How Visual Thinking Strategies Unlocks Innovation in a Complex World
WRITTEN BY DABNEY HAILEY AND HEATHER CURRIER HUNT
What’s going on in this picture? Take a few minutes to jot down whatever you notice. Ask yourself, what do I see that makes me say that? What more can I find? Try to stick with it as long as you can. Eventually, you may you feel you’ve exhausted all there is to find.
What if you were looking with a group and could access all the intelligence of a diverse field of observations, experiences, and ways of making sense of this painting, as you share your own?
The wicked problems that teams, leaders, and organizations face today are inordinately complex, like great paintings. They require the expertise, lived experiences, and wisdom of many to solve. No one person knows as much as a group of people who can listen to one another. What’s more, there is usually more than one right answer or path forward. The issue is finding a way to invite the thinking of everyone into a shared space, to test assumptions and prevent premature conclusions.
We would like to share an arts-based approach to discussion that helped us create these kinds of spaces in the business world. Many years ago, looking at a work of art together cemented our working relationship and spurred a new strand of learning at IDEO, a global design and innovation company.
VISUAL THINKING STRATEGIES
In 2015, a small group gathered in a bright conference room in IDEO’s New York studio to discuss a painting. People began tentatively at first. Some felt they only had a little to say, that much of the painting was self-evident, but a facilitator kept the group exploring, thinking, and listening to one another. As individuals shared ideas about the artwork, the facilitator paraphrased each comment and probed by asking, “What do you see that makes you say that?” when an observation lacked evidence. Person by person, the discussion grew, and after each contribution, the facilitator spurred them further with one more prompt, “What more can we find?” She framed each person’s lenses, linked ideas across the conversation, attended to the ongoing thinking rather than directing it, and stayed with the group as they developed a much deeper understanding of the painting, their own sensemaking, and each other.
Dabney, a former museum curator, guided the group that day using a methodology called Visual Thinking Strategies,¹ or VTS, which she was bringing to the business world. Heather, a participant in the discussion and Executive Director and Global Head of Learning & Development, had invited Dabney because she was keen to explore how VTS might have impact at IDEO. We have been working together since that sunny day and hope to share outcomes and catalyze new ideas with this essay.
VTS offers a research-based, learnable structure for leading and participating in discussions about ambiguous materials. At its core, this methodology was designed to build critical thinking skills and metacognition, or thinking about our own thinking, at the same time that it creates a psychologically safe space of inquiry. The practice has had multivalent, positive effects at IDEO.
Over time, we have found that engaging in VTS helps leaders and teams:
MAKE BETTER DECISIONS
In business, decisions must be made and actions taken. And yet, by allowing for more perspectives to be shared and acknowledged without affinity, you ensure your future judgments are more sound, backed and driven by evidence. You don’t have to suspend judgment and stay open in perpetuity, but being able to do it at all is far too rare. As a colleague put it, “Suspending judgment helps people feel brave. It’s okay to say whatever they’re thinking. This can be a powerful part of innovation and seeding a full range of ideas.” We want and need information rooted in the contributions of multiple perspectives using a range of lenses and reached through evidence-based reasoning. This doesn’t just happen; we have to structure it with intention, and VTS requires us to inhabit this stance.
SHARE OWNERSHIP
Leaders are usually taught, and rewarded for, convincing, directing, or influencing rather than stewarding a process of exploration, of listening to understand. There is an enormous opportunity space in business if we can stop driving towards consensus quickly, and instead invite multiple, often conflicting opinions into the conversation. By having permission to think and contribute, teams that practice VTS feel an increased sense of ownership. They can see how their contributions impacted the direction of the work and by extension have deeper empathy for others. Or as one leader reflected on how learning VTS changed her framework, “I used to think that being persuasive is being a champion of the idea/project. Now I think creating the conditions for someone else to arrive on their own is what matters….I’ll structure conversations to empower others, especially clients, who need to feel ownership of the ideas.”
COLLABORATE INCLUSIVELY
Another IDEO colleague described the transformative impact of learning VTS on her awareness that she can’t find all the answers independently and needs to access other viewpoints. “I used to think I was really observant, like a Sherlock Holmes. Now I think there are a lot of perspectives I won’t notice on my own. [Using VTS, I can] open up more and get a full picture faster by inviting all those perspectives in.” VTS challenges the notion that there’s one right answer. During a discussion, we intentionally keep the inquiry open and stay in that open state together, as a team. Our materials at work are so familiar to us: the strategy documents, the spreadsheets, the annual report. So much so we might assume that either everyone understands them in the same way, or that there is nothing more to discuss about them. Is it any wonder that people often feel left behind? Or worse, feel unable to ask a question that may expose an entirely new interpretation? VTS brings everyone along. We tap into so many critical thinking skills and are invited to attend to our thinking, including mitigating our biases. We hold multiple perspectives as possible simultaneously. We are in an active state of learning as we collaborate.
INNOVATE MORE EFFICIENTLY
A paradox of holding ourselves in ambiguity through a process like VTS is that we get more done in less time: we hear from more people, we understand the stimulus/problem more deeply, and we let go of ideas that don’t stick while anchoring those that do in concrete evidence. At IDEO, we have begun to reframe a bias toward action to include the active state of thinking deeply together. In the words of another colleague, “It’s amazing to be in a space where we don’t have to make snap judgments and move quickly through materials, to allow for focus and depth, to see complexity.” When we test our assumptions within research, for example, probing for insights and reflecting on those insights with more rigor, assumptions and biases are mitigated earlier in the design process.
