Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity

Chapter 16. Supporting Team Performance: Visualizing Goals, Roles, & Action Plans

Moving from thinking to action is a shift from looking at systems and structures conceptually to coordinating actions over time. It begins when decisions are made to apply resources to plans and ideas, and moves through project organization and implementation and sometimes to high performance. Highly productive organizations also invest in learning and development so that experiences benefit future projects. There is a lot you can do to support everyone in this process with visual meetings. It starts with using visualization for decision making and commitment, then involves graphics for action planning and project management, and eventually using visualization to support innovation and learning—the high-performance results organizations would love to have from meetings.

Facilitators, project managers, team leaders, sales teams, change managers, and development professionals all face the challenge of anticipating and managing processes over time. As a way of getting into this material, we will begin by looking at a general level at a map of the process that any group or team goes through, and what the predictable phases and stages are. Then we will take a closer look at how the different kinds of visual meetings support this natural process. Subsequent chapters explore each step in a little more depth. ...