How to Use Visual Thinking to Solve Problems

Eric Bakey shares how his passion for visual thinking got him promoted from building bridges under rocket attack to working as an elevator apprentice, general superintendent, and construction executive. Hear how this experience helps him solve business blind spots for organizations that he cares more about.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Eric?
• Origin Story
• Eric’s current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Eric
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Eric on Instragram
• Eric on LinkedIn
• Eric's website
• Google

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Sharpie marker
• Cardboard box
• Crayons
• Butcher paper
• Flip chart
• Neuland
• Replaceable nibs
• Fountain pens
• Feud tips
• Post-it-notes
• White board
• Google Docs
• Procreate
• Concepts
• Notability

Tips

1. What problem are you trying to solve, who is it for, and what is the value of solving that problem?
2. Where are you right now and where do you want to go?
3. Be useful, resourceful, and knowing your five-mile famous world.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's great to have you, and I've got Eric Bakey on the line. Eric, it's so good to have you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Erick Bakey: I appreciate you having me. Longtime listener, first-time caller. So, I'm really excited.

MR: And I'm excited to have you. We had a little chat just before the end of the year and immediately thought that you'd be great for the podcast to share your story and your perspective. So, let's get that started. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

EB: It has evolved. I'm an entrepreneur. If I'm at the bar, I would just tell someone I doodle for dollars. That gets a rise outta most people, but in a very real sense, I try to solve business blind spots. That feels right when I say it. I've had to go through a few different iterations of how you show up as an illustrator, which is not quite that. Not quite a cartoonist, not quite a whiteboard wizard, or whatever else you wanna call yourself. But that one fits right now.

MR: Nice. Nice. Let's jump right into your origin story. I know a little bit about it, but I wanna let you take your time and tell us, maybe start from when you're a kid. Did you draw since when you were a little kid, and did that maintain itself through your life or did it come later in life? How did all that work out and to get to the place where you are now?

EB: Yeah. I was drawn to the arts and I drew cartoons when I was a kid, and I actually won some scholastic awards in high school to go to art school, but I was too much of a tough guy. I just wasn't prepared to go take my art seriously. And so, I joined the Army right after high school and got to do the tough guy thing. Learned to blow stuff up, and more importantly, build bridges.

When I got out, pun intended, I came up in the elevator industry and I went from stack and steel and spinning wrenches an elevator apprentice and worked my way up to become a general superintendent and construction executive. Really, it was the application of visual thinking that really helped me exceed in these kinds of things.

I've brushed over about 12 years' worth my life there in a couple of sentences, but really, it was trying to understand the complexities of what an owner's intention was, what an architect's plan for making the thing beautiful, how an engineer makes the thing actually work, and then getting 80 different contractors to get on the same exact page and try to put the job in on time.

I just used the tools that were available to me, which were a sharpie and a cardboard box, and just wheeled this thing into existence by getting everybody literally on the same page because everyone has their own competing priorities when it comes to a project.

I used what tools were available, and that happened to be this thing called visual thinking. In hindsight, I wish I would've put a little bit more attention to that ability when I was going into my day job. It probably would've saved me a lot of stress. But, yeah, that's kinda the origin story.

MR: Wow. Here's an interesting question because you came up from the bottom, being an apprentice and seeing everything from that perspective, you think that helped you when you came to the point of being this, I guess, a facilitator, I guess is probably the right way to call it, right? You're a facilitator using visual tools to try to get everybody organized and on the same page some ways, like a project manager, I guess, you might even say.

Do you think, coming up from the bottom and working up that way gave you good perspective for all those other roles because you would've had to understand all those roles to really make them almost like interpret one to the other, right? Like the architect to the engineer because they might talk past each other. Is that a fair way to guess how that might have been?

EB: Absolutely. It was through hard work and going from not knowing anything about anything and just struggling at every face going up. I hated at the time. I hated my job at every face of that experience 'cause there's always problems. But it was just a commitment to craftsmanship and then ultimately, the respect of the guys when I'm in charge.

