuals to enhance understanding and retention. That’s why we’re excited to offer a free resource to help you bring your ideas to life with our Visual Notetaking Tip Sheet. You’ve seen our team at work graphic recording, well you can use the power of visuals too!

What’s Inside the Tip Sheet?

Our Visual Notetaking Tip Sheet is designed to make it easy for anyone to start drawing out their ideas, regardless of artistic skill level. It covers five essential elements:

1. Text: Learn how to use fonts and styles to make key points stand out.
2. Containers: Discover how to frame information with boxes, clouds, and banners.
3. People: Simple techniques for drawing people to add a personal touch.
4. Bullets: Create clear, organized lists with various bullet styles.
5. Connectors: Use arrows and lines to link concepts and show relationships

Download Your Free Tip Sheet

Ready to take your meeting notes to the next level? Download our Visual Notetaking Tip Sheet for free and start transforming your ideas into visual stories. Click the link below to get started:

Download the Visual Notetaking Tip Sheet

At See In Colors, we’re dedicated to helping you design and facilitate meetings that are not only productive but also visually engaging. Whether you’re brainstorming, planning, or strategizing, our resources are here to support your journey.

Happy drawing!

From the See In Colors Team

Following the effects of the pandemic, many organizations have had to make a change from the traditional workspace design to adopting a more flexible hybrid design. A hybrid workspace design gives employees flexibility over where they work so that they can effectively work from home and at the office at different periods.

Designing a suitable workspace poses quite a challenge as employees who had been required to work from home for months at a stretch might find coming back to the office an unwanted change.

As a business owner or an HR professional, applying design thinking to the way you design your hybrid workspace post-pandemic can make the difference between retaining quality employees and losing them.

Through human-centered design thinking methods, you can empathize with your employees to create the most favorable and efficient work environment for them.

Some of the things you should consider when creating a hybrid workplace are:

Employee Safety and Wellbeing

While designing your hybrid workspace, one primary thing you have to factor in is the safety of your employees. While employees are at work, you should provide tools and systems that guarantee their safety and compliance with safety measures.

Employee Schedule

To achieve success with the hybrid model, employee roles and responsibilities should be considered during the design process. Some roles require more in-person work than others, and as such, an employee schedule should be designed to accommodate all roles.

Team Meeting and Connectedness

A significant challenge running a hybrid program may pose is the possible disconnect between employees. Good employee relationships have been shown to improve the quality of work in organizations. To foster this, your hybrid workspace should accommodate and encourage communication and connectedness irrespective of the work location.

Are you looking to improve employee experience by designing the perfect hybrid workspace? You can find solutions for your hybrid workplace with our Design Thinking Workshop. You can register here.

The planning phase is arguably the most crucial stage of a project’s life cycle. At this stage, you determine the logistics, budget, and other important details.

Here you can define and discuss potential problems your project might face at the different stages of execution. Then you can brainstorm with your team and provide possible solutions to these problems.

More importantly, it is during this project planning phase that you need to identify and select the RIGHT problem that your project will solve upon successful execution.

Why?

Identifying and presenting the key problem your project will solve to stakeholders is vital for effective communication and ensuring expectations are met.

So, how can you create an invaluable project management plan and identify the correct problem?

There are several visual planning tools and project plan visualization techniques that can help you execute this crucial part of the project planning phase.

Why Should You Use Visual Planning Tools and Techniques?

Turn a project’s large volume of data into useful and straightforward diagrams that help you brainstorm and communicate the project’s SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). 

Outline and visualize all stages of your project’s life cycle so you can present a high-level plan to project stakeholders.

Better yet, you can use visual planning tools at all stages of your project execution!

It’s true, visual planning techniques help foster creativity when approaching and solving complex situations or problems. Visual techniques like mind mapping, process maps, or cost breakdown structures are crucial to your project planning.

Types of Visualization Tools for Project and Program Planning 

There are many project planning tools and techniques to use for project management, but not all are suitable for the planning phase. Your visual planning phase should be a detailed process where you might use several project planning techniques and tools.

Here are the top visual planning techniques that will help ensure that you identify the key problem, that your project’s stakeholders and team are on the same page and that expectations are clear and met. 

