'I don't have time to Sketchnote!'

Rachel Burnham writes: 'I don’t have time to Sketchnote!’ - is one of the comments I get when I am encouraging people to make use of Sketchnoting.

If you haven’t come across the term ‘Sketchnoting’ before – it was coined by Mike Rohde and is the name for those graphics, which are often colourful and hand-drawn, that combine both words and pictures to share information and ideas.

I have been Sketchnoting for the past 8 years or so, initially to make notes for myself at conferences and presentations, but gradually I have realised what a flexible and effective ‘learning and thinking tool’ Sketchnoting is.

Yes, Sketchnoting often seems to take more time than conventional written-only note-taking – however, if you never refer back to those written notes and find it difficult to recall what you have written, then it is worthwhile investing in the time to develop your Sketchnoting skills.  Both myself and the very many people I have worked with have found that Sketchnotes are far more memorable and the active process of creating them means that you find the information easier to recall. I think this is because Sketchnoting, with its use of both words and simple pictures makes use of dual-coding. Dual-coding has been well-researched in many cognitive psychology studies and is well established as a practice in which the combination of visuals and words help to form rich memories, thus aiding recall and learning (listen to ‘The Learning Scientists Podcast’ episode 12 for a good introduction to dual-coding).

The length of time it takes to create a Sketchnote can vary tremendously depending upon how familiar you are with the material and also with Sketchnoting, plus what the purpose is of the Sketchnote. When Sketchnoting for yourself, you can create effective Sketchnotes in 30 to 60 minutes – as an experienced Sketchnoter I frequently Sketchnote live sessions in 30 to 45 minutes.

Secondly, the very fact that creating a Sketchnote is a relatively slow process is a strength.  As you draw, embellish and colour in elements of a Sketchnote, you relax and can find yourself thinking more deeply and also differently about the topic you are capturing.  By seeking out relevant images to illustrate points and using metaphors for this, you gain a different way of looking at the subject and may find yourself with fresh insights. By taking your time to consider the topic, you become able to reflect on it - I think this makes Sketchnoting (and drawing more widely) a useful tool for aiding reflection and contributing to learning in this way.

If you are interested in how Sketchnoting can help you, your team or your organisation learn, think or work more effectively I would be happy to discuss this with you.

Rachel Burnham

24 July 2024

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

Is Sketchnoting only relevant to people in creative roles?

Rachel writes : This blog is the first in a short series looking at some of the questions and feedback I have received recently.

I want to start with this question about the relevance of Sketchnoting to different roles. Sketchnotes make use of a combination of words and simple pictures and I confess that when I first started offering workshops introducing people to Sketchnoting, I thought that the people who would find Sketchnoting most useful would be people in roles that were clearly creative such as learning designers, writers and communicators. But over the last 6 years I have worked with a very wide range of professionals including forensic scientists, healthcare professionals, coaches, software designers, engineers, chemical regulations experts, librarians, educators, academic publishers, quality improvement teams, people professionals and yes, even some learning designers!

What continues to fascinate me is the wide range of ways in which these professionals are using Sketchnoting to help them to be even more effective in their work.  Lots of people are initially attracted to Sketchnoting as a way of making meaningful notes when attending meetings and conferences, but then find they can apply Sketchnoting to their work in many other ways. Through working with diverse groups and seeing the uses that they put Sketchnoting to, I have realised that Sketchnoting can be used not only for making notes, but for planning work, to aid reflection, for sense-making, as a flexible communication tool and many other uses.   For example, some coaches use Sketchnoting to create shared notes with coachees; managers have used Sketchnotes to map out processes with their teams and research students have used Sketchnotes to synthesize ideas from multiple data sources. Sketchnoting can be an aid to creativity as it enables you to make fresh connections and see things differently because of its use of visuals, layout and metaphors.

There is a huge amount of change in the world of work, with many roles facing constant change and requirements for new skills and behaviours.  Over the years many attempts have been made to suggest what skills will be needed in the future. One of the requirements consistently predicted for many roles is increased demand for creativity. So perhaps all of us could gain from having a go at Sketchnoting.

Let me know what you think.

