Melaine D’Cruze on Visual Thinking & Innovation | HBS Online
If you visited Melaine D’Cruze’s home in Karachi, Pakistan, you’d notice something unique: whiteboards in nearly every room. D’Cruze and her two sons use the whiteboards to visualize thoughts, work through problems, and communicate with each other.
Visual thinking—also called sketch-noting and creative note-taking—is D’Cruze’s superpower.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve taken notes visually,” D’Cruze says. “I think in pictures. It’s just the way my brain processes things.”
Growing up in Karachi, D’Cruze dreamed of being an artist. She doodled everywhere. Yet, her family’s financial situation made money for art supplies—let alone art school—hard to come by. She remembers sharing art materials with her two art-loving siblings, making sure to save specific colors for each other on the days they had art class.
“There were constraints, but we were creative about how we bridged them,” D’Cruze says. “We managed, and I think we did quite well.”
Building a Career Across Education and Business
Although D’Cruze never received formal art training, she continued to incorporate drawings into her everyday life and developed her graphic, whimsical style.
Deciding on a career path with a practical outlook, she earned her bachelor’s degree in commerce, a master of business administration from Preston Institute of Management, Science, and Technology, and a master of arts in educational planning, economics, and international development from University College London.
Over the years, her career path took shape, winding between education and business. The two fields finally collided at Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development, Pakistan (AKU-IED, P), where she now works as a senior manager of strategic planning and operations and leads the development and implementation of the institute’s strategic planning and overall operations.
The institute provides educational training to help teachers level up their skills. D’Cruze has managed the institute’s open learning and eLearning program and led the revival and educational management of the institute’s professional development center in Karachi.
Throughout her career, art and creativity continued to be a common thread.
Visual Thinking as an Educational Innovation
Despite D’Cruze always sketching her thoughts, she hadn’t considered its potential to help others until the opportunity was staring her in the face.
“I discovered my older son had difficulty studying text-based content,” D’Cruze says. “He needed to find alternative ways of learning. I discovered that he was good at learning with pictures and mind maps. I thought to invest in my visual thinking skills so I could learn something and perhaps use it to help my son.”
She enrolled in several online courses from various providers to deepen her knowledge of visual thinking and learning.
“I discovered there was a name for all these drawings and doodles I kept making,” D’Cruze says. “Visual thinking is not only about drawing; it’s about active listening. It’s about thinking and processing.”
Visual thinking greatly helped her son understand and retain concepts and information. As she deepened her skills, she also began to see the possibilities of using visual thinking and creativity with her team at work.
“I learned that this wasn’t just for fun or learning,” D’Cruze says. “I could also use these tools to think, strategize, and innovate in the workplace. Very complex ideas are simplified when you visualize them. The content becomes more digestible for someone who’s having trouble understanding a concept or is unable to connect to the content.”
In a perfect storm of events, this realization occurred during AKU-IED, P’s push for innovation and, coincidentally, when D’Cruze first heard of Harvard Business School Online’s Disruptive Strategy
course.
Leveling Up with Disruptive Strategy
Having watched interviews with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, D’Cruze was eager to learn his theories of strategy and innovation. She was grateful the course was offered online to accommodate physical distance, the time difference, and her busy schedule as a working parent.
“I thought, ‘Now’s the time for me to invest in something else,’” D’Cruze says.
After taking the course, D’Cruze’s biggest takeaway was Christensen’s jobs to be done theory, which states that customers don’t just buy a product; they “hire” it to do a “job.”
“The jobs to be done theory is so critical,” she says. “Now, when I think about any task, whether at home or work, I always think, ‘What problem can I solve in relation to what job needs to be done?’ That’s the kind of impact this course had on me. It changed the way I think.”
D’Cruze, who’s taken 16 online courses to date, says she enjoyed the HBS Online experience more than other course providers’, largely due to the social interactions the platform facilitates.
“I learned so much from the discussion forum and reading everyone else’s experiences,” D’Cruze says. “It’s just amazing. This model of learning, where people can respond to questions and comments and offer up their thoughts and views, was invaluable.”
