Innovation and Creativity Will Change your Meeting Dynamics Forever!

Hello, my name is Nicola, I am a professional meeting and graphic facilitator and the founder of Paper Plane, a company designed to encourage visual thinking, generate game changing ideas and accommodate successful strategic planning.

Meetings should be simple, creative and highly effective, but in reality, very often, they are the opposite – routine, ineffective and unproductive.

That’s where the Paper Plane concept comes in. It combines my expertise in group dynamics with the use of creative graphic tools to either actively facilitate and drive your meeting, or if you have your own facilitator graphically record your meeting. 

Both concepts work very well with small and large teams and create powerful progress that encourages participation and involvement, unlocks individuals’ potential, consolidates commitment, and brings about innovative results.  Graphic recording and graphic facilitation bring ideas to life, simplify complex concepts, illustrate and communicate information and vividly help teams meet their goals.

Paper Plane’s graphic recording and graphic facilitation programs accommodate meetings, workshops, seminars and sessions and specialises in the facilitation of

• Strategic Vision
• Strategic Planning
• Strategic Alliances
• Project Planning
• Deployment Projects
  

My background

With eighteen years in sales and marketing working for IBM and Microsoft, I understand what you are looking for in a meeting or strategic session, and I am passionate to help you and your team achieve your goals.

I am certified IAF Professional Facilitator, and have trained with The Grove in San Francisco, Meeting Magic in the UK, Loosetooth in Chicago and Open Space Works in Australia. I also hold a BA (Hons) degree in Social Science and Business Studies.

..and to answer the question I am most frequently asked …

No, I am not a consultant, and I am not giving advice or telling you what you should do.

As Graphic Facilitator, I discuss goals, expectations and required outcomes with you, and once I have made sure I fully understand your requirements, I facilitate your meeting by encouraging team participation, extracting ideas and concepts and helping your team achieve great results.

Paper Plane will take your communication to new heights

Graphic facilitation techniques have been proven to increase engagement, align and coordinate diverse views and bring effectiveness, vitality and creativity into decision-making processes. Since 2003, organisations across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Singapore have worked with Paper Plane.

Let me assist you in meeting your goals and objectives. I’d be delighted to show you what Graphic Facilitation can do for you!

Nicola

Paper Plane clients include:

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Paper Plane was borne out of the frustration of our corporate clients need to achieve tangible outcomes from meetings that command the valuable time of an organisation’s most senior executives.  Through tight briefing, focused and controlled facilitation (and some necessary injections of in-flight levity), Paper Plane can achieve a quantifiable result to the benefit of all participants and stakeholders.

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Strategic visioning, planning, and brainstorming workshops are crucial to the success of organizations and businesses, but they also tend to be time consuming, and the value and practical deliverable of such sessions is a repeated concern of managers and meeting conveners.

Facilitation with Paper Plane was born out of the need of corporate clients to achieve tangible, actionable outcomes in a timely manner.

What exactly does ‘Facilitation’ mean? At Paper Plane, we define it as: ”Using a person who is not involved in the content of a discussion to help a group to meet its aims, by providing effective processes and structures.”

In a meeting or group session, the distinction between content and process is often unclear, and this can be the cause of unproductive outcomes. It can be difficult to manage effective process and structures, as you are probably too involved in the content and desired outcome. A facilitator, in contrast, controls the process, so you can concentrate on content and goals.

Graphic Facilitation takes the process a step further

A graphic facilitator manages the group process and draws out and involves attendees in creating the shared output by using graphics. Graphic charts are the key tools utilized to set up the meeting, to frame the group sessions, and to capture output – by the facilitator and the participants.

What are the benefits of using a Graphic Facilitator?

Humans are hard-wired to be visual. So when you look at your contributions appearing onto a large graphic you can literally SEE that you have been heard. Being asked to record your own contributions provides a real sense of commitment and ownership. As all the information is visible at one glance, it is so much easier to understand how different aspects inter-relate. You can literally SEE the concept that you are discussing. As the meeting is recorded right in front of you and everyone else, the agreements that are made are much more likely to stick! When you can SEE what you are agreeing to, it gives you an opportunity to speak up if there are still issues to resolve.

Graphic Facilitation with Paper Plane means

• Working together with you to thoroughly prepare for your session
• Agreeing on a planned agenda
• Facilitating your meeting and keeping you to schedule
• Helping your team identify core priorities, remove roadblocks and solve issues
• Producing actionable outcome
• Delivering excellent follow-up documentation

“We would never have advanced our collective thinking, nor made the commitments to action we did as a team without Paper Plane’s expert facilitation. You waste so much time (equal to money!) by not using professional facilitation of this kind.”  Christine Gardner

“Nicola is an accomplished & competent graphic facilitator. She was able to get workshop attendees to work together to produce meaningful workshop outputs from her sessions. Her graphic charts were very useful which helped the group to focus on the session’s objectives. Attendees were able to work with ease even on heavy topics such as team planning meetings.  Nicola was appreciative of the sensitivities & culture of the group she was working with. Her appropriate good sense of humour is contagious and her relaxed nature helped attendees feel comfortable which put her in good light”. Masitah Babjan

 More testimonials…

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“A Picture is worth a thousand words”

If you don’t require an independent facilitator, but understand the power of visual thinking, you can also arrange for Graphic Recording.

This means that a map of your conversations and discussions will be recorded, in real time and in front of everyone, so that you have a visual summary of what was said and how progress developed.

Graphic Recording is a powerful visual tool that gets the “right brain” working

The brain structure and function of the mind is often described by suggesting that two different sides of the brain control two different “ways” of thinking: The right side of the brain is said to control creative thinking while the left side controls analytical thinking, and persons are considered to be left or right brain dominant.

What we all share is our preference for visual images in contrast to text or number images.

That’s why graphically recording a meeting or group session has significant benefits:

• It fosters creativity and innovation
• It extracts ideas and concepts
• It makes complex issues easier to understand and visualise
• It brings vitality, effectiveness and fun into your session
• It encourages involvement and participation
• It increases productivity
• It creates better outcomes
• It gets people to identify with the process and commitments to be kept

How does it work?

An assigned facilitator will moderate your meeting and Paper Plane supplies Graphic Recording. All information that is shared in the meeting is captured in real time and on large displays on the wall in legible words and simple pictures that tell a powerful story!

Any questions? Give us a call or drop us an e-mail. We’d be delighted to provide you with more information on the advantages of Graphic Recording.

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