CityView Magazine

34 | January/February 2017 courses, workshops, visual note taking, graphic facilitation and infographics." rough the Whiteboard Academy, Schlegel hopes to help businesses and organizations learn how to put visual thinking to work for them. "ere are two kinds of people, visual spatial and logical sequential. In traditional educational programs, our schools teach Mike Schlegel and Diane Bleck, creators of Innovation Think Pad, have led more than 300 Innovation Sessions with companies large and small. Photo and images ontributed to a specific kind of person. e logical sequential individual has been favored over the visual spacial. As people go through school, we basically teach them logical sequential ways of thinking. But drawing is a thinking tool. Drawing can be seen as a verb and as a noun," Schlegel said. "is is about ideas and not art. I mean, I am a colorblind ley, and I draw in front of people for a living." Denise Bruce, Environmental Outreach Manager at Sustainable Sandhills, hired Schlegel in 2016 to help attendees at the UNC Clean Technology Summit and the Sandhills Clean Energy Summit Community Vision make sense of the scientific facts and figures within the presentations. "Working with Mike is like having a videographer with a pen, that's the best way I can describe it." At the Community Vision event, Bruce was in charge of taking pictures of Schlegel throughout the presentation as he drew. "I was listening to the people talk and watching him draw and he was making this entire world. His illustrations were beautiful, and even though it was very info- heavy, [the information] was still very digestible. He's extremely good at what he does." Schlegel, unlike many visual recorders, is unusually comfortable with public speaking. He isn't certain where his confidence comes from, but he feels it can be summed up with a story from his life. Schlegel is the father to three daughters. ey are the reason he earned the nickname "Muddy," as "Muddy Waters" was determined to be his Indian Princess name. On his 40th birthday, Schlegel said, he reached out to his three daughters for life advice. "ey say, 'You aren't good at everything,'" Schlegel said. "And I'm like, 'Wait a minute girls, that is just hurtful.' And my middle daughter said, 'Don't worry, you are awesome at some things.' en my oldest daughter says, 'Just be yourself and you'll be fine.' I guess I gave up on perfect, in favor of awesome. Screw perfect. at gave me a lot of the confidence I needed to share visual ideas in front of all of these people." CV To learn more about Schlegel and visual thinking as a business tool visit the Whiteboard Academy at whiteboardacademy.com.

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