1. The Six Thinking Hats:

This can be done remotely or at in-person meetings to explore different viewpoints related to complex situations or problems. Team members will wear different “hats” that represent different thinking perspectives. The six thinking hats are: Creativity, Process, Benefits, Facts, Cautions and Feelings. Use an online whiteboard tool to take notes on each of the participants points of view.

2. Starbursting:

Help meeting participants fully understand the problem that your project is going to solve. Once a team identifies a problem, draw a 5-point star and label each of the 5 points: What?, Where?, When?, How?, and Why? Have meeting participants collaborate and add detailed questions to each of the 5 categories.

3. The Five Whys:

More specifically used for quality improvement, and to thoroughly analyze a problem, repeatedly ask the question, “Why?”. Using a whiteboard, state the problem. Then list out five boxes below the problem statement, each with the question of why? As you repeatedly answer why, you will eventually reach the root cause of a problem.

4. Mind Maps:

Mind mapping is a useful way to gather and organize all information about your project. Mind maps are crucial to the information-gathering process. Mind maps can be helpful during brainstorming sessions to generate and gather new ideas. Besides, you don’t have to collect information hierarchically. You can add ideas as they come to mind, and the mind map will help you present the information in an orderly and meaningful way.

Project Management Apps For Visual Project Planning 

Project management software helps you collaborate effectively with your team and carry out your visual planning. Most apps are designed to work for remote meetings as well. So, your team members and project stakeholders don’t have to be physically present to brainstorm on your project. 

There are various project management applications that help to effectively assign tasks, manage, and track your team’s progress such as Trello, Asana, and TeamGantt. But what about apps for visual project planning?

Think collaborative whiteboard apps, such as Mural, Miro, Zenkit, Google Jamboard and Lucidchart.

Collaborative whiteboard project management apps provide the option to collaborate visually in real-time, and allow meeting participants to add sketches, notes, videos and more to a digital canvas.

Conclusion 

Project planning is a crucial phase of your project. You can’t afford to skip it. Visualization techniques can help you get on the right track. But you must be sure you are using the right tools and techniques to get the desired results. 

Do you need help facilitating your meeting so that everyone can see the big picture? You can reach out to us here to help you out with visual planning.

Have you taken time to evaluate last year’s projects or programs? 

It’s the beginning of a new year – the perfect time to do project course corrections with your team. Besides, the last year was eventful; the pandemic forced every organization to operate differently. 

Now is the best time to step back and think of how these changes will affect your programs and initiatives this year. 

•         What are the things your organization should be doing to take advantage of these changes?
•         What are the things that are no longer relevant in the current situation? 
•         How can you manage your team effectively in light of these changes? 

These questions are necessary for project evaluations and may provide innovation and improvements for your organization. 

Do you know what process is simple to remember during a performance review? 

The Stop, Continue, Start method! 

This easy exercise can help you manage your business, team, and project more efficiently. It allows you to think through what you need to continue, stop, or start doing. 

Here are 7 areas that should be considered, among many more, for the Stop, Continue, Start exercise.

Meetings

Meetings are a crucial part of project management. So, that is one of the areas you should perform a Stop, Continue, Start exercise. Plus, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed how meetings operate – a shift from mostly physical sessions to virtual meetings. 

•         What are the things you should start to make your meeting run more effectively?
•         What are the things you should stop doing to make your meeting less time-consuming?
•         Do you need to stop/continue/start using a specific platform for your meetings?

For example, should you conduct some meetings via phone and stop doing all meetings via video because everyone on the team is suffering from Zoom fatigue?

Should some meetings be “hybrid” meetings, because some employees are working from home while others are now working at the office?

Stakeholder Management

Your stakeholders – your team, clients, and management, are the backbone of your project. As a program director or project manager, it is your responsibility to manage how well stakeholders receive information. 

You can use your stop, continue, start exercise to determine:

•         What are the things you can start/stop to help you with your stakeholder management? 
•         What you can start or continue to help you manage information dissemination well.