We have taught and applied VTS at IDEO in North America, Europe and Asia, with colleagues in a range of roles up and down the hierarchy and across many disciplines. Its learnings are applicable to giving and receiving feedback, deepening rigor within research and ideation, critique, client relationships, and team collaboration. We look at art, texts, prototypes, spreadsheets, websites, research materials, raw data — whatever is relevant to a team and project.
WHAT MORE CAN WE FIND?
To understand all this a little better, let’s return to the painting you examined at the outset. Look at the notes you jotted down. During a VTS discussion, those ideas would be seeds of a group conversation in which you would be invited to make sense of both the painting and the thinking of everyone else in the room. It’s not possible to see and find everything on your own (although asking yourself the questions we began with can help you look longer!).
We can’t invite you into an active VTS discussion in this written piece, but we can visually illustrate how another group’s thinking grew as they explored the same artwork. The next two figures show two moments in a recorded VTS discussion about this painting with seven professionals; each person’s comments are drawn onto the painting with a different color. If someone had an overarching interpretation, that is represented by a line around the painting’s perimeter.
Figure 1: This sketch illustrates the discussion at the seven-minute mark. Five people have added to the conversation so far. They’ve noticed many key narrative elements and even begun to build consensus about one valid interpretation. A great start to be sure. At this point, some of them felt satisfied, a little restless, finished. In many meetings, a team would stop here and move on to another topic. But the expert facilitator urged the group to keep at it; seven minutes is not sufficient for something as complex and layered with meaning as this painting, even if some members of the group were a little uncomfortable. She continued listening deeply and patiently asking, “What more can we find?”
Figure 2: Spurred to persist, the group discovered much more. After another 18 minutes, everyone had spoken at least twice; many had revised their ideas based on more evidence and the thinking of their peers. The colored lines around the perimeter show different patterns because the participants began generating multiple, interwoven interpretations, an authentic engagement with this work of art. They surfaced many more details and connections. Ideas not rooted in evidence withered away. They understood one other and were delighted and deeply present to the process of making meaning together. They moved past that desire to be right and done, and into a new, much richer experience of sensemaking together. All this happened in under half an hour.
Business challenges and opportunities are as layered with meanings, ambiguity, and complexity as this painting, Winslow Homer’s tour de force, Fog Warning. We all have colleagues with fascinating ways of thinking built on their professional expertise and lived experiences. Let’s not leave them (or ourselves) steering into the fog alone.
Bringing multiple perspectives together is at the very heart of innovation, and it requires space, time, and intention. Our problems and our fellow workers deserve our attention and openness. VTS is one way to model and teach us how to get there. It’s not a panacea, but learning this careful armature for discussion has opened colleagues at IDEO to new ways of thinking and being that are helping us build a road to inclusion, better answers, and a lot more wonder and delight in each other and the journey ahead.
A favorite insight that has surfaced for many people learning to facilitate VTS discussions at IDEO is this, “I felt intensely responsible to other people.” Learning this process has shifted how people show up for one another — with more patience, curiosity, and respect for what they can and will bring to the table. Partly because we discover we too will be treated this way: heard, understood, and supported as we grow.
This stance, and the exploration and learning it seeds, is critical in an age of absolutes, where opinions often act like facts, and facts are fluid. So many of us are craving new ways to work, new approaches to solving problems that are inclusive, collaborative, and creative. VTS is proving uniquely suited to this time, when more than ever before we must all ask, “What more can we find?”
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Dabney and Heather co-wrote and first posted this article on Medium in 2022, just before they presented together at SXSW EDU with the workshop Unlocking Creativity Through Inclusion.
Dabney Hailey is Founder and Principal of Hailey Group where she has brought her VTS expertise and many years as a museum curator to upskill organizations, from Fortune 500s to non-profits. Dabney also works in higher education and healthcare, offering leadership trainings as Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and serving as co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Medical School course, Training our Eyes, Minds, and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Healthcare Professionals.
Heather Currier Hunt is currently Chief Learning Officer at the global architecture firm, Perkins & Will. Before that, when we co-wrote this article, she was Executive Director and Global Head of Learning and Development at IDEO where, as a learning designer, she led extraordinary teams in creating and delivering global leadership programming. She was co-Faculty of the IDEO U course, Cultivating Creative Collaboration and a perpetual advocate for the OOO message.
The painting reproduced above is Winslow Homer’s The Fog Warning, 1885, oil on canvas, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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¹Visual Thinking Strategies was developed by museum educator Philip Yenawine and cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen through an iterative, research-based process at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It spread from museums, where it is applied internationally, to education, healthcare, and through Hailey Group, the business world. VTS is currently taught at more than thirty medical schools in the U.S. and beyond, including Harvard Medical School, where Hailey co-teaches the course, Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis. Yenawine is a founding consultant to Hailey Group.
For the story of how VTS began, see here.
For a summary of the research and theory behind VTSand peer-reviewed findings on its impact in schools and healthcare, see Dabney Hailey, Alexa Miller & Philip Yenawine, “Understanding Visual Literacy: The Visual Thinking Strategies Approach” in D. M. Baylen & A. D’Alba (eds.), Essentials of teaching and integrating visual and media literacy — Visualizing learning. New York: Springer, 2015, pp. 49–73.
For a detailed analysis of its impact on children and teachers, see Philip Yenawine, Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Thinking Across School Disciplines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2013.
For more information on its adaptation for the business world, look around haileygroup.com.