At The Grove we are officially launching Visual Leaders today. This means that Amazon is shipping; it’s in the stores at Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. And one person wrote from Canada that he saw it in Toronto in its “World’s Biggest Bookstore.” Richard Narramore, my Wiley editor, writes that he’s already let a contract for a Chinese translation. The process is a bit like having a baby. In between the nine months gestation and a life time of living with the result is this one moment in time. Print is static. Life is dynamic. One has to imagine all this, whether reading words or looking at pictures.

This image from a Nike meeting captures a bit of this feeling. Can you see the book as a satellite orbiting a fluid environment of issues and challenges?

 EmergingIssuesMuralFragment

 

Read more…

Fast Company excerpted my new book Visual Leaders in their recent on-line edition. The article features my observations about how to deal with social media by thinking about messages as being buoys in a foggy sea of possibilities. I shared a set of principles that are elaborated on in the article. Click here to read.

Read more…

A third book in my Wiley & Sons trilogy on visualization is nearing completion of its first draft. Wiley agreed to print the book in full color, and I am having a terrific time loading it with examples of how leaders of all kinds can take advantage of what I’m calling the visualization revolution.

 

VisualLeadersCover8-3D - Visual Leaders is Happening

This cover image illustrates the big picture focus of the book. It’s written to help leaders and managers increase their visual IQ, learn to work with visual practitioners, and guide their organizations in become more literate visually, in both face-to-face and virtual environments. I am making sure there are lots of practice exercises and suggestions for new leaders.

As with Visual Meetings and Visual Teams, I have been able to not only write the book and do the drawings, but design it myself in InDesign. I’ve actually moved to doing the writing in InDesign, so that from the very first drafts I can see what I’m getting on each page. It’s a thrilling process to be able finally to create in both text and graphics. If you want to read the TOC, click on the images and they will expand.

Read more…

LaingWSibbet - New Years Day with My DadMy father, the Reverend Laing Witherspoon Sibbet, passed away this New Year’s Day at Sutter Solano Medical Center, in Vallejo, California. His death, as did his life, touched me deeply, and I’d like to share some of this story. He was 93, and up until his last sermon on Christmas Day in 2008, a full time Congregationalist pastor. I’ll begin at the end, with what I wrote to the family the evening of his passing.

“Dad peacefully left his body tonight at 8:05 when he stopped breathing at the conclusion of a ceremonial last supper we held for him in the hospital. The day was a graceful ballet of our family—gathering and forming a loving container for his passing.

Read more…