I have long been a fan of whiteboards. I use them to help clients understand aspects of their business, plan strategy, brainstorm, and keep notes of meetings. The beauty of the whiteboard is its impermanence. There is a freedom in being able to pick up the eraser or swipe away that last thought with a shirt sleeve. And whiteboards are big. They allow free ranging discussion that jumps around. Being able to go back to something that was discussed an hour ago is very useful.
But what happens after the meeting? You can't file away those whiteboards in a back room and pull them out again to check up on your progress. Sure, you can take pictures or transcribe the salient points, but once they leave that magical, stark white, vertical medium they lose something. Enter the flip chart.
Here is what I like about flip charts.
- They provide a natural segway from whiteboard ideas to necessary actions or decisions. When you get the group (or yourself) to commit action steps or decisions to a flip chart you can go back to that document again and again until the action is taken or the decision is proven good or bad. Use the whiteboard at the beginning of the meeting to brainstorm and discover. Use the flip chart at the end to summarize, memorialize and commit.
- They are easy to store. You can keep a hundred pages of flip charts on the easel and you can file a dozen flip chart pads in the store room without too much worry.
- They are big and they are vertical. It is important to get things off the horizontal desk surface. People think and present better when standing up. Flip charts, like whiteboards, encourage collaboration and group engagement.
- They are easy to keep visible. If you use a flip chart don't leave it on the easel in the conference room. Drag that sucker into your office and set it up so that everyone can see it, including you. If you committed the group to a course of action in the staff meeting last week, those action items need to be staring everyone in the face, every day. If you are concerned about privacy leave the very first page blank and pull it over the chart before your outside appointments come into the office.
- They start conversations. When blogging became popular it gave people a whole new reason to visit web sites. Visitors knew there would be fresh content, not the same static, boring web page. Flip charts can become the fresh content for your office. Don't be afraid of the conversations they generate. If you see someone reading your flip chart (and they will, they can't help themselves) ask what they think. Start the conversation and see where it goes. This results in two very important secret ingredients to success. First, it opens you up to new ideas and possibilities you might not discover on your own. Second, it creates a very real sense of accountability and recommits you to the actions and decisions you wrote down in the first place.
If you don't have a flip chart handy I would encourage you to go out this week and get one. Buy some markers, stick it in the corner of your office and spend an hour or two this week tackling a problem or thinking about a big idea that has been nagging at you for a while. See where it takes you. I think you will find this simple, affordable conference room fixture quite valuable.
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 11:00PM 
Reader Comments (2)
But nothing compares to using the windows at BFC building on the 10th floor to capture ideas! That was classic. Thanks for the idea - getting an easel this week for the conf rm.
I miss the windows too. There was a lot more real estate to write on up there.