From Clueless to Clarity (With Marcus de Vale) - Lean Agile London 24 TalkInTen

Each year the Product Agility podcast goes on tour. We get to go to some of the best conferences and interview some of the most influential speakers out there. 
And this year is no different. We kick off our talks in 10 initiative for 2024 by visiting Lean Agile London, 
lean Agile London is a fantastic community event, which has a lot of soul and a lot of energy to it. They've also attracted some of the best speakers I've seen on a lineup for a long time. Over the next few days, we are gonna be bringing you as many of these speakers talks in 10 as we possibly can do. 
Each of these episodes will be recorded on the ground in the moment. So you may hear some background noise I hope, but that adds to the ambiance and makes it feel like you are there with us. This episode of the Product Agility Podcast is sponsored by AHA Slides, your solution for more engaging and productive team meetings. Transform your team's learning experience with our HA Slides, AI powered tools designed to quickly generate quizzes and interactive content, boost engagement and efficiency in one go when. What more can you ask for? Visit aha slides.com and use the exclusive discount code prod agility 2024 to get 50% off of all yearly plans. Now, shall we get onto our talk in 10? 
We're at Lean Agile London at 2024 and this is, I think 
the pronouncement episode that I'll be recording. Maybe we'll release these out of order and that statement will mean absolutely nothing. But I feel it's significant 'cause we've recorded I think 13 or 14 episodes we've got, um, I must say 
and don't tell any other speakers this, we saved the best all last, 
see why I did that. Um, and for this one actually, we're inside and we're not in a hallway somewhere, so hopefully the audio's a little bit better for you all and you can all hear nice and clearly. 'cause I am here with Marcus Devale. Yes, that's right. Marcus Devale. Um, 
I did, maybe I should have cleared that with you beforehand, so I didn't embarrass myself by pronouncing it incorrectly. But Marcus Deve who ran a workshop yesterday, which was entitled Clueless to Clarity, which he did tell me many times, and that's at a moment like I've, I haven't forgotten, but maybe I have clueless to clarity. Um, could you 
for our listeners introduce yourselves and give them an overview of what your workshop was about? Sure. So I'm Marcus. I'm visual facilitator and basically my workshop clue to Clarity was all about using visual thinking as a tool to gain clarity around what's going on. So basically in the workshop yesterday we kind of did an intro to visual thinking, how can you visualize your ideas, take something that's abstract and make it concrete? And then we looked at how we can basically visualize things, a process, a flow, in this case looked at meetings, how we can visualize meetings and see where the kind of problems are, where the issues are and we can make decisions from there. So it's all about basically taking things are kind of abstract and difficult to understand and simplifying them and visualizing it should get this big picture of you. 
You make it sound very straightforward. 
I, I guess it isn't, is it that straightforward? So you would be really surprised how straightforward this actually is. So there's this really, there's this idea when it comes to visualizing that one is about kinda making things look good, which is really not. Um, and that two, you have to be some sort of talented person to do it. When it comes to drawing, you don't need to be talented. It's just like language. There's an alphabet. If you learn it, you can do it. Most people just don't have that basic alphabet. Doesn't mean you can actually learn very, very quickly. And the other point on doesn't need to look good. No, it's about basically the process of taking something and visualizing it and having that reference point. How nice that reference point look doesn't, doesn't actually matter. It's about taking that abstracting that's oftentimes in their heads a 
bit complicated or in someone else's head and being able to show that. And when you do that with a group of people and they're all visualizing the way they see something, you suddenly get this massive shared picture of what's going on versus kind of just having bits and pieces of people's different thoughts and kind of unconnected and difficult piece together that you get to see it all out in front of you and really see what's going on. 
So what are the 
inspirations or any kind of un conceptual underpinnings that you 
have researched or learned about which has helped you kind of arrive at this workshop? 
So for me it actually always comes from 
figuring things out myself first. So I always, whenever I'm doing something I just think about what works for me and how do I kind of go around getting clarity around things and then I try it with people. That's kind of my way. And then obviously reading as many books and things as looking up to the people, obviously all that as well. But I always then take all that and go, does this work for me? And basically what I found was when I started to, when I was in a situation, just didn't really know what was going on, I was like, there's something going here, but I don't really have a clear view of where to go or what to do. Just started basically drawing it out to look at what's going on in this situation. And then as I was doing that, I started to get more and more of an idea of what was happening. And oftentimes what I found was that I wouldn't even need to then do any problem solving on top of that. I would just be like, oh, I can see the issue there. And there's a really easy fix for that because I had just taken that time to really 
formalize my thoughts into a picture that I can then see. So what if it comes from me exploring things and all the other fantastic visual of facilitators out there. I've read all their books. I always feel bad that I'm accidentally stealing something without realizing it. So credit goes to all visual facilitators out there, many facilitators. So probably still with your stuff I'd used it without realizing, but you're all all fantastic. 
I did wonder if it was gonna be a fight between you and two young. Like there's gonna be some kind of like sparring session between you both. Oh yeah. Because I know he's often, the con historically at conference is doing visual facilitation. I didn't know if there was any kind of beef between you, but you seem to be friends. Oh no. Yeah, we're doing a fight next year actually. You can get tickets. No, um, he's, he's fantastic. He's a really great guy. And actually if anything I would love to collaborate with with Stewart, um, he's really great at what he does and I think we could do something very cool together. Could have like a sketch off or something. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, sketch off. Not quite a fight, but you know, on its way. 
Could we do that as a live stream? Would that work? I think that would work. Yeah. I think it could make that happen. That'd be fun. 