We all made fun of the guys who came straight outta college and started telling these 55-year-old mechanics how to build an elevator. They don't even know to do anything. The same thing, when I actually got on the office side of things, being able to speak from the perspective of the guys but on a more elevated business-like fashion and being able to—just the proper frame based on true experience rather than hypothetical book knowledge. I mean, it's just like street smarts versus taking a class.

Fortunately, I've been able to do both, and absolutely, it was just a commitment to craftsmanship and trading cartooning as an honest trade. That's really how I came to this and leaning into it to say, "Okay, I'm not where I want to be yet, now that I've transitioned into this visual thinking world. I want to go there, but I'm not there yet. So what can I do now with the skills and abilities resources? I've got to be a good steward of these resources and solve the problems that are around me with these things to get me to where I'm trying to go in that general direction of what I think visual thinking should be. "

MR: Another interesting question. Because you came from this perspective, you obviously had the respect of the guys who did the work. How did management react to you when you came to them? Do you think you had an interesting, where you are this in-between mediator that could speak the talk and yet speak their talk as well?

EB: It's hard to be a legend in your own land. Fortunately, I got recruited from the field, I went to the office, I went to the competition. I could not get to the office level from the field place I was at. I had to take the next step of the ladder in a different company so that they would appreciate my knowledge. 'Cause I was just the irreverent kid, elevator mechanic at the one company that, yeah, sure, he does a good job, but he's an elevator mechanic.

Those skills were celebrated by the competition, and it was a big opportunity. I wanted to overachieve and bring everything I could from the field but then apply in a new context in the office. It was appreciated at the new company.

MR: Interesting. Almost like the place that where you got to a certain point where you outgrew it, and the only way to make the next step would be to leave it behind where nobody has any kind of preconceived ideas of who you are so you could start over again.

EB: Maybe that was my own limited ability, but it's like the grass is always greener anyway. There's always ways, even now that I wish I could have transitioned things a little bit smoother, but, for me, it's always been, "All right, well, this is the new thing I'm doing. I'm going here and I'm gonna kick butt and it is what it is."

MR: Interesting. Do you find that that's been the true for your process? Obviously, in each one of these, you had to burn it down and start over again. Are you finding this is a trend in your life for you to go to the next level? Has that been true for you?

EB: Whether it's wisdom or fatigue, I'm doing less burning of bridges or anything like that. Distilling down with the truth and principles really are to get to where I'm trying to go has been more important. I think I was driven a lot by ego in the beginning. I wanted to go be the tough guy, army guy. I wanted to go be this pipe-swinging elevator guy. I wanted to go be the boss.

Then as I started achieving these levels I was essentially climbing ladders, leaned up against the wrong building. I didn't think before actually building a career. If I would've had some visual thinking skills to really plan this thing out a little bit better, especially as I get to mentor some people now as employees and whatnot.

It's like when I see that spark in somebody, instead of letting them go all these different directions, I try to channel it towards, "Hey, what are you really trying to accomplish?" I see there's a whole lot of activity, but what are we really trying to accomplish here? And try to channel them towards the best direction and just trying to be the friend or leader that I wish I would've had as I was coming up.

MR: That's great. That's great. What kind of work are you doing these days? Are you still in the construction business? Where are you working?

EB: I'm no longer in the construction world per se. I do a little bit of real estate development work, which is similar but different. It's before the construction actually even happens. I would argue it's much more lucrative to stay on that side of things. Also, I just got hired by Boeing, the big aerospace engine conglomerate. I'm really excited about that opportunity.

I was kind of the wild, wild west of freelancing, whoever would hire me as a visual facilitator of how you show up as a marketer or a sales strategist or all kinds of different ways that you can use these skills. But I saw a real weakness that I had that I want to solve bigger problems and I want to be with a team executing upon worldwide. I just wanna have a bigger impact with these things.

