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Think With Ink®
Dive into the world of visual thinking with our blog. At Lizard Brain, we specialize in visual facilitation. Based in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area, we offer teams across the country an evolved approach to brainstorming, helping them unlock their full creative potential and achieve breakthrough results.
Here on our blog, we share insights, tips, and stories about the power of graphic facilitation and recording. Discover how to transform your meetings, spark creativity, and achieve breakthrough results. Join the conversation and learn how to make your ideas truly visible.
Sticky Notes and Big Ideas: How Inspiration Boards Energize Your Team
An Inspiration Board is a powerful tool to energize your design thinking workshops and team-building offsites. It's quick and easy to set up and incredibly effective at fostering creativity and team bonding.
Personal Visions: Creating High-Performing Teams with Shared Aspirations
Unless you have a deep admiration for the management philosophy of the Enron corporation, you’d probably agree that collaborative team environments are valuable assets in any organization. At Lizard Brain, we partner with organizations to intentionally design and develop high-performing teams and collaborative environments.
Crafting Clarity: How Visual Templates Transform Group Decision-Making
Unless you have a deep admiration for the management philosophy of the Enron corporation, you’d probably agree that collaborative team environments are valuable assets in any organization. At Lizard Brain, we partner with organizations to intentionally design and develop high-performing teams and collaborative environments.
From Chaos to Coherence: Navigating the Pitfalls of Hybrid Meetings
Navigating the challenges of modern meetings often involves choosing between in-person, virtual, or hybrid meetings. Hybrid meetings, where some participants gather in a room and others join virtually, seem like a flexible solution, but they come with huge drawbacks. At Lizard Brain, we universally discourage the people we work with from using hybrid meetings.
Embracing Whole Selves: Cultivating Psychological Safety and Diversity in Meetings
At Lizard Brain, we believe in the transformative power of visual and experiential methods in group decision-making. But beneath the charts and sticky notes, there’s a deeper element at the heart of successful collaboration: the genuine presence of each participant, fostered through psychological safety and diversity.
The Power of Paper: Enhancing Discussions in Meetings
I’ll just say it. Presentations aren’t effective for communication.
Vilifying PowerPoint is nothing new. But if no one likes sitting through a presentation where the speaker reads every single word on the slide, why on this green earth do we keep doing it? It’s monotonous, ineffective, and insulting to the intelligence of the participants.
5 Ways to Facilitate Ambiguity
Dealing with facilitation ambiguity is a skill that every team leader, CEO, coach, or HR professional can benefit from mastering. By asking the right questions, you can navigate uncertainty with confidence and keep your group focused on achieving their goals.
Appreciative Storytelling in 4 Parts
It can be tough for team members who live in the day-to-day reality of their work to easily articulate their organization's core purpose. As a remedy, some companies use elevator pitches
Advice From a Hero
“The only way to learn how to write and draw is by writing and drawing … to persist in the face of continual rejection requires a deep love of the work itself, and learning that lesson kept me from ever taking Calvin and Hobbes for granted when the strip took off years later.”
--Bill Watterson
Implementing Visual Learning in Your Organization
Visual learning isn't just a trend; it's a powerful tool that can transform your organization. By integrating visuals into your workflow, you can improve problem-solving, boost retention, and streamline processes. For CEOs, business leaders, non-profits, and educators, mastering visual learning can be the key to unlocking your team's full potential.
Navigating the Iceberg: A Framework for Asking Facilitative Questions
Someone asked me once, “Can you facilitate without markers?” “Sure,” I said. “But don’t ask me to facilitate without questions.” Questions are the most powerful tool consultants, coaches, and facilitators have to move groups. Period.
Create Space for Unscripted Insights and Flashes of Inspirations with Morning Percolations
There’s a temptation to jam as much content and activity into an agenda as possible, to demonstrate that “we’re being productive.” But really meaningful group work happens in the spaces and discussion between the prompts and presentations and prescribed activities. There’s something inherently awkward about saying, “We’ve created a structured activity for you to be as innovative and inspired as possible!” So how do you create space for those flashes of inspiration without overprescribing and smothering the spark of creativity? How do you bottle group lighting?
Take the Guesswork out of Decision Making: How to Design and Apply Decision Models
“The most important thing teams do is make decisions. And yet, few teams are explicit about HOW those decisions get made.” - Joe Gerstandt, diversity and inclusion expert.
Revolutionizing Brainstorming: Overcoming the Traditional Barriers
Have you ever left a brainstorming session feeling as if something held back the flow of ideas?
Persuade and Decide: "Meet me in Paris"
Where would you meet me if all I said was, "Meet me in Paris?" This seemingly simple question can unmask the intricate layers of group decision-making dynamics. Interestingly, most people would answer "The Eiffel Tower." But why?
Case Study: Four Visual Methods FasterCures Used to Advance Research Partnerships
In late 2019, the FasterCures team within Milken Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think focused on accelerating measurable progress on a path to a meaningful life, hired Lizard Brain for visual notetaking at their annual Future of Health Summit. FasterCures leads a network of patient organizations focused on advancing research into diseases that sometimes fly below the radar of the big pharma companies and the disease research industry.
Why Every Professional Should Consider Visual Facilitation
Visual facilitation is making waves in various industries. Imagine transforming your meetings and workshops into dynamic, engaging sessions where everyone is on the same page. This blog will guide you through the benefits of visual facilitation and explain how it can be a game-changer for professionals in business, education, and team facilitation. Let's explore who can benefit the most from this approach and how it can revolutionize your next session.
Science-Backed Engagement: Transform Meetings with Visual Facilitation
Meetings often get a bad rap for being dull and unproductive. But what if we told you there’s a game-changing technique that can turn mundane gatherings into dynamic, collaborative experiences? Enter visual facilitation—a cutting-edge approach backed by science that significantly boosts engagement and drives impactful results.
Why Lizard Brain is the Secret Weapon for Tech Startup Success
Lizard Brain provides a dynamic and interactive visual facilitation approach that keeps teams engaged and energized. Experience working with tech startups and understanding the unique challenges of this industry.