Hi, Sarah, and welcome to Think Visual with Shapeshifters.
This is our first online recording. And I'm really
grateful that you're here with me today. Thank
you for taking the time. Deanna and I, we've
been running Think Visual for most of 2024. And
to kick off 2025, we thought we'd do something
a little bit different and go online. So this
is our first one. You're our first speaker. Wish
us luck. I'm excited to be here. Excellent. Okay,
to kick things off, who is Sarah Stokes? How
did you get to where you are today? And what's
your story? Well, that could be a very long answer.
I'll try and focus it on design and some of the
things that underpin my thinking. I'm from the
UK. I grew up there, and I went to university
there. I've been in Australia for 20 years, but
between then and now, a fair bit has happened.
So I got into design when I was working at a
theatre company in the West End. We owned 10
theatres, and I'd heard about this internet thing,
and I said to the CEO, I can make you a website.
And I had no idea what I was doing. So I ended
up being the web mistress, the designer, the
information architect, the marketer. And it was
a very steep learning curve. But we delivered
a website in three months. And from there, I
did a master's in interactive multimedia, because
I thought I had to back up the bullshit, if I
may say that. And then from there, I ended up
working various different areas in entertainment,
other theater and ticketing companies, Sky Television,
when a remote could have been the interactive
TV part of things where you could order pizzas
through your TV and tickets. So I worked on that.
I worked in financial services for quite a long
time as well. And more recently in Australia,
banking, retail, market research, property. And
now I'm working in tech at Atlassian. So I've
gone through all the levels of design, from even
coding right through to kind of service design
and organizational design. Underpinning all of
it, though, I would say, is like a human -centeredness.
So I also did archaeology for work experience
as a teenager. And so just understanding where
humans are and how they live and how they thrive
or didn't. is quite interesting. And so from
archeology, human -centered in the past, to human
-centered design, and now kind of person -centered
leadership is where I'm at. Wow. You sound like
such a curious and go -get -em kind of person.
Can you tell me a little bit about this? You
seem like just as an observation, you have this
real great just do it attitude. Can you just
expand a little bit on how did you get that way
and what's behind that? Whether I like it or
not, I'm driven. I'm quite ambitious and it doesn't
feel like it's comfortable. It's like that's
just who I am and I've got an inner drive and
I think I'm fiercely independent and I always
want to be doing well. And I want to keep learning.
So it's that inner drive. I'm not sure where
it comes from. I'm the bottom end of six kids.
Maybe I was oppressed by my older siblings. I
don't know what a psychologist would have to
say about it. But I think being brought up in
that kind of chaos makes you independent and
self -possessed, I would say. Wow. Another question.
How do you use visuals in your work and in your
life. It strikes me as, you know, your independence,
your approach to things seems super creative,
but specifically on visuals, what role do they
play in your work and life? So before sketchnoting
was a thing, I've always been a doodler. I've
always liked to draw. It helps me think, it helps
me concentrate. And so people would always remark
on me. I'd say, excuse me, I need to do this
to concentrate. And I knew that from an early
age at work. So people know that of me. And then
I also think visually. So if I'm thinking about
a concept, it will end up being an analogy. And
I'll end up saying it's like, We're going from
and to something, so what's between us? Or we're
on a journey together, or we're feeling a bit
at sea, so it's that concept of using visual
language, which then helps us, helps me actually
create visuals to align people. I think the other
thing is, I love frameworks and models, so when
I worked in finance and we had consultants come
in and they'd have all these fancy frameworks,
I'd be like, wow. Wow, look at that pyramid.
That's an amazing quadrant. And they had all
these things. And over the years, I've actually
collected them all. And I've got this dodgy -looking
keynote presentation with all these frameworks
in that I find incredibly useful as inspiration.
But what they all speak to is externalizing a
problem by using visuals to create alignment.
You're a great verbal communicator. When you
use visuals, Do you see that it improves communication
or, you know, what is your observation actually
of what it does to your communication? I think,
I wouldn't say it necessarily improves my communication.
I think it improves the collective communication.
So it does actually improve, actually I'll go
back on that. I've actually done an exercise
before for myself by drawing a particular framework.
when I was doing some self -coaching, and it
actually helped me achieve an understanding of
where I needed to focus. So visualization can
actually help yourself as a tool as well, depending
on what frameworks you use. So yes, I think it's
the visuals plus the thinking behind it and then
the purpose of it. And knowing when you've run
out, when it's run its course. So you might have
an analogy and suddenly it breaks. So you go,
OK, we can't continue this. We need to find something
different. Can you expand a little bit on the
collective communication part? So what do visuals
do for collective communication? Well, I think,
as I said before, I think it externalizes. So
we've all seen diagrams of a thought bubble with
a triangle in one and a square in the other,
where people think they're thinking the same,
but they're not. People are talking in concepts
that's abstract. So if you have a visual, even
though it may be an analogy or a metaphor, it's
making something concrete. So you can say, for
example, we're going from something and to something.
