Lena Pehrs sketches success as a change management consultant - S14/E06
Description
In this episode, Lena Pehrs shares how she explores and co-creates change management solutions with her clients with visuals.
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Running Order
- Intro
- Welcome
- Who is Lena
- Origin Story
- Lena’s current work
- Sponsor: Concepts
- Tips
- Tools
- Where to find Lena
- Outro
Links
Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.
Tools
Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.
- Neuland pens and paper
- Neuland fine tip markers
- Post-it notes
- Pilot fountain pen - fine tip
- Moleskine Notebook
- iPad Pro
- Apple Pencil
- Microsoft Surface Pro
- Sketchbook app
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Adobe Fresco
- Procreate
Tips
- Explore metaphors by taking creative or poetry classes.
- Get good structure in your drawing.
- Try and change format.
- Have some fun.
- Play with children. Draw with them.
Credits
- Producer: Alec Pulianas
- Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
- Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
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Episode Transcript
Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike and I'm here with Lena Pehrs. Lena, great to have you on the show.
Lena Pehrs: Thank you, Mike. Very excited to be here.
MR: I'm excited to have you because I've been following and chatting with you on LinkedIn for, I don't know, about two years or something like that, a year and a half, something like that.
LP: Yeah.
MR: And we have been having a good discussion, and I just thought you're just a great person to have on the show. So here we are.
LP: Thank you.
MR: I'd love to hear more about what you do and how you think about visualization in your context and the people that you work with. So, let's begin first by you telling us who you are and what you do.
LP: Well, I'm a management consultant. And I live in Stockholm, Sweden. Well, I do what normal management consultants do, but I do it with a lot of visual thinking and visualization.
MR: Great. So is that your secret superpower for your clients, would you say?
LP: Yeah, I think so. And I think that the analysis is really the image, so it works together that when you start thinking with visual thinking, you start to analyzing things in a different way. you start to see the world in a slightly different way. And I think it's really a means of getting better understanding and cooperation towards the goals you want to achieve. So it's really fundamental for change. Yeah, that is the secret sauce.
MR: I assume that you probably work on some paper or whiteboards or something like that. Is that the typical tool that you use with your clients? Or are you using iPad? What is the tool that you would use to help them and guide them?
LP: That would be a mix. I really prefer what happens in the room when you co-create together. And then I think that big white papers on the walls and pens, and like this tactile thing as well, really helps because for me it's important that the image, this visualization, it's not mine, it's the client's. So I really need their buy-in. It should be their pictures, their thoughts, their visual thinking really. So when you do it on paper, that really helps.
I always know that when two clients are standing in front of the wall and discuss, "Okay, this is the problem and this is how we're going to solve it." I know that, you know, it's their picture, but of course during the pandemic this wasn't available. So working with digital tools are a good way to—it's very practical. You don't really get the same creative buy-in, I think. But of course, you need to combine these. So for all these Zoom meetings, digital tools are good and they do the job. But if I can choose, I go for pen.
MR: Yeah. In person, maybe it adds a little something. I would think the other benefit, and correct me if I'm wrong, is by focusing on the paper and drawing your image, that the focus becomes on the paper, and maybe not even on yourself, you can become a little bit separated from the thing that you're doing. Rather than being about me, it's about the problem we're solving.
And that changes the relationship, I think, to the problem solving with clients with you. Or it opens it up for you to speak into that when they now detach themselves from the problem. The problem is there and we together try to solve it.
LP: Yeah.
MR: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.
LP: And I think that in all these kind of discussions and workshops, it's always a challenge that ideas kind of fly up in the air. And when you manage to get them down on paper, then people can more build on each other's ideas. Which makes problem-solving so much better. So that is also like the process.
MR: Interesting. So basically, if I were to encapsulate what you're doing, you're bringing clients in maybe one or multiple, and then you're basically facilitating and guiding them to the wall to visualize their problems and then guiding them towards potential solutions to their management issues, whatever it is.
LP: Yeah.
MR: I think you mentioned when we chatted that you're heavily into change management. Am I right about that?
LP: Yeah.
MR: Which is difficult at best, right? Moving through change is really hard.
LP: Yes.
MR: So that's really fascinating. Maybe we can get into that a little bit more when we talk about projects you're working on. So I'm really curious now, how did you come to the place where you are now? When you were a little girl, did you love drawing? Were you able to keep drawing through school where maybe others stopped drawing? Like what is your story, your origin story for that?
LP: Yeah. I loved drawing when I grew up. So I would spend a lot of time drawing and painting and all kind of creative stuff. Just, you know, spending a lot of time in my teens just sitting at home and drawing, drawing, drawing. I really enjoyed it. And then I chose to go to university to have a master of science in industrial engineering. And even though I love that, I love maths, I actually love like solid mechanics and this kind of subjects.
But it was a world with a lot of right and wrong and linear thinking. So after five years at university, I couldn't draw anymore. That had killed my creativity in drawing 'cause then I try to draw something that was perfect and correct, and that's not just possible. So I stopped drawing and I did other kind of creative things like photography or baking or gardening and all those kind of things. But I didn't draw for almost 20 years.
MR: Wow. Wow.
LP: Yeah. And then I had a colleague that said like, "Well, Lena, why don't you join me for this? There's something called graphic facilitation, and I think since you like to draw, maybe should join me." And that's like 2014, I think. And I went to that course and I was like, "Yeah, wow, this is something. This is interesting."
But I thought I was a really a long—I didn't see how I would be able to incorporate that into what I was doing. How am I going to u