Of course, while taking Disruptive Strategy, D’Cruze used her creative note-taking to visualize and make sense of the concepts presented in the course. She was eager to share with her peers, who expressed their gratitude for her organized final product.
Using Disruptive Strategy for Organizational Innovation
Since taking the course, D’Cruze has shared her learnings with her team and used them to reframe how they think about innovation in the education sector.
“Things really started picking up for me after I took Disruptive Strategy,” D’Cruze says. “I was able to develop several models for revitalizing the work I did at the Professional Development Center, Karachi at AKU-IED, P—my final paper for the course was actually about that.”
After completing Disruptive Strategy and applying its various features at work, D’Cruze was promoted twice within the organization.
“In so many ways, the HBS Online course has helped me develop a framework for how to strategize,” D’Cruze says. “That’s the kind of learning I’m trying to instill with all my colleagues at work.”
Recognized by her colleagues as a lifelong learner, D’Cruze now meets with her organization’s management staff quarterly to share new learnings and perspectives. She encourages the same culture of knowledge sharing she experienced in Disruptive Strategy and has even persuaded some colleagues to sketch-note their annual vision boards.
Embracing Creativity as a Strategic Advantage
To D’Cruze, creativity isn’t just a “nice to have” trait; it’s an integral part of solving problems and leading innovation within organizations.
“That’s the core of my entire work; it’s to solve problems,” she says. “My colleagues like to tell everybody, ‘If there’s a problem, you need to go to Melaine.’ I’ve become the go-to problem-solver at my organization. It comes from years of cultivating this creative, problem-solving mindset, the books I’ve read, and the course I’ve taken from HBS Online.”
To professionals who want to incorporate creativity into their work, D’Cruze invites them to reject the notion that they aren’t creative.
“If you want to bring creativity to work, it comes with the mindset that you have it,” D’Cruze says. “I know a lot of people think they aren’t creative and, hence, can’t think creatively, but I don’t think so. Everybody’s creative. It’s a skill that can be developed over time.”
She also challenges them to expand their definition of creativity beyond art, use their own experiences as a starting point, and approach problems as an opportunity to use creativity to find solutions.
“Our individual experiences play a big role in what we bring to the table in our corporate lives,” D’Cruze says. “When we talk about bringing creativity to our work, it comes with practice. When you venture out to fix your organization’s problems or figure out the jobs to be done, that’s when you’re bringing creativity and innovation to your work.”
As an easy place to start, D’Cruze recommends writing and drawing on whiteboards or paper to visualize the problem, the job to be done, and brainstorm solutions with your team.
Looking to the Future
D’Cruze will be presenting on creative note-taking and visual thinking at the virtual closing reception for this year’s Connext conference
alongside cellist Tina Guo.
“I would love for virtual Connext attendees to bring their paper and pens so they can draw along with me,” she says. “I’ll be sharing how to incorporate visual thinking into their lives and how to create their own sketch notes. I want it to be a fun, interactive experience.”
When thinking about her future more broadly, D’Cruze is hopeful and determined. One long-term goal of hers is developing a course on using visual thinking strategies for teaching and learning.
“If I were to bring about some kind of impact, I’d like to make this knowledge accessible to more teachers and students,” D’Cruze says. “I believe you can improve the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers and influencing learners with new and innovative ways to learn.”
Additionally, she’s exploring the ever-evolving interaction between the analog and digital methods of visual thinking. She aspires to educate teachers, parents, and students on how to incorporate both into their teaching and learning methods and is considering write a book encompassing her visual thinking knowledge.
“You never know—there might be one mother or one teacher who picks up the book and thinks, ‘Hey, this is something I can use with my kids,’” D’Cruze says. “If you can influence even one person in your lifetime, you’ve made progress.”
Are you excited to experience Melaine D’Cruze’s creative note-taking at Connext 2022? Learn more about this year’s hybrid conference for the HBS Online global Community.