For example, should you stop sending broadcast emails and start calling individuals to encourage more effective conversations and, in turn, improve communication with stakeholders? You can use this exercise to revisit your stakeholder register to identify if there are new stakeholder groups to add, or stakeholder groups to remove from the list.

Changes & Requests

Changes and requests occur often throughout the course of a project. They are necessary for growth. On the other hand, how well you handle them determines if they will improve your project. 

So, during your project or program evaluation, you can discuss:

•         What are the processes that you should stop doing because they impede your ability to manage changes/requests?
•         Are there better ways you can handle your requests? 
•         What can you start doing to implement changes better?

For example, maybe you should stop receiving change requests via fax because no one is faxing anymore? As as result, you may need to consider implementation of a web based change request system to increase efficiency.

Risk Management

For any project, you must have a proper risk management plan in place to identify and take care of issues as they arise. To keep your risk register up to date, you should carry out the Stop, Continue, Start exercise often to mitigate new risks as they emerge.

•         What risk mitigation practices should you start to make it easier for you to identify and manage risks?
•         What risk management processes do you have in place that have proven effective?
•         Do you have practices you need to stop?

For example, is it possible that management needs to revisit their emergency contact list? Is management ready to take the necessary action to contact their team during a time of crisis, such as the U.S. Capitol riots? Do they have an updated cell phone list to ensure they can get in touch with their team members?

Training

Training is a crucial process in every organization. It exposes your team members to new and more effective ways of tackling the task at hand. Due to pandemic restrictions, training your team may become increasingly challenging. 

An excellent way to tackle this problem during performance evaluation is to use the Stop, Continue, Start exercise.

•         In the light of the recent changes, what are things you can start to make training your personnel easier?
•         Should you continue/stop in-person training? Or start virtual training?
•         What can you initiate to make your team members take advantage of the training?

For example, as a program manager, maybe you need to find a service provider that can assist your staff with Microsoft teams training?

Onboarding

Effective onboarding is essential to incorporate new members and programs into your organization without disrupting the workflow. 

•         How efficient is your current process? Do you need to start a new onboarding process?
•         Are there practices you need to remove (stop) from your onboarding process?

For example, maybe you will start using a new onboarding system to more effectively manage your growing team or project portfolio? Maybe you will need to stop using the paper system and move your onboarding process online to a more intuitive web based platform?

Reporting

Reporting is crucial to let your stakeholders know about your project’s progress. So, you should also evaluate your reporting system to ensure you aren’t lacking in that area. 

•         What action should you take to help your team report better?
•         What are the irrelevant things you need to stop reporting on?
•         What are the things you need to continue or improve?

Should you stop tracking a certain metric because it is no longer relevant, for example, fax numbers?

How to Execute the Stop, Continue, Start Exercise 

The best way to run the Stop, Continue, Start exercise for your project is to perform it with your team. Create a time for you and your team to review each element of this exercise. By asking questions, you can categorize their input as stop, continue, or start. 

Ask for your team members’ input. Their feedback will help you in making the right decision. Take advantage of this team-building exercise!

Conclusion

In summary, these are the things that a project manager, program manager, PMO, or senior level manager would consider to improve their project/program. Of course, the point of executing the Start, Continue, Stop exercise is to act on your findings.

Once you have completed your list, make it a point of duty to consult the list regularly. This will promote movement in the right direction towards your program’s goals, as well as your overall company’s mission.

This visual template can help you carry out your Stop, Continue, Start  Exercise efficiently. Click here to print the template and instructions. 

It’s the beginning of a new year!

For leaders and consultants, that implies the start of new projects and products. It is also the time to assess existing projects in your company.

It’s time to get back to the drawing board to create a roadmap. 

Why a Roadmap?

Strategic planning is an essential part of project management or product development. And a visual, like a simple roadmap, is a crucial part of your organization’s strategic planning. 

A road map is an excellent way to show information about your project or product at a glance. A high-level roadmap will help you collect and organize your project’s strategy, goals, and tasks. A strategic roadmap can assist leaders in providing a visualization of the organization’s long-term vision, mission, goals and initiatives for key stakeholders.