How Sketchnoting became the key to unlock a whole new way of working

 Case Study - Sketchnoting in Use in the Chemical Industry

Background

• Janet Greenwood runs a specialist consultancy, TT Environmental Ltd, helping high hazard industries such as heavy industry and manufacturing understand and comply with chemical regulations. They provide environmental consultancy services and GHS Classification Courses, which provide introductions to CLP, and also CLP mastery, which is all about ensuring that organisations are able to communicate clearly to customers and staff the hazards of chemicals.

How Sketchnoting is being used

Janet has been using Sketchnoting in her work since she did an introductory virtual workshop to Sketchnoting facilitated by Rachel Burnham in the summer of 2021. There are two main ways in which she is using Sketchnoting:

• Firstly, as a way of communicating urgent news to customers and contacts in a quick and easy to digest format. This has enabled Janet’s consultancy to get breaking information out rapidly to her client base and industry to inform and reassure.  Eg  a problem with the law underpinning CLP was identified and it was important to provide professionals dealing with this with timely advice on how to respond. Here is the simple but effective Sketchnote used to do this: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/janet-greenwood_state-of-play-with-annex-viii-to-clp-as-we-activity-6900757098003517440-W51n/
• Secondly, Janet and her team are now making extensive use of a variety of Sketchnotes within their training courses to summarise complex and detailed information on a single sheet.  She describes Sketchnotes ‘as a way of getting across years or even decades of experience concisely and in an easily understandable form, both to beginners and more experienced professionals.’ They had previously make use of flowcharts and infographics - one of the advantages of Sketchnotes is their flexibility, so that you can vary the approach used to present the content most effectively and also combine a number of approaches within a single Sketchnote such as flowcharts, words, diagrams, arrows, structure and pictures. Some of their Sketchnotes are more word based and some more visual eg setting out the hazards of particular chemicals. With a Sketchnote you can both get the big picture, the context and also specific details.

The impact of using Sketchnoting

• Janet and her team have had a very positive response to their use of Sketchnotes both as a communication tool and also as a learning aid from their customers and contacts.  Communications using Sketchnotes shared on social media have had an excellent response with people commenting on the usefulness of the information contained.
• Participants in their training courses undertake a series of tests covering each of the course modules and since the introduction of the Sketchnotes pass rates have improved. As other improvements to the courses were made at the same time this cannot be wholly attributed to the introduction of Sketchnotes. However, the trainer’s view is that participants understand the information presented more quickly and easily when a Sketchnote is used. In addition, individual participants have commented on the ease of understanding the Sketchnotes in discussions. This feedback from trainer and participants. when coupled with the test results, indicates a positive impact from using Sketchnotes.
• Clients have responded very positively to the use of Sketchnotes in their work – in this field of work, clarity is highly important – the risks of getting information wrong are high. So any tool which leads to great transparency of information is valued.
• Janet was so impressed with the impact of Sketchnotes for her business that other team members have now been on the online Introduction to Sketchnoting workshop and are now using Sketchnoting in their work.

Key Learning

A Sketchnote doesn’t have to be perfectly drawn to be highly effective as a communication tool. This is not about producing art.

In Janet’s and her colleague’s experience they have found that they can create one in about half an hour – providing they fully understand the topic. What the process shows up is where your own gaps in understanding are and so it helps you to pinpoint where you need to do more research.

The only downsides are that you go through a lot of pens and sometimes end up with ink all over your fingers!

‘It is like turning a key in a lock and opening up a completely new way of working’ says Janet.

Rachel Burnham

25/4/2023

How can Sketchnoting make a difference to the way you work?

Here is a case study looking at how Sketchnoting has been used in a business to work with customers and help the team become even more effective at communicating complex and technical information in easy to understand ways. It shows the value that visual thinking can bring and how it is a highly effective way of working, rather than just a fun activity.

Sketchnotes make use of a combination of words and simple graphics to communicate information. They can combine pictures, diagrams, flowcharts with words and so are a very flexible tool for use in learning, thinking and working. I offer workshops introducing professionals and students to using Sketchnoting for note taking, planning, reflection, sense-making and communicating.

With many thanks to @JanetGreenwook of TT Environmental Ltd for telling her story. It is great to be able to share this experience of Sketchnoting from the chemical regulations and health & safety field.