I feel like I have these really cool skills that are Ferrari skills for a small little consulting gig. But always, I want to go bigger and deeper with these people and it's hard to do that internally in a small business. I figured I'd go jump in the deep ocean where I'd have a team and ultimately also get mentoring from somebody I really respect.

MR: Got it.

EB: It is the same thing of—the ego thing is starting to fall past that. I wanted to be this irreverent entrepreneur, but what kind of problems do I really want? Like, oh, I can get, have a much bigger impact with over here, and I have these weaknesses that aren't gonna be used against me. They're actually gonna be strengthened by someone who I actually trust to help identify them. I'm really excited about the big opportunity that I've got going on now.

MR: Give me an example. Let's say you're working with a—now you're internally, so let's say you're at Boeing someplace, just make a theoretical situation. You've got a problem that you're facing. You've got your team, you've got all of Boeing or some section of Boeing. How would you approach that? What kind of stuff would you bring to the table and how do you use visual thinking in that context?

EB: It really is very important to understand the situation before you try to solve the problem. Slowing down and asking the right questions, it's not about having the right answers, it's about asking questions and truly having a consultative Socratic approach of feeling, where's the pain? "It hurts on the left-hand side of your body here. Is it in your arm or is it more in your leg? Oh, oh it hurts right there."

Like, "Right there, right there, right there, right there?" And really taking a frame of, okay, so how does that apply to visual thinking? Drawing it out, asking the questions, capturing the emotion. That's the power of studying cartooning. The extra squiggles that make a cartoon really pop, make it look like it's moving can speak and tell a story that's more true to life than reality itself.

I love that ability, and I do it and I show it to somebody and it's like when I get that, when I see the pain in their eyes and they can laugh about it, then I really truly understand. And then it gives me the right to then, "Hey, could this possibly be a solution?" Again, you get that work done upfront before you start prescribing a solution. So, really, it's understanding and doing it visually so that I don't have to have all the answers.

I don't have an aerospace engineering degree, and so I'm gonna go—they did a fantastic job of interviewing a whole lot of people and I felt very unqualified 'cause I have no aerospace engineering background whatsoever. But I guess it was just in the way that I approached problem-solving, and that's what I'm excited to work with their innovation team to do that and really understand the kind of problems that a big multi-billion-dollar international company has and solve them with some simple pictures. Sounds really exciting to me.

MR: That sounds really cool. I've looked at some of your work and talked to you a little bit. My impression is that the visualizations you do are a means to an end. Your goal is not to produce an image. The image is a step towards solving a problem. So, it doesn't have to be beautiful. It could be, as you said, you drew it on cardboard with a sharpie. Like medium doesn't matter, quality doesn't matter as long as it's communicating those concepts.

Talk a little bit about your perspective on the actual work and how you use it and at what point do you just not worry about it, it just becomes a step along the way, or maybe it does become like a map of some kinds that maybe a team would follow over a long period of time.

EB: I'm very fortunate that I have put the work in to become a really good illustrator. I've been paid to illustrate, I can draw photos realistically. I can paint portraits, I can do this really cool thing, but so can everybody else and they can actually do a lot better than me. So, I'm like, "What can I do to compete in this industry, the talent level is just unbelievable what people are able to do."

I just chose to solve problems that were bigger than just pretty pictures. In the beginning, I didn't wanna share things that weren't super pretty. Like, is that social media envy game of who can get more status and likes and whatever. I just started sharing stuff that I thought was meaningful for me. I've been very grateful that it has resonated with some people 'cause I get people comment and message me very often about how can I do this for them in their organization.

It's just me scratching my own itch. The longer I took to make sure everything was picture perfect and drawn out just perfectly, I got no different people either get it, where they don't get it and they're just like, yeah, like why am I so worried about this? Nobody actually cares. No one cares at all. So, it's like they only care about what you could do for them.