Roadmaps come in several formats. Your roadmap can be a simple line chart or a complicated flow chart. Regardless of the format, your roadmap should be a visual that assists your team in making better decisions. It should simplify and streamline communication about your projects, products, programs, or organization’s long-term initiatives.

So, how do you draw a no-fail high-level roadmap? 

This article will cover the top 8 tips to help you create the perfect roadmap. Let’s get started. 

1.    Begin with the end in mind

What is the big vision at the end of the road? What are the goals that align with that vision? What is the time frame for the project?

The answers to these questions should be the first thing on your roadmap. Define your vision, goals and time frame clearly on your roadmap. Your goals should align with your vision clearly. 

With clearly defined goals and time frames, you can decide the tasks (next steps) you need to complete your project. Plus you will have a way to measure progress.

2.   Gather all relevant information 

Make sure you have all the relevant information about the project at hand. That way, you can easily define your project strategy. Talk to all the key stakeholders involved and get their input. 

What will support the vision and what will challenge the vision?

If you are creating a roadmap for a product, engage with your product user community. Get the consumer’s input about the product.

3.   Add specific tasks

Once you have established your end-results, create specific tasks for each process of your project. Make sure you add a time frame to each task as well. 

Each task should be clearly defined and assigned a time duration. It makes your roadmap action-oriented. 

4.   Don’t include everything on your roadmap 

Avoid too many details on your roadmap! 

Your roadmap is supposed to be a graphical representation of your project. It does not replace other project management tools, it  supplements them. 

Keep it high-level!

5.   Design your roadmap image with your audience in mind 

Your stakeholders will be reviewing, approving, responsible, or accountable throughout your project.

Use formats, diagrams and terms they will easily understand. If you are presenting to several groups, point out key areas in the roadmap that are key to each group. Our facilitators love using Mural.co to create roadmaps during strategic planning retreats. Mural is a great collaborative whiteboard tool. 

Keep in mind that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to create different roadmaps for each group. 

6.   Use a simple design, large titles and subtitles 

Think of your roadmap as a presentation of your project. 

Your audience should be able to read your roadmap even at a distance. Use a bold font to call attention to different areas and a layout that people can easily read. 

7.   Use various colors

You can use different colors to represent each process on your map. However, make sure you use contrasting colors so it is easier to read. 

You can use a color code to help people quickly make connections between the different processes. 

8.   Use the right roadmap tools 

Lastly, make sure you are using the right roadmapping tool.  Pair that with the solid meeting facilitation tools and you’ll be on your way to having a productive strategy meeting. 

Your roadmap tool should:

• Make it easy to create visual concepts
• Update visuals
• Be user-friendly 
• Make it easy to export
• Easily integrate with cloud storage and other project management tools 

Those are our tips to help you create strategic roadmap to success. Feel free to download this template to get some inspiration for creating a roadmap for your organization, program, or project this year. 

If you need professional help to create the right roadmap for your project or to facilitate your strategic planning session, you can book a consultation here.

In 2020, we saw a sudden increase in the use of video conferencing. Mainly due to the pandemic restrictions.

Online meetings replaced face-to-face meetings and video conferencing became a regular means of collaboration. 

In fact, working remotely is now the norm rather than the exception.

Although restrictions vary based on region, many companies prefer to continue with their work-from-home arrangement. Just recently, Google and Facebook announced that they will continue with their remote work arrangement for now.

What does this mean for you? Virtual meetings are here to stay! It is important to set up your home office with productivity tools to stay on target with your 2021 goals, and video conferencing equipment to ensure your virtual meetings run smoothly. 

To help you stay up to date on the latest and greatest work-from-home gadgets, here are my top tools of 2020 that I keep in my teleworking toolbox. 

1. Microphone/Headsets 

The last thing you want during your video conference is terrible audio!

People should hear you clearly during your virtual meetings and using only your computer’s microphone may provide a poor audio experience. 

Adding a superior external microphone or headset to your virtual meeting toolbox will ensure your audience can hear you properly during virtual meetings.

There are several microphone brands on the market to give you crisp, clear audio. Do consider if you are uncomfortable sitting in front of a microphone, and if so, go for a headset instead. 