Collection of Sketchnotes from World of Learning Summit 30 & 31 January 2024

Rachel Burnham writes: I spent a very interesting two days at this year’s World of Learning Summit, which was held in January 2024, at Olympia, London. I was fortunate to be able to attend the conference to Sketchnote a wide range of sessions, but of course also enjoyed meeting and speaking with people in between sessions, over lunch and whilst wandering around the exhibition. 

The sessions I participated in were on a real mix of topics – AI and its importance for L&D, skills-based organisations, learning in the flow of work, neurodiversity, reverse mentoring, the advantages of curiosity and developing our digital skills as L&D professionals. 

The sessions that were most effective from my perspective dug deeper – for example Kerry Richardson from Thames Water presented an excellent case study (see Sketchnote later in post), which was about ‘Learning in the flow of work’ as advertised. But she also set out clearly how to run an effective pilot, including focusing the intervention clearly on a business need – in this case reducing complaints with clear success criteria and showed how to cost the results generated from the pilot. There was so much useful stuff in this session – not necessarily new, but practices that are important and often don’t get done. 

Some of the less effective sessions attempted to cover far too much material and so skimmed over the surface. I think it is easier to get more depth if sessions involve just a single presenter or case study or if sessions are slightly longer and I would encourage conference organisers to take this on board. 

 Here are all 8 of the Sketchnotes that I created live over the two days. 

The Opening Address on AI 

Not surprisingly, the first two inputs at this year's conference were on AI and how L&D can be making use of this. My favourite bit was the Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly stages that Trish Uhl outlined that we need to go through in our learning about how to get the most out of AI.

The Skills-Based Organisation 

This is from a session by Asi De Gani and Dani Saadu, who each talked about their organisations' approach to taking a skills based approach to Learning & Development. People I talked to about this session had very mixed responses - some feeling that this was bread and butter L&D and wondering how it was different from a competence based approach, whereas others found it incredibly helpful for the journey that their own organisation was in the midst of. 

Have a look and see what you think. 

A practical look at learning in the flow of work 

Great session from Kerry Richardson, Thames Water detailing how they ran a pilot to add a learning in the flow of work element to the mix using 'Clever Nelly' to pose questions. So many super things about this approach - it taps into both 'retrieval practice' and 'spaced repetition', they focused on addressing a key business needs - reducing complaints - and identified success criteria ie what success would look like, they carried out a pilot and compared with a control group, and costed the results sharing their workings out. Kudos to Kerry and her colleagues for such a rich case study. 

Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world 

I am so excited to be able to share my Sketchnote with you from the session led by Leena Haque and Sean Gilroy from the BBC, titled 'Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world'. Leena described her experiences of autism and of the challenges of school and finding her way into the world of work - she used pictures and video clips to vividly communicate her story. Of course as a Sketchnoter, my favourite bit was when she told us about how she drew pictures at school to process her learning! This is something we can all do and benefit from. 

Sean also explained about the initiatives the network they co-lead had taken at the BBC to address the needs neurodiverse people had identified - training to increase awareness, changes to the built environment and to technology to make it more accessible and to build community. 

I know a lot of people in the session were very moved by this presentation. 

L&D skills for the digital world 

Here's my Sketchnote from Jo Cook 's session 'L&D Skills for the Digital Word' which was getting us thinking a bout the Digital skills we need now and how to future proof are skill sets. 

The curious advantage 

Great conversation about curiosity and how it benefits organisations and how to nurture it. So good to hear Peter Ashcroft, Garrick Jones and Tim Munden discussing this. 

The evolution of reverse mentoring 

This session was co-delivered by Emily Cosgreve from 'The Conversation Space' and Mark Taylor from RSM UK. They shared their experience of using reverse mentoring to stimulate intergenerational conversations at work and they included lots of helpful detail about the way they did this. 

I hope you have found it useful to see summaries of the sessions in Sketchnote format. I am always interested to hear what people think of them. 

If you are interested in learning to Sketchnote yourself or have colleagues who would find this of interest do get in touch – my next open workshop is online from 1pm on 29th February. Or get in touch if you would like to commission me to create a Sketchnote for your organisation. 

