You don’t need to be a creative professional to draw at work

You like drawing.

You also like your job even though it’s not considered “creative”.

At some point, that raises a quiet question: Is there a way to combine the two without turning my job into something it’s not?

That’s exactly the question I ran into.

About seven years ago, I was working as a headhunter at Michael Page. It was a hard sales job. I didn’t love it, but I learned a lot about how corporate environments actually work, think, and communicate.

At the same time, I was working on my first children’s book. Every free hour went into drawing - evenings, weekends, spare moments. Slowly, a different question started to form:

If I love drawing this much, why does it have no place in my work?

The answer turned out to be yes, it absolutely could.

I later joined a boutique consultancy called Ink Strategy, where we used drawing to make corporate communication tangible. Not as decoration, but as a way to think, align, and explain. It was eye-opening. I hadn’t realized drawing could function inside almost any profession.

In this article, I want to share a few concrete ways I use drawing in non-creative work. Nothing fancy. No talent required. Just practical techniques that help ideas land, stick, and make sense.

1. Presenting ideas: make structure visible

Most people think of presentations as slides.

I mostly think of surfaces.

Sometimes that’s PowerPoint. More often it’s a whiteboard. A flipchart works just as well. The tool matters less than the intent.

When you’re presenting, your job isn’t to repeat the content. It’s to show how the content fits into a larger picture. That’s where drawing becomes useful.

Visuals are not particularly good at listing information. But they’re excellent at showing structure. And structure becomes visible through relationships.

Instead of explaining things one by one, you let people see how things connect.

For example, when I draw something like People, Planet, and Profit on a whiteboard, I’m not explaining each concept separately. I’m showing how they overlap, where tension exists, and why decisions in one area affect the others.

You don’t need illustrations for that. Simple visual elements already do a lot of work:

• diagrams and arrows

• rough graphs or tables

• boxes and lines

With just those, you can immediately show:

• what belongs together

• what comes before or after

• what supports what

• where trade-offs exist

Because everything is visible at the same time, people don’t have to keep the whole story in their head. They can look at it.

You can keep it extremely minimal or, if it fits you and the situation, be more expressive. Both approaches work, as long as the structure is clear.

The key shift is this: You’re not decorating information - you’re externalizing structure.

That’s why drawing works so well when presenting. It doesn’t replace your message.

It gives your message a shape people can understand in one glance.

The text is in Dutch - but you get the idea.

2. Collecting ideas: making thinking visible

When people think of drawing at work, they usually imagine lines on a whiteboard. But visual communication doesn’t always start with drawing. Often, it starts by simply making thinking visible.

This is where Post-its and word webs shine.

In almost every group setting, the same problem shows up: a few people talk a lot, while others think just as much - but say less. That doesn’t mean they have fewer ideas. It usually means the format doesn’t suit them.

By letting people write ideas down first, Post-its, keywords, short phrases, you’re already working visually.

Without adding a single drawing, you:

• slow the conversation down

• make ideas visible before they compete

• give everyone equal space

Ideas no longer live only in people’s heads or in the flow of conversation. They have a place in the room.

Once ideas are visible, something important happens.

People stop reacting only to each other and start responding to what’s on the wall.

Whether that wall is filled with Post-its or a simple word web doesn’t really matter. What matters is that thinking is no longer sequential and spoken - it’s shared and spatial.

You’re no longer managing opinions.

You’re managing objects in space.

3. Thinking for yourself: drawing as a private language

This one happens mostly in your notebook.

No audience. No pressure. No aesthetics.

These drawings are messy, half-finished, sometimes barely readable a day later, and that’s exactly the point. Drawing here doesn’t mean making pictures. It can be as simple as a line that groups ideas, an arrow that shows flow, or a shape that holds text together.

I use drawing in this way to:

• untangle ideas

• prepare conversations

• structure systems or processes

It’s not about clarity for others.

It’s about clarity for me.

You’re basically having a conversation with yourself, but instead of keeping it all in your head, you put it on paper.

4. Aligning teams: making thinking tangible together

This is the most powerful, and the most complex, way of using drawing at work.

I did this for years while working with teams on strategic and organizational questions. What I noticed again and again is this: people talk a lot, but they don’t always fully understand what they’re saying themselves.

That usually doesn’t come from a lack of intelligence or effort. It comes from the fact that spoken language stays abstract. Ideas sound reasonable, but they float. Everyone hears something slightly different.

That changes the moment you force yourself to make those ideas visible.

When you start visualizing what’s being said - live, in the room - things slow down. At first it feels vague. Sometimes even uncomfortable. The drawing is incomplete. Awkward. Clearly not “right” yet.

And that’s exactly why it works.

Because now, instead of reacting to each other’s words, people react to something concrete. They can point at it. Question it. Adjust it. Notice contradictions they didn’t hear before.

The drawing isn’t there to be correct.
It’s there to make thinking tangible.

As the visual evolves, so does the conversation. What started as opinions slowly turns into structure. Patterns appear. Gaps become visible. Misunderstandings surface - not as conflict, but as something you can work with.

Alignment doesn’t happen because everyone suddenly agrees. It happens because everyone can see the same thing.

At some point, a more stable visual emerges. Not as a goal in itself, but as a snapshot of shared understanding.

It’s important to get this right: the finished drawing is not the solution. It’s the residue of a process where vague ideas were forced to become visible, discussable, and adjustable.

The real outcome isn’t the visual on the wall.
It’s a team that understands what it’s doing, and why, in the same way.

Drawing here isn’t about making things look good.
It’s about giving complex thinking a surface where it can finally settle.

A final thought

Using drawing at work sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy.

Not because drawing is hard, but because it asks you to slow down, to make thinking visible, and sometimes to sit with vagueness a bit longer than feels comfortable.

If you’re struggling with this, that’s normal.
If it feels awkward at first, that’s expected.
And if you’re thinking “I see the value, but I don’t quite know how to do this yet” - you’re not alone.

That’s exactly why I created Visual Communicators.

It’s a course for people who think visually, work in non-creative roles, and want to use drawing as a serious thinking and communication tool - not as decoration, and not as art.

We go step by step:

• how to make structure visible

• how to work visually with others

• how to facilitate alignment instead of just discussion

• and how to build confidence using drawing in real work situations

No talent required. No performance. Just practical ways to think and communicate more clearly.

If this article resonated with you, you’ll probably feel at home there.