Do you think these signs are related?

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

A simple recipe for effective communication

Alberto with one of his "recipes"

My friend Alberto Boin taught me a simple way to think about communication that is especially helpful when giving instruction or training materials. He uses the concept to design software, but it's applicable to any kind of learning design.

Whenever you want to capture a work flow or "how to do something" you just think about it as if it were a recipe. And think small -- could you fit it on an index card?

It's as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Headline
Your headline is the Result: What you want the person to learn or do. Example: "Chocolate Cake" or "How to write a memo."

2. Ingredients
What are the necessary components that you must have in order to do the thing? Example: Milk, eggs, etc., or "Working knowledge of C++."

3. Recipe
Step-by-step instructions that describe "how to make it" or "how to do it."

You will be surprised how useful this little concept is whenever you set out to communicate, especially in business environments when you want to get people to do things!

As usual, the key to success is simplicity.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Find your own path

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Today was a painting day

More paintings on my Flickr.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Windows of Saint Louis

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Share your espresso experiences

I travel a lot and stay in hotels fairly often. I also like espresso in the morning. In the US this leads to disappointment more often than not.

Many hotels don't serve espresso, but what really irks me is those that say they do but really don't. Instead they serve some kind of watered coffee drink with foamed milk. It tastes worse than regular coffee to me.

If anyone knows of hotels that serve good espresso please add a comment. Help me -- and all those other espresso lovers out there -- get off to a good start more often!

Please include:
- City
- Name of hotel
- DO or DON'T?

Some of my recommendations:
- DO: Any downtown San Francisco hotel is close to many excellent espresso experiences. I particularly like Cafe Bean on the corner of Sutter and Jones for ambiance as well as espresso.
- DON'T order espresso at the Doubletree in Redmond, WA
- DO order espresso in any Microsoft cafeteria
- DON'T order espresso at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas

Depicted here is an excellent espresso prepared by the Soulard Coffee Garden in St. Louis.

Please share your espresso experiences. Our taste buds thank you!

P.S. Do you see a ghostly face in my espresso or do I have Pareidolia?

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

How to write a marketing story that sticks

Are you trying to get a message through, to an audience that's hard to reach?

Maybe they are distributed around the world; maybe they don't see your mission as a priority; and maybe they are just busy, but whatever the reason you are finding it hard to break through.

It could be the story that you are telling. There are three main elements to crafting a story that will get traction in difficult communication environments:

Your story must be

1. Relevant: People care about things that are relevant to them and their situation. To make a story relevant you need to get inside your audience's heads. The more you understand how they see the world and what they care about, the more relevant your story will become.

2. Unique: The benefits you describe need to be unique to you and available nowhere else. If your benefits aren't unique, you will become commoditized, and people won't why they should come to you. You might have a great story that gets great results for someone else!

3. Memorable: The story must not only hold people's attention, it's got to be easy to remember. You can't always control the timing, so you need to be sure people can recall the essentials at a later date. You also want a story that's interesting enough to pass on to others, and easy enough to tell that people tell it consistently.

A story that meets these criteria will get results for you more often than not.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Visual thinking practice: Memory

Whether or not you are an artist, you can use drawing as a method to record and recall things that you think are important. The very idea that you might draw something will cause you to notice more about it, just like the idea that you might teach something will force you to pay attention when you are taught.

Remember the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words?" A drawing -- especially when enhanced by your written notes -- can capture more information, and more meaning, than words alone.

Learning to draw from memory can help you improve your visual note-taking skills, and can also enhance your visual memory. When I was in grade school I set myself a mission to draw a side view of the bus that took me to school every day. I hadn't learned to carry a sketchbook yet, so all my drawing materials were at home.

Every day when I got off the bus, I would look back at the bus and try to remember as much information as possible. There is a lot to remember about a school bus: the number of windows, the words on the sides, the details of the wheels, and more importantly, how all those things lined up with each other.

When I got home (about a five minute walk), I would erase and adjust my picture to incorporate the new things I noticed -- and I would also discover new "unknowns" -- things I hadn't noticed but needed to know to complete my picture. Those items would form the list of things I wanted to notice the next day.

This project went on for weeks, and in the process I honed my visual thinking skills.

Visual thinking is the practice of using pictures to enhance your ability to solve problems, think about complex issues and communicate effectively. Are you ready to work on your visual thinking skills? You don't have to be an artist. Pick up a pen or pencil and try the following exercise:

1. Choose a subject:
Find something that is sufficiently complex that you have a hard time remembering all of its details. It can be anything, but it should be in a different place than the place you typically sit down to draw or work. It could be something you see out the window on your drive to work in the morning. It could be something in the cafeteria where you have your lunch. It could even be your neighbor's dog.

