If I had to choose one thing to stick within my coaching and business, that would be sticky notes. Today I'm going to teach you how to use these beautiful sticky notes to go beyond your leadership and be more strategic with the help of these lovely, colorful thingies.
Hi, my name is Noa, and I work with leaders, executives, and founders of companies just like you to go beyond your leadership. So let's go.
When I started writing, I bartered my coaching services for editing services a few years ago. The person who helped me edit my blog was a TV producer at a known reality show. She taught me that they use sticky notes to work on brainstorming ideas and also learn how to create connections between ideas when you want to organize them.
She invited me to try an experiment using sticky notes to work on my ideas for my business. This is where my journey with sticky notes started, and since then, it has never stopped.
I use sticky notes in two main ways:
Help people brainstorm and find creative ideas or think about their ideas in a more profound way
Help people capture their thoughts and organize them.
What's so special about using sticky notes to organize your ideas?
Here is the deal. When you have all the ideas in your head, it's challenging to create a structure. Sticky notes is a system that helps you take the ideas you have in your head that feel unorganized or that maybe you don't know how to approach and when in your head can even feel confusing.
Having them on the sticky notes allows you to start taking what you have in your head and structure them into something tangible that makes sense.
Here are a few ways I use sticky notes to organize my ideas (clients' ideas), but first! I follow an important rule: Each idea gets a particular sticky note.
When you have each idea on a sticky note, the fun begins:
Move them around. What's good about sticky notes is that when you start putting the ideas on the table or the wall, you can identify connections between ideas and group them together or create a workflow that shows the relationships between the concepts.
Next time you have great ideas in your head, take those buckets of ideas and put them on sticky notes, and enjoy moving them around until you can see the connection that makes sense to you.
Color indexing. Color indexing is a great way to help you create a process to manage projects or structure your ideas. For example, each blue sticky note is a topic; underneath, the sub-ideas are in pink color, and then the ideas' actions or outcomes will be in yellow, and so on.
But I prefer to brainstorm on my computer…
Do you like to capture your ideas on your computer or pad? My favorite free tool with sticky notes as a team or alone is miro - click to check it out.
So next time you tell yourself, I'm not strategic enough, remember that strategy is about planning ahead. It is about taking time to step back and understand ideas, connections, and much more. Standing up and playing with sticky notes can make strategic planning an energetic and creative activity.
I challenge you to get some sticky notes in different colors and pull down all those buckets of ideas you have in your head on paper.
Have fun and go beyond with your leadership.
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