Purchasing Coach: Advent Window 17: Drawing

25 unconventional coaching and facilitation tools to surprise and delight

It's not so long ago that I wrote a post on how one team on a category management workshop used drawing as a means of getting new insight on a situation. It involved barbed wire (see image below), and ended up with a discussion about whether Procurement were as much to blame for putting the barbed wire between them and their stakeholders as their stakeholder were.

The process is simple.

• Pick an issue you'd like more insight on
• Draw a picture that represents the current situation - using as much lateral thinking as possible  
• Either draw a picture of the end result (ie the outcome you want or solution)
• Or make changes to the original picture to make it as you'd like it to be
• Or even just see what happens as you make changes to the image (not dissimilar to the collage process I wrote about a few days ago)
• Identify an action plan of how to apply the insights gained from the exercise, and apply them to the current situation, or notice how the situation already feels different, or perhaps a totally unrelated thought has come to mind about what you need to do to resolve the current situation.

Here's a quick example, showing how we don't need to understand the content of the situation to provide advice.

Current situation (no judgement - no logic either - if an image has come to mind there will be a part of you that knows how it relates):

Outcome (again no judgement - here I wanted to draw one non stick person and had thought perhaps they needed to be a different colour, and as I did that it started to look like an angel, and so I added the halo, the wings and some colour) 

Actions/Advice I've given myself as a result of reviewing these images:

• Less doing more being.
• Focus on being me (which was supported by the insight in window 12's tool - which demonstrates that the subconscious will make it's message heard what ever tool we choose to use. It's also why you may get other insights - because you'll notice something that you need to remember that relates to your situation. Whilst I've noticed what I need to remember). 
• Remember I can say no - in fact I am entitled to say no - nor I am obligated to say Yes. (more in tomorrow's post.)
• Do what gives me joy daily. 

To help bed in the insight, and because I know this works for me personally, I may use the image as wallpaper on my phone. I may even make a collage to help bring it alive too.

Perhaps you noticed different insights altogether?

Remember, this is my image, and so may make no sense to you. It's simply an example to demonstrate how the process works. It's only by embracing the process, and trying it for yourself, that you'll truly understand its effectiveness.

You may like this post using drawing to assist in a situation someone felt they were going around in circles about.

Alison Smith
Unlocking procurement potential - using conventional and unconventional tools
Procurement and Business Speaker, Coach, Trainer, & Facilitator
alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0)7770 538159

Earlier in the year I applied some of the unconventional tools shared in this series of advent posts to common procurement challenges - more here.