While a wired headset is a great choice, the wiring and cabling creates limitations. 

You can go for the Bluetooth models that offer comparable audio quality; however, they are a bit more expensive. 

Lastly, if your work-from-home environment is loud, minimize distractions by opting for a noise-cancelling headset.

Personally, I prefer a microphone, and recommend the SNOWBALL Microphone.

2. Document Cameras 

Document cameras are a small and powerful replacement for transparency projectors, This specifically designed web camera projects crisp and clear images onto a display, a great addition for virtual meetings and presentations!

I use the IPEVO V4K Ultra High Def Document Camera. It allows me to draw and have meeting participants see me working on a sheet of paper. My version of the Ipevo is old and it doesn’t even have a light but I still love it.

However, the IPEVO VZ-X 8MP Document Camera has a light and WIFI included if you are interested in those specs.

A third option, that a colleague of mine raves about, is the INSWAN INS-1 Tiny 8MP USB Document Camera.

At the Black Maternal Mental Health Summit, we used our document camera alongside the Powerpoint presentation as a means to visually communicate with the attendees of the event.

3. Lighting 

Invest in good lighting! 

Although natural lighting can be good enough for some video conferences, better lighting improves your video quality. 

If your desk is located in a darker area of your room, there will be no need to find the right angle if you have a to brighten up your workspace! 

With a proper lighting device it will be easier to video call at any time, including night. 

I recommend the Neewer Ring Light Kit that comes with a tripod stand, dimmable LED lighting and color filters.

Looking for a more affordable LED Ring Light option that can hold your phone, has an adjustable color temperature range, and can clip on your desk or laptop? The UBeesize Selfie Ring Light checks all of those boxes and is compact and quite versatile!

In summary, the top three specifications to consider when purchasing your video conference lighting device are its dimmability, does it have the option to control the color temperature, and whether it provides adjustable positioning.

4. Traditional “Lo-Fi” Office Tools

Aside from the tech gadgets mentioned above, there are three key office tools that I recommend for seeing the big picture with visuals.

I love this UCreate Sketch Book, it’s always on the right-hand side of my desk, right next to my mouse where I put all of my notes. You can easily turn the sketch book from profile to landscape orientation, allowing for less restriction. There are also no lines, so you can sketch and doodle to your heart’s content!

Keep a Bullet Journal handy, specifically one that includes a dotted grid to make note-taking easy and increase productivity.

Lastly, every year I order a new wet & dry erase wall calendar which is located above my desk so that I can easily add, remove or revise events and goals. I love seeing the year at a glance, because I’m a visual person of course 🙂

Leave a comment and tell us about your favorite work-from-home tools!

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Below are our top four tips for visual thinking!

Incorporate more color. Sticking with black and white can be a little dull and on the boring side. Bring some color into the mix. You can color code ideas to represent goals, topics and more. Don’t forget to add some neon post-it notes to the mix. This is where your creativity can come out!

Connect similar thoughts. Draw an icon in the center to represent the topic.  Draw lines to branch out from the central image. Now group fresh ideas and thoughts inside thought bubbles or clouds to keep things organized. Need some help with your drawing skills? Take our FREE icon course for more tips! Another way to keep ideas grouped is through highlighting similar topics. Allow your color coding to come into play again through this organizational tip.

Go big. Big paper means BIG ideas. Don’t limit your space with small pieces of paper. Grab some poster board or large pieces of butcher paper. If your company has a print shop, ask them for some plotter paper which tends to be 30” inches or so wide. You can draw and write large ideas and have smaller topics or action items branch off of your big idea. Bring a few pieces to make sure you don’t run out of room and can keep the ideas flowing!

Encourage participation. Get the office or team involved with this process. You can expand your original ideas or let them bring new thoughts to the table. One way to encourage participation is to bring colored dots to your session. Allow each participant to use their dots to identify which idea they like the most and contribute their vote! The dots could also serve as a representation of their roles in the company as shown in the image below. See where everyone adds their talents!

Dream big and have fun! If you think your not sure how to plan a brainstorming session, we can support you,  just contact us. We would love to help!