That wouldn't that be a world first of all's first live stream sketch off. I think it would be, yeah, we could do the first one. Make a thing of it. Alright, well well let's get a date. 
Let's get date. I, I'm assuming Stuart will be up for this. He's Tim up for most things. Oh yeah, Stuart definitely be up for that I think. Okay, sure. We'll get on di then. And now you mentioned earlier about alphabet. Yes. 
What is the alphabet? Is it 
that logically makes sense to me? The gap for me is what is the alphabet of drawing in your opinion? 
Okay, so when it comes to drawing, basically the key thing you're trying to do is be able to take something that you can see or imagine and give it a form of some kind. So you're just trying to take that. And the basic language that we use is, is basic shapes. 
So I always find it quite funny whenever I'm doing a workshop or training people how to do visual facilitation, I'm like, we're gonna start with something that's gonna seem really boring and really like there's no purpose to it, but it's actually kind of the core of everything and it is just basic shapes. So squares, circles, triangles, if you look at them, you can actually basically build everything out to these basic shapes. Even things that are very, very complicated. You can build out these basic shapes. Now some things you can draw really simply. So for everyone listening, if you picture a bomb, you know, it's pretty much a circle, a square and a squiggly line is what makes those up. So you can see these basic shapes and that makes 'em much easier to draw. Now there is more complicated things out there, um, and what you do there is you kind of look for the basic shapes in that object. So you think if I had to start with basic shapes, how would I sort of bend and change them to get to this image? And that's the way you do it. And with a bit of practice very quickly you get really quite fluent at doing that. And you do not need to be very good from a a skills drawing perspective on how nice does things look to do visual facilitation effectively. It is about making things visual, not pretty. So that process of visualizing is the key thing. And one thing I actually did, uh, in the workshop yesterday was before I even showed them anything, I just got them to, on a post-it, note each draw out just how the, how they got here this morning and just in five minutes and then share it with their, their partner next to them and everybody could do it. So even before they had actually learned anything about the drawing side, they could actually do it and they can visualize much better than they think. Oftentimes people lack the confidence or once maybe they've got the confidence between a few kind of frameworks to follow, which is where I come in on the training side. But you people can do this. It's mostly just having the confidence to pick up the pen when you've got an idea, when you've got a challenge and getting it down on paper. Mm-Hmm. 
Yeah, I, I 
suppose I, 
I don't struggle with it as a concept. I struggle with me putting that into practice. Mm-Hmm. Do you find that there are people that are in the workshop today or in previous workshops that 
just can't get over whatever it is I need to get over to be able to just, just to give it a go and embrace it? 
Uh, so it's an interesting one. So when I'm doing trainings, for example, do public trainings also most of the trainings do is actually private. So getting called in house for a company and that will be, someone's arranged it and there's, you know, a team and there'll be several people on that team who are not too hot on the idea of coming to learn some visual thinking. And oftentimes I'll actually get several emails and sort of the week before being like, I'm really terrified to do this. I can't even draw a stick figure. How is this gonna be possible? And everyone that I've trained has been able to do it pretty quickly. So everyone does sort of leave the ability to do it and it is just about giving it a shot. It's one of those things where you can spend, you know, years saying I can't do this. Or you could spend 20 minutes just sitting down and giving it a shot and you'll find that very quickly is something that you're capable of doing. One thing I would say is some people who do have maybe the, the skills to do it or they know they can visualize, there can be that also that barrier of now actually going and implementing it in your day to day, some people get a bit nervous about maybe doing it in front of people. They get caught in the, this looks good, doesn't look good enough versus it's doing its job. So I always try to encourage people to remember that this is a tool, it's a, it's a skill that you're using to help you with your work. It's not, you know, you're drawing this to show someone something nice, doesn't matter if it looks good or not, use it as part of your process, fold it into the way you work and it really just does kind of layer on top of what we already do. So it's things you add on top, it's not necessarily its own separate thing that you do at the size. So I always try to get people to pick anywhere in your work next meeting, whatever it is next you've got an idea, doodle it out, show them, find someplace that you can slot it into your day-to-day rather than viewing it as a separate thing that, you know, you do that when you have the time folded into what you're doing. So 
in integration rather than like replacement of something. Yeah, absolutely that. So you wanna just, yeah, that's perfectly integrated into what you're doing. Don't use it to replace things. This is a, it is almost to me what um, if you think of just meetings where all conversation no post-it notes no anything versus you know, say a workshop where you've got post-it notes and gripping and clustering. It's to me almost just another layer on top of that. You're adding the visual element on top of that. It brings more to it in the same way that adding the post-it notes and gripping brings more than just a, a conversation. So. 
Awesome. Well sadly we're at time. 
If people wanna find out more about you LinkedIn I assume is a good place. Yep. So in link on LinkedIn post a lot stuff on there. Also the website work visible studios.com. Work visible studios.com. Yep. Fantastic. But we'll definitely get your LinkedIn, uh, link in the show notes. Uh, thank you so much for coming us, it's been a pleasure to meet you. I've seen you kinda knocking around the conference the last couple of days, so it's nice to actually hear more about what you're up to. Um, everyone, thank you so much for listening. I do remember to 
share this episode or any of the other episodes that we've been recording from Lee Agile London with someone that you think might like it. Your support and the feedback we get from the community, uh, make all of this worthwhile. So please do share this episode and any others that you feel are useful to your community. Uh, thank you very much for listening, Marcus, thank you for coming on and we'll be back again later.