Part of my daily process is drawing each and every morning. You know this by now if you’ve been reading along.

One sketch. One quote. One small act of creating something where nothing existed before.

And of course, there’s the client work. Corporate sessions. Murals. Strategic planning visualizations.

But there’s another part of the process I haven’t talked about much. It’s what happens every Monday morning.

That’s sitting down with my friend Doug, a business consultant to talk about RedTale. About life. About what we’re working on or where we’re going.

Rarely a strict (or any) agenda. We just start talking. He asks questions. One topic leads to another. We follow threads that seem interesting. And those threads can sometimes mean circling back three (or many more) times before landing on something meaningful.

It’s a purposefully winding road.

Because what comes from those conversations (after the meandering, the tangents, the coming back around) is clarity.

The kind of clarity that shows up when you give it plenty of space to arrive.

This Monday, somewhere around minute 46 of one of these conversations, something unexpected clicked.

We’d been trying to figure out the thread that connects all of RedTale’s work.

The thing that ties together corporate visual facilitation, town murals, book illustrations, daily quote drawings.

Was it listening? Trust? The small things adding up?

Turns out, it’s been clarity all along.

Clarity On Different Paths

Sometimes seeing things clearly comes fast.

A team walks into a room scattered, and two hours later, they’re looking at a board making everything obvious.

Sometimes it takes longer. Multiple sessions. Conversations building on each other. Patterns only emerging after stepping back and look at the whole picture.

But whether it’s a corporate strategy session helping leadership see what’s actually happening, a town mural giving a community a vision of itself (more on this soon!), or book illustrations that bring someone’s words to life (also more on this too!)?

The work is the same.

Making something invisible that much more visible.

Turning complexity into something others can actually see and understand.

I’ve been searching for the thread that connects all these different projects. What’s the thing that makes them all RedTale work?

It’s clarity. Visual clarity.

Not drawing what’s said. Drawing what’s meant.

From Listening to “I See It!”

Wrote a few weeks ago that “listening is the deliverable.” And I still believe that.

But I think the idea can get a bit of an update.

Listening is the process. As is sketching. Clarity is what emerges from it.

When I’m drawing during a session, I’m listening for the thing underneath the words. The real message people are trying to get to but haven’t quite named yet.

The drawing doesn’t just capture what was said. It reveals what was meant.

Have seen this more times than I count. It often looks like someone pointing at a board, or a mural, or an illustration, and saying:

“That’s it! That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to say.”

Clarity isn’t just seeing something.

It’s the feeling of alignment when the noise drops away, and what matters becomes obvious.

Clarity You Can See

Naming this helps with, you guessed it, clarity.

Understanding that visual clarity is what connects all of RedTale’s work → from massive town murals to tiny Post-it notes. I think it means we can finally articulate what we actually do.

Helping people see what they already know, just more clearly.

Not decoration. Direction.

Not just pretty pictures. Visual thinking that helps understanding complex problems.

When you can see clearly, you can move forward. When everyone in the room is looking at the same picture, alignment happens naturally.

What would change if you could see your challenge more clearly?

If you, your team or your organization is navigating complexity and needs clarity about where you’re going or what matters most, let’s talk.

That winding conversation that leads somewhere useful? That’s what we do.

Sometimes it takes 46 minutes.

Sometimes it takes multiple sessions.

But clarity is worth the journey.

Grateful you are here,

Wade

PS - Reminder! The Draw for Hope store is open for business! Check out some of the quotes we are most proud of over the years.