Rachel Burnham 

2 February 2024

 

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

If you have lots of complex or detailed information to get your head around or convey to others – why not consider a Sketchnote?

Rachel Burnham writes: Many of us need to digest and make sense of detailed and complex information such as regulations, health & safety requirements, project plans and organisational policies as part of our work.   And having got our own head around this material, need to go on to convey this to others in a meaningful way.

Sketchnoting the key points from this kind of material can help you to get to grips with it.   Creating a Sketchnote is a dynamic process that can help you to step back from the detail and identify the big picture – the main story, if you like. Sketchnoting can help you to identify the most important aspects of the information for your needs and map out how these aspects are connected – arrows, proximity and size are often used to indicate relationships within a Sketchnote.   Sketchnotes are versatile and can make use of a variety of different types of graphics – flowcharts, simple illustrations, diagrams (such as Venn Diagrams or Input/Output Diagrams), cartoons, plus words and even combinations of these.  By playing with different ways of representing the key elements you can discover what best represents this information.  Working visually and on paper is often easier – in a way the paper becomes an extension of your brain.   By Sketchnoting you can set out your own understanding of complex information in a one page format. 

Going through this process in an iterative way can help you to identify your own gaps in understanding and enable you to focus your efforts to get further clarity. 

By making visible your understanding, you can also use this to test out with other colleagues and stakeholders, how your understanding compares to theirs, making it much easier to develop a shared and more rounded understanding of the information and insights from it.

Once you and other stakeholders are happy that your Sketchnote represents a helpful summary of the information, you can use this as a basis for communicating with others.   You could use the Sketchnote as a summary or introduction to the more detailed original information.   A Sketchnote could be used as a talking point within a presentation or learning programme or could be used as a curated resource conveying the key information, with access to the detailed material for those who require it.  

Sketchnotes are often experienced as a more engaging and accessible way into a topic.  And for complex or detailed information they can be computational more efficient because they summarise the material in a single page and so allow people to access the main points more easily.

If you would like to learn to Sketchnote why not book a place at my online ‘Thinking Differently:Introduction to Sketchnoting’ workshop? 

 

Rachel Burnham

3 February 2023

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing

 

Sometimes you don't know what will be useful, until it becomes essential

 

Rachel Burnham writes: I was clearing out some shelves in my office the other day and I came across a notebook with my notes (& pictures!) from when I was first learning to facilitate live online sessions – though back then I called them webinars and was just learning to distinguish webinars and virtual classrooms.  It was 2208/9. 

I started learning about them and how to facilitate online out of sheer curiosity, rather than a need or specific demand from a client.  As a result I was able to suggest to a client that we started to make use of live online sessions as part of a blended approach to the redesign of a programme that I went onto to develop.

When the pandemic began I had 10 years’ experience of designing and facilitating live online sessions.   And I was so glad of this!  And the client had developed its provision by then to offer options for all courses that were either blended or totally online.  It was comparatively easy for them to move over their offerings to a totally live online programme.

Somewhere in between these times, a fellow volunteer for CIPD Manchester, Mike Collins, introduced me to using some new-fangled online meeting tool called ‘Zoom’.  As we found it useful for holding planning meetings in the evenings to bring together our small but dispersed team of volunteers for CIPD Manchester’s L&D work we adopted the practice of using it. It saved us all having to struggle into the centre of Manchester for a short meeting and made it much easier to find mutually convenient meeting times.   Back in 2017, it never occurred to me that I would be using Zoom for hosting most of my professional work, chairing CIPD Manchester committee meetings, painting socials, #LnDCoWork Manchester Christmas Curry and even family Christmas parties.

I started using drawing in my work in about 2015 and found myself developing skills in Sketchnoting, before I had even heard of the term!   Now the majority of my work is drawing and Sketchnoting related and I have even illustrated Gary Cookson’s ‘HR for HybridWorking’ book.  My art teachers from school would be flabbergasted.

Last week in the #LDInsight chat 13/1/23, we were discussing how we could explore the use of AI in our work.  And that made me think back to that notebook I had found earlier in the week.

Sometimes, you just don’t know what will be useful and in what way, until it is essential to have that skill and experience. Message to myself - keep exploring, keep learning, keep experimenting.

 

Rachel Burnham

17 January 2023

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.