And once I realize that it's like, okay, so how do I get faster at this and how do I capture these and share these meaningful things that maybe I care about and I thought people would actually care about, and they don't. So, like, huh? It's just been just creating as many—that parable if you wanna create the perfect pot, you don't spend three months making one pot. You spend the next 90 days making 90 pots. I'm just trying to crank out 90 pots and then eventually I'll get the perfect one.

And then what to what end? It's ultimately just trying to solve problems for organizations and people that I want to be around. To what end, it's simply to have—I call them visually valuable conversations. I wanna have conversations with meaningful people. That's the end. I happen to use analog tools, digital tools, all kinds of different tools. It just a medium. I could be a crayon a on butcher paper for all I care, as long as I get the kind of impact that I want out of it.

MR: And that it communicates. You're connecting your communication between whoever you're working with or the people that you're working with, so you get on the same page. That seems really important as well. That's really fascinating and I think that's covers a little bit of what you're doing. If you're just starting, you're probably not even sure what you're gonna be up to at Boeing yet. That'll be real fun to follow and see, check in with you in the future and see what you're up to.

I wanna shift into the tools that you like. You've talked a little bit about using crayons and butcher paper and sharpies and cardboard. Do you have like a go-to set of tools like pens or notebooks or paper or some materials that you like, that you typically will run with? Let's start with analog first and then shift to digital.

EB: As I said, I started with just a cardboard box and a sharpie marker. That's effective when you're just quick and dirty in the field trying to just get a point across, explain something complicated to someone who doesn't get it, that checks the box. When I went pro, about 2016, I started doing this full-time and I bought this fancy flip chart all the Neulands and replaceable nibs.

I love it and they're super cool and fountain pens and feud tips and like, all kinds of really sweet stuff. And then I let the tools get in the way of doing the real work. I spent all this time practicing my typography. It was fun to take the courses. There's so much stuff to learn. There's so much to this stuff. I have a whole huge book

MR: Your books.

EB: I love. I'm a total nerd when it comes to visual thinking and tools and only having the best. But then I stopped being a little bit so precious about it once the pandemic happened and I'm like, "Well now it's like what problem am I really trying to do?" I was so concerned about making sure it was pretty and messing around with like the right tools and everything. It's great. It's hard to do good work with crappy tools, but only a poor craftsman blames his tools.

It's just like this dichotomy of, what can you use to get the job done and what job is it that you're really trying to do. When it comes down to it, you can do this job with some post-it notes and a sketchbook or a whiteboard or whatever it is that you have around you. There are some really nice things. There are wonderful resources. But I try not to get too hung up in it 'cause I will nerd out on—like the 0.07 G2 is better than the 1.0, or vice versa. I can totally nerd out on it, but I try not—what am I really trying to accomplish here? So that'd be my only feedback is don't let the tools get in the way of a good job.

MR: It does sound like you probably appreciate—my perspective is I like to have tools that I can go into any drug store anywhere in the world and buy. If I can get used to using those tools, I know I've always got a backup. If mine blows up, I can go to the Walgreens or the corner drug store in the UK or whatever and probably buy something that if it's not that thing or it's pretty close.

Sounds like Pilot G2 would be one of those things. Do you have any favorite notebooks? I only use 3M post-it notes because the cheap ones tend to curl up and fall off the wall. That's a little tip there in case you're gonna use post-it notes, get good ones ‘cause it's worth the money.

EB: I do not leave the house without a little pocket-sized back—my back left pocket at all times with a sharpie, with the fine tip and the regular tip on it and a big like a 0.9-millimeter mechanical pencil because they don't break. I will never leave the house without it because you should always have your tools, especially there's always time, little five-minute pockets time to practice or the things that pop in your head or whatever. I love to just capture these little tiny things and it's just something that it is impossible to forget for me when I write it down, which is why I started doing this anyway.

And if I put the words with the visual, it will burn itself. It's like mental dynamite. It's in there for good if I take the time to draw it out, especially in an emotional moment. So, I just have it with me. I don't always pull it out every single day, but it's always there and it's just like, these are my tools and this is how I'm showing up. Those are analogs I gotta have.

