What If Meetings Were Fun AND Productive?

After the amazing success I've had with my "WhiteBoarding For The Sales Engineer" class I've been looking at extensions to the methodology. As research for putting the class together I've been reading many of the books out there about using pictures, graphics and visualization.

I've always been puzzled by the way the worldwide educational system values words over pictures from the age of about 8 upwards. My wife teaches at an elementary school (Kindergarten through 11 years old). If I walk into one of the K-classes and ask how many kids can draw, almost all of them put their hands up. If I ask the same question of 5th grade (the 11 year-olds) less than half of them put their hands up. By the time we're 16-17 only 10% of students will self-identify as a "drawer". Which is strange - I don't know about you, but I learnt to read by identifying words with pictures. Chemistry was made easier by understanding the Periodic Table drawing, Geology was made easier by remember the strata/layers of rock etc.. where do we lose this ability to visually represent life?

I think it's because expectations are too high. The most common objection to using a whiteboard in my classes is "I'm not an artist/I can't write neatly". Yet once we get halfway through the class, most people are coming up with creative representations of products/architectures/problems and so on - using a variety of interesting, and simple, icons and constructs. I'm now looking at how we, as Presales Engineers, can apply all these techniques to a variety of internal and external meetings - not just when you are explicitly selling something. So stay tuned. It's fun and colorful!!