You can have two cliffs and a bridge over it.
That's the future. This is the past. What are
we leaving behind? What are we taking with us?
People can engage with that. And it becomes more
of a story. And you can talk about the journey
over the bridge and what needs to happen first.
And so all of a sudden, You're covering several
concepts at once that make people think more
openly and maybe less territorially or self -centred.
I think it makes us more collective. In this
kind of rich diversity of work that you've been
involved with, do you have any influences? They
might be people or things or... movements or
ideas, do you have any? And what might they be?
Well, I come from a bit of an artistic family.
My sister, older sister, she does art workshops,
but she used to run a ceramics design company
and also architectural design. I've got three
sisters and my mum, they all do sketching and
drawing. So I think we've always had art in our
blood. I also studied the history of art from
Impressionism to Surrealism. I'm quite attracted
to the Dada movement. I also think a bit of humour,
so Surrealism as well. So I think that's just
been part of my DNA. And another question. Why
should people use visual thinking? Does it help?
I think if you are somebody who works with other
people, and you're kicking something off, it's
a great time to use it because, again, it externalises
that thinking, gets everyone on the same page.
If you're struggling in conversation, it can
get you over a hump. Because you can say, rather
than, oh, it looks like we're dealing with a
terrible situation, it might be... Do you remember
that time when Homer Simpson designed a car and
it was like a Frankenstein car and had bits all
over the place? Well, it feels like that's what's
happening now. Perhaps if we had a vision of
what the car would be, it would end up being
like Homer Simpson car. And then you can draw
a picture of a car. And that kind of gets everyone
thinking about the problem rather than something
else. I love your reference to Homer. And the
Homer Simpson car is a bit of a classic. Actually,
could you mind telling us a little bit about
some of the metaphors and the frameworks that
you'll kind of discuss on the day? And how would
people actually be able to make use of it themselves?
Cool. Well, so as people come into the room,
so spoiler alert for those coming in. I'm going
to put some pictures on the wall like a hammer
and a nail, a swan, an iceberg, a coin with two
sides. And you see a picture and instantly you
can relate to what we're talking about. So I
think that's like a stimulus to understand that
we can use visuals to very quickly convey a message
or a thought experiment. So that's the kind of
the metaphorical side of things. When it comes
to frameworks, I could just draw two lines. That's
a quadrant. That could be effort impact. It could
be love it, hate it, want to do it, don't want
to do it for coaching. You've got the iceberg
model. So that can be behavior, or it can be
the UI, UX, and all the technology beneath it.
Then we've got things like the pyramid. So we've
got Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but that can
be all sorts of different things, pyramid shape.
So these are shapes that are very simply drawn
that suddenly align people on concepts. I'm sure
there's a few, yeah, there's bend diagrams, one
of my favorite things. And then there's two circles
next to each other, which is comfort zone and
where you grow and things like that. So we'll
be sharing some of those. And then in terms of,
I'll talk a bit about why models and metaphors,
which I've kind of covered a bit today, but I
won't go into it too much now. But what I think
we'll do with people there is in pairs, we'll
go, what's it like? So. It could be your job,
your current challenge, your pet at home. So
that kind of thing. And you can say, well, my
job, I feel like I'm treading water. My dog is
like a bull in a china shop. But you have to
draw that thing. And you share with the other
person. Perhaps you could extend the metaphor.
We'll share back and look at each other's pictures
and see. Maybe sharing just the picture, having
a guess at how they're going at their challenge.
And that's kind of putting it into practice straight
away. And then I think the idea I want people
to walk away with is you actually already have
a toolkit of all these shapes. But it's just
having them together in a toolkit means that
you're already on a running start next time you're
going to a difficult meeting or you're thinking
and you want to have some inspiration. That's
amazing. Okay. Lastly, where can people find
you? Because... I'm sure people will be interested
in who Sarah Stokes is. So where can people see
some of your work or get in touch with you? Where's
the best place? Well, you could find me on LinkedIn.
You could probably Google me and see some of
my talks I've done. So Sarah Stokes Sydney Design.
I've done talks on empathy and design, leadership,
wisdom and things like that. I also have a website
sarastokescoaching .com. So see you there. Fantastic.
We'll be sure to include those in the show notes,
but thank you very much, Sarah.