We were lucky to catch up with Lloyd Dangle recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lloyd, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

I work with leaders, companies, and organizations to help them think better and transform something––their businesses or themselves. This is complex, hard, and often risky work. I make it easier by using pictures, cartoons, mental models, and diagrams. These tools take the complexity out of their heads and make it tangible and pliable.

The industry standard for this kind of work is usually referred to as “Management Consulting” or “Strategic Planning,” and usually results in a binder or playbook full of recommendations that are rarely implemented. The plan gathers dust on a shelf.

My approach is laser focused and compresses time. The combination of structured conversations with shared, co-created visual storyboards delivers incredible results.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Draw the Future is a transformational coaching and consulting firm that helps senior leaders think better together. We focus on helping senior executives have meaningful high-stakes conversations where decisions are made that will transform their businesses and even industries.

In business, conversation is a neglected and dying art! People have conflicting agendas, they talk past each other, they bore each other to death with PowerPoint slides. In addition to designing and facilitating conversations we coach the leaders and teams to be ready and capable to step up.

I came into this work in an unusual way. I was a newspaper cartoonist for over twenty years until the newspaper business blew up. The discipline of cartooning made me skilled at synthesizing complex ideas into pictures and concise stories. Many companies––like Airborne Health Formula–– began engaging my skills to help them explain and brand their products.

Eventually I took my visual and strategy skills into live corporate sessions with senior leaders. I spent a decade inside large technology services companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Amazon Web Services, running high-stakes strategy meetings between sales leaders and their top enterprise customers. I’ve now worked with over 200 companies in 75 industries helping them design their business strategies.

Have you ever had to pivot?

For over twenty years I worked as a cartoonist and my work came from publishing and entertainment. The internet and the birth of social media combined to blow up the business model for syndicating cartoons. My fellow cartoonists and I were disrupted and not happy! That’s when I learned about illustrators who would attend a conference or meeting and spontaneously capture the content in real time on big murals. I thought, “I can do that.”

I tried it and for a while I was on the road all the time, going from conference to conference, doing this kind of entertaining drawing but I wasn’t very happy. I believed that the live drawing would have tremendous power if it was integrated into the conversations, but I didn’t find anyone who was doing it in the way I imagined. Eventually I connected with some folks in the technology space who saw the need for using visuals in a way that helped tech and business leaders envision new possibilities and models. The pictures were so necessary in helping generate big new ideas.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients has been 1:1 networking. I talk every day with leaders who are responsible for some kind of transformation within their organizations, or they might be launching something. Sometimes they are launching a new version of themselves!

For years I coached leaders and teams to help them show up powerfully for a make-or-break meeting. What I’ve realized over time is that every day is a make-or-break opportunity to leaders, and coaching them to be their best selves is always the most important––and satisfying––thing to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://drawthefuture.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloyddangle/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@lloyddangle

Image Credits
Terry Lorant (Photo of Lloyd) Lloyd Dangle (All illustrations)