george-dicristoforos-drawing

anthony-romanos-drawing

balloon

In 2008 I taught more workshops than any other year since I began teaching in 1992. In these hard economic times the Idea Mapping Workshop is in high demand because participants are taught many tools that help them to:

1) Do more with less

2) Get their arms around complex and large amounts of data

3) Discover the infinite potential of their brains

4) Be more creative in business and life

5) Move from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (as described by Daniel Pink in his book, “A Whole New Mind“)

6) Learn how to learn (Thomas Friedman says this is one of the most needed skills today in his book, “The World is Flat“)

7) See the “big picture” as well as connections between pieces of data that would go unnoticed in linear documents.

These skills among others are so critical to business today, that this year my corporate clients have asked me in many cases to more than double the workshops we provide this year. So what does that have to do with these portrait drawings? If you search on “portrait drawings” in this blog you will learn the basics of what this activity achieves. Today I want to go deeper into the implications.

These two portrait drawings were drawn by George DiCristoforo and Anthony Romano during the November 6-7, 2008 workshop at Ontario Teachers Pension Plan in Toronto, Canada. This activity is based on some of the teaching of Betty Edwards. Drawing is about seeing. So this portrait drawing activity becomes an analogy for something much greater. It opens the door to stretch and grow workshop participants in an area that most adults think impossible.Today’s professionals need to be able to see relationships. We need to understand the connection between diverse, and seemingly separate disciplines. We must know how to link apparently unconnected elements to create something new (according to Daniel Pink). Learning to draw helps to lead us in doing just this among other benefits.

Enjoy the success of these budding artists!

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