Draw How to Make Toast
Draw How to Make Toast is a fast, simple, and fun design exercise that gets people to think about systems. It is also a great warm up to thinking about how to solve problems visually.
Three minutes, three steps
You don't need a workshop budget or a facilitator certification to run this. You need pens, paper, and a question.
Felt markers
Thick paper or sticky notes
A wall or table where everyone can see each other's drawings
Ask the question
Say to the group: "Draw a picture of how to make toast. No words. Just pictures. Show someone who has never made toast before how it's done." Set a timer for three minutes.
Look at the drawings
Have everyone hold up their drawing. Wait for the laughter. Then post all the drawings on a wall or across a table where the group can see them together.
Have the conversation
Ask: How are the drawings similar? How are they different? Which one would actually teach a stranger to make toast? The differences are the conversation worth having.
Every group draws four kinds of toast
After thirty years of running this exercise, I can tell you the drawings always sort into roughly the same four groups. The fascinating part is that almost no one knows which group they belong to until they see everyone else's.
The system is the machine
Draws the toaster itself. Cross-section, heating elements, the lever, the timer dial. For this person, making toast is a question of mechanism.
The system is the morning
Draws a person at a counter. Bread, knife, butter, plate. For this person, making toast is a moment in someone's day.
The system goes back further than you think
Draws the wheat field, the bakery, the truck, the grocery store, the kitchen. For this person, the toast existed long before anyone reached for the bread.
The system is everything
Draws the Big Bang. Yes, really. One person once drew all the way back to the formation of stars, and it might still be my favourite drawing of toast I have ever seen.
No single drawing is complete. Each one is a private mental model made visible. That's the gift.
Three things you can take into any meeting
Nodes and links turn invisible thinking into something a group can work with
Every good systems drawing has them, whether the person knew they were making one or not. Nodes are the things. Links are the relationships between them. Together they turn a private mental model into something the room can actually point at and edit.
Five to thirteen nodes is the right size for almost everything
Fewer than five and the picture is too simple to be useful. More than thirteen and people go into what I call map shock. This pattern holds across strategy decks, org charts, and customer journeys. It is not just toast.
Groups working in silence consistently produce richer models than groups talking through it
When you remove conversation, people stop defending their position and start building on each other's ideas. The room aligns around something they made together. That is a different outcome from most meetings I have ever sat in.
Print the guide, run it tomorrow
A one-page printable you can hand to your team or pin to a meeting room wall. Materials list, the three steps, and the four kinds of drawings to look for.
We will send you the guide and a few short follow-up emails with more visual thinking exercises. Unsubscribe whenever.
Draw Toast is the doorway
Draw Toast is the simplest example of a much bigger idea. Visual thinking, working in silence, surfacing mental models, mapping nodes and links. These are the foundations of how Wicked Problem Solving runs every kind of meeting, from a fifteen-minute team huddle to a six-month strategy redesign.
The first chapter of Meeting Mastery
A short read on the five stages of any meeting that actually works. Free, no further email needed.
Read the chapter →Meeting Mastery
Twelve plays. Four hours of video. A complete system for designing and leading the meetings your team runs every week.
See the course →Things people ask before they run it
How long does it actually take?
Twelve to fifteen minutes including the conversation afterward. The drawing itself is three.
Does it work remotely?
Yes. Everyone draws on paper, holds it up to camera, and you screenshot the gallery. Or use a digital whiteboard like Miro or FigJam. The exercise works because of the diversity of mental models, not the medium.
Do I need to show the TED talk?
Not before. Run the exercise cold so people don't anchor on Tom's framing. Show the talk after, once the drawings are on the wall.
How many people can do this at once?
It scales. Tom has run it with groups of six and groups of two thousand. Above thirty, break into pods of four to six.
Can I use this with executives?
Especially with executives. The senior the room, the more entrenched the mental models. The drawings expose what conversation hides.