MR: Nice. Then I assume like the little notebook that you keep in your pocket set, like a field note notebook or something like that.

EB: It's a super cheap one. You can get them in packs of 12. They're super cheap and they're just plain. There's no dots or anything on them. Again, just like an Amazon special, I've got super precious notebooks and like sketchbooks that I don't wanna screw 'em up with like, whatever. I bust them out for [unintelligible 00:22:09]. I'll really lean into it when I'm gonna do it, but when I'm just for an everyday carry, it's better to have something that you don't mind messing up and just getting used rather than never using it.

MR: There is something to be said about something that's so inexpensive that if it gets screwed up, "Eh, I'll just recycle it and start a new one." It doesn't feel like you're hurting anything. Nothing precious has gone away. It got all bent up or got a little burned in the fire or whatever. Take pictures of the important stuff and recycle it and move on to the next one. There's something really freeing about that. You're not so tied to having to have a special book or something like that. So that's really interesting. What about digital tools?

You can run an entire business now with Google Docs. It's just unbelievable what is available for free to be able to do this. I've used Procreate to illustrate a couple books now. I love it. Concepts is really cool. I'm probably gonna transition more to Concepts because I'm running these much bigger projects and gonna need that infinite canvas to be open at all times and continue.

When it comes to actually doing consulting work and delivering these things, Notability is just unbelievable. Being able to have a really pretty PDF that's uploaded into it and then you can also draw on it. It's unbelievable the tools that you can get for like 10 bucks.

MR: Right. I know.

EB: It's just mind-boggling. Because I'm not as seasoned as you are, but I was not willing to pay for Adobe Creative Suite back in the day. It was just not even an option. I just got good at these inexpensive tools and they're just unbelievable how good they really are. The tools are smarter than me. I don't even use them for even a fraction of what their ability to do is, and I'm already just blown away by how useful they are.

MR: I've seen that as well. The quality of the tools that we have available to us for the price that they cost, like Procreate and Concepts, and even I use Paper By WeTransfer like that's $12 a year. That's a drop in the bucket. I get value out of that within the first week that I use it, it's already paid for in my mind from the value it provides. Even some other tools that you can get are pretty reasonable as well.

I think that's good. It democratizes accessibility to those tools where maybe in the past it was pretty limited. You had to really be in with the old Adobe suite, especially if you bought it. Couple hundred bucks, maybe a thousand bucks if you really needed lots of tools and suddenly you better make use of it 'cause you know, a lot of money. That's really fascinating.

Well, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your tools. Sounds like you're a pretty practical guy like me. Let's shift into tips now. The way I frame this is imagine there's somebody listening, they're a individual thinking, whatever that means to them, and they feel like they've reached a plateau for whatever reason.

Maybe it's the beginning of the year, maybe it's just, tired out of something. Just they need a little bit of inspiration. What would be three things you would give them, three tips you would tell them? It could be practical, it can be theoretical things that you might say to encourage them to begin again or start the climb.

EB: I'd say first, what problem are you really trying to solve? You're hung up on this thing, you are trying—what are you really trying to solve and who are you trying to solve it for? Are you trying to solve it for yourself? Because sketchnotes are a fantastic way to solve for yourself also get some gratification and edification from other people who think your work is cool.

There's a whole community for people who just do sketchnotes. As someone who's gone through several apprenticeships, it's essential to get those basics down 100%. What are you trying to solve? If it's skills that you need to get, just do some sketchnotes and it's for yourself. If you're trying to solve for somebody else, okay, is this a graphic recording kind of question? Is this a visual facilitation kind of question? Then what is the value of solving that problem?

For you, is it to just get past the mental block of that, "I'm not good enough to do this thing?" Well, yes you are. There's so many uses for visual thinking and how you can in increase your skills and share them with somebody else because the only way to get better at drawing is to push the ugliness out of your pencil on that piece of paper. There's no way—no matter how many books I read or courses I take, I continue to learn and continue to get better.