2. Observe your subject carefully:
Whenever you see your subject, try to notice something you hadn't noticed before and hold it in your memory. Some of this will be details, but some of it will also be proportions: the relative sizes of the various elements, and how they align.

3. Record your observations:
In a time and place where your subject is not visible, record your observations. Keep a record of those "unknowns" -- questions you have that you intend to answer the next time you encounter your subject.

4. Iterate:
Continue to observe and draw in an iterative fshion. Over time you will become very familiar with your subject, so that you can draw it completely from memory. You will also find that your powers of visual observation will become more acute and refined, and you will notice more of what's around you than others do. This can be a helpful skill in life and business.

For more about visual thinking, visit visual thinking school or please consider joining our visual thinking group on Flickr and showing us your drawings!

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Conversations

One of my favorite things about this blog is the ongoing dialogue that happens in the comments that accompany each post. If you don't read the comments you are missing out on a huge part of what makes this blog worth reading.

The idea of a blog as a hub for rich conversation, where the blogger operates like a talk show host, to set the themes and moderate the tone, is one of the things that got me blogging in the first place.

Charlie Rose is one of my favorite interviewers, because of the themes he chooses and the tone he sets. He is an erudite yet humble man; he talks to interesting people; and he asks them thought-provoking questions.

I have always aspired not only to emulate him, but to be interesting enough myself that he might want to interview me someday.

For those of you who have commented on this blog's postings, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtful commentary -- it keeps the blog alive. For those of you who prefer simply to listen and learn, you are welcome and keep coming! And please consider joining the Communication Nation conversation.

And now for the theme of the day:

One thing that many people find difficult about communication is the challenge to remain positive; it can be too easy to slip into "complainer mode" and hard to stay focused on what's working or on making things better.

How do you keep yourself out of the negative zone? And when someone else is complaining, what kinds of things do you do to boost the conversation into a more positive arena?

As always, please share your thoughts.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Strange feeling while walking in the woods

I wanted to spend some time by myself, so I took a walk in the woods. The whole time I had this funny feeling, like I was being watched.

I took some photos while I was walking. Do you notice anything strange? Or do you think it was just my imagination?

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

I wonder what this warning label is trying to warn me about?

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Dave Gray interview

Chris Brogan lives in northern Massachusetts. He writes about self-improvement, from fitness to nutrition to leadership and relationship-building. He's also got a lot of diverse interests from technology to design and visual thinking.

Chris just interviewed me for his blog. Here are his questions:

- Tell me about founding XPlane. What came before, and how'd you make your move?

- What does a typical Xplane engagement look like?

- What's your work and skills background?

- You recently started up the Visual Thinking School. What was on your mind?

- What has most surprised you about the Visual Thinking School Project?

- How much of your networking, your connecting to new people, are you accomplishing through these online venues like Flickr, Squidoo, and the other places you're hanging your work?

- What's up for Dave Gray in 2006?

- If someone were interested in getting involved in Visual Thinking or Visual Communication, what are some tips and advice you'd give them?

- Anything else you'd like to add?

Read my answers.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

I wonder who designed this?

Sign, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

I wonder who designed this sign. It looks like the little stick man got screwed -- literally.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Communication practices for work, love, and liberation

"Imagine a personal discipline for learning communication and cooperation skills, using the routines and errands of everyday life as our classroom. It's all free because it's outside the money system entirely. But it can help us make a living, avoid trouble, improve personal relationships, and work together for a better world. In an age of arrogant and abusive institutions, we can learn skills to take back more control of our lives.

For example, many people have difficulty asking for help (asking for what they need), especially when they need it most. But they can learn by practicing first in easy cases, like asking for street directions -- while focusing on ease, style, or technique more than on the information they seek. They can practice hundreds of times if necessary for mastery. If they have issues about asking for help or deserving it (due to past experiences obscuring current realities), they can start working on them here. Later, as they advance to increasingly important requests (such as seeking assistance on the job), they build competence to ask effectively and strengthen relationships even in critical or intense situations.

This practice works like martial-art training, but for skills we use all the time in everyday life. While it can be competitive, it's usually about cooperation -- not winners and losers, but larger outcomes we build together. "

Read more -- and join the email list -- at Communication Practices for work, love, and liberation.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

Don't laugh

It's getting harder and harder to break through and get your message seen, heard, or read. This is one of the best ways I know to ensure that people are exposed to your message. I assume you'll need to reach women too, so you'll have to also apply the principle to the backs of stall doors. It may seem silly but it works!

The low-budget version: Get your message on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall. Odeo does it -- why not you?

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.