People are so good at this stuff and even after people are tell me that, "Oh, you're so talented." Still, I'm never satisfied with how much further I could push this. The tip point number one is what problem are you trying to solve? Is it for you or for someone else? And what is the value of solving that problem? So, you get off your butt, actually solve it. You need consequences for it not being solved or a reward for solving it.

What is the problem? Who's it for? What is the value of doing this work? You need to get that clear before you're gonna get past your funk. That'd be my first tip. Second is, so where are you right now and where do you want to go? As I said, if you want to build sketchnotes onto and become a professional with this thing, you can. There's also people who I would argue I'm a better illustrator, or arguably they've got incredible businesses doing this thing.

It has very little to do with your physical skillset and more about who is the community that you're surrounding yourself with. If you're just trying to be, like just educate yourself on a specific topic. Maybe you're struggling with math or physics or something like that, and you can use visual thinking and sketchnoting to solve for that. Or there's tons of business and personal development advice out there. There's tons of podcasts that, to distill it down.

It's a whole problem of itself, there's this proliferation of advice out there. It's too much of it. It's a massive fire hose. And people have made incredible Twitters and Instagram pages and made incredible illustrations and sketchnotes of just distilling down all the stuff. Maybe you'll also see that some of it is bull crap. Drawing it out and seeing, oh, this actually doesn't—that I see it in front of me, it sounded really good, but.

That would be, so where are you now and where do you want to go with this? Do you wanna do this professionally? I have now I've got hired by this incredible company that's an aerospace defense company that's unbelievable. And I'm just someone who's like a reformed construction worker turned cartoonist. It'd be really hard to even put your finger on exactly how I got here. It's not something that I intentionally woke up and said, "I'm gonna do this thing." It was something that pulled on.

Once I saw it, once I saw your work, I saw there was a whole community, how do I get better at this skill so that I can be undeniable that even that I can solve these problems and work for a company that is on a mission that I actually care about. Cool. My third and final one would just be to be useful, resourceful, and worth knowing in your five-mile famous world.

It's not about being the best artist or even being the best listener. It's not being about being the best, it's being useful with the talents that you've been given, the resources that you've got. Resourceful people, use your resources and be useful to the people who are around you. And being worth knowing, I feel is a higher calling than being well known. That's really what I aspire to do. I guess I'm giving myself my own advice here, but that'd be my third tip.

MR: That's great. Those are three great tips. I love all three. Thanks for sharing those with us. We're right at the end of the podcast if you can believe it. It just kind of flew by. It was so fun chatting with you. Tell us, what's the best place for people to find you if they wanna connect, if they wanna talk with you where would they go?

EB: I post pretty regularly on both Instagram and LinkedIn, and they're under my name Eric Bakery, B-A-K-E-Y. I also have my own little website, Eric bakey.com. The whole online presence, I'm not hard to find if you just type me into Google, I'm sure you'll find me.

MR: I hadn't thought about this until you said your name. Is there any kind of background in your family of being bakers? Is that in your history?

EB: Funny thing on my mom's side, so not my dad's side, but the Bakey name, my mom's grandfather was a famous wedding cake baker in Philadelphia.

MR: Really?

EB: Well, my mom makes me a birthday cake where she makes wedding cake, birthday cake for me.

MR: Wow.

MR: I can't get it at the store. I gotta get my mom's fancy birthday cake stuff. I guess I'm kind of spoiled.

MR: There is baking in your history somewhere.

EB: There is. Yeah.

MR: Interesting. That's pretty cool. Well, Eric, this has been so much fun chatting with you and having you share your experience and your story. Thanks so much for being on the show and thanks for the work that you're doing and how you're sharing and how you're being in the world. We so appreciate it.

EB: I appreciate you. You're a huge inspiration. Thanks a lot, Mike.

MR: Well, thank you. And for everyone listening to the show, it's another episode of the "Sketch Note Army Podcast." Till the next episode, we'll talk to you soon.