Draw How to Make Toast
A short, fun and impactful design exercise that gets teams thinking about systems. Join thousands of people who have used Draw Toast as their first step into visual thinking.
Mental models differ much more than teams expect. Draw Toast makes these differences visible in fifteen minutes, and teaches the value of visualization.
Draw Toast works as a warm up before any session where a group needs to solve a problem together, and as a standalone introduction to systems thinking for people who have never worked this way.
Ask ten people to draw the same process and you will get ten different diagrams. Some show only the toaster while others trace the bread back to the wheat field. Each drawing shows the invisible mental model each person carries in their head. Drawing makes it visible, allowing everyone to see how their thinking differs.
Sticky notes or index cards, felt markers, masking tape, a wall, and a timer.
A wall of unique mental models (of toast!) and a new vocabulary and skill of visual thinking.
Running the exercise in four simple steps
Each step takes a few minutes. The full exercise fits comfortably in a fifteen minute block, and you do not need a workshop budget or a facilitator certification to lead it.
Felt markers
Thick paper or sticky notes
A wall or table where everyone can see each other's drawings
Setup the room
Gather felt markers, thick paper stock, sticky notes or index cards, and masking tape. Give each person one note or card and a marker. Arrange the room with tables and chairs, and clear a wall where you can post the drawings so everyone can see them.
Ask the question
Say to the group: "Draw a picture of how to make toast. That is, darkened crispy bread. Use no words in your diagram. Try to illustrate the important actions to someone who has never made toast before." Use a timer and countdown three minutes.
Share each drawing
Go around the room one person at a time and have each person hold up their drawing and describe it, and expect laughter. Post the drawings on the wall as you go so the full set builds up in front of the group.
Compare the drawings
Once everyone has shared, ask the group how the illustrations are similar and how they differ. Ask which are clearest, which contain surprises, and which would do the best job of explaining how to make toast to someone who has never done it.
- Avoid over-explaining the prompt. Some confusion at the start is useful.
- Avoid correcting anyone. Every drawing is a valid answer to the question.
- Allow time for laughter. It signals that the room is comfortable thinking out loud.
Four foundational insights
Raise these once the drawings are posted and the group has compared them. This is the part of the exercise that travels back into the work.
Every drawing on the wall is built from the same two elements
Nodes are the things in a process, and links are the relationships between them. Once a group has those two words it can say what a drawing is missing, move a node, and reuse the same two parts on every map it builds after this.
Five to thirteen nodes is the right size for almost every diagram
Ask everyone to count the nodes in their own drawing. Fewer than five is usually too simple to be useful, and more than thirteen produces what we call map shock, where the picture is too dense to read. The same range holds for strategy maps and org charts.
Groups that work in silence produce better models than talking ones
The three minutes of drawing were silent, and that is why the wall holds ten distinct models rather than one shaped by whoever spoke first. Removing conversation moves people from defending a position to building on what they can see.
The subject is trivial on purpose
Nobody has a stake in being right about toast, so people show their reasoning instead of protecting it. That is the condition the method needs, and it is much harder to create when the question on the wall is next year's strategy.
Every group draws four kinds of toast
After thirty years of running this exercise, 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, in cross-section, with heating elements, the lever, and the timer dial. For this person, making toast is a question of mechanism.
The system is the morning
Draws a person at a counter with bread, a knife, butter and a 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 and 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 our favourite drawing of toast.
"Draw a picture of how to make toast. That is, darkened crispy bread. Use no words in your diagram. Try to illustrate the important actions to someone who has never made toast before."
Read it out loud exactly as written, start a three minute timer, and say nothing else until it goes off. The silence is doing the work.
Get the printable guide
Download the PDF so you can try Draw Toast with you team today. The guide includes:
- The materials list and the timing at a glance
- All four steps written out, ready to read aloud
- The four debrief insights to raise once the drawings are up
The guide lands in your inbox in a minute or two. We will also send a few short follow-up emails with more visual thinking exercises, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like.
Draw Toast is one activity in the Wicked Problem Solving method
Wicked Problem Solving is a methodology, like Lean or Agile, for people who want a proven way to think, decide, and lead. It was developed and refined through thirty years of solving real problems inside top global organizations, and everything you just ran with a marker and a sticky note is the front door to it.
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Draw Toast is one of a set of activities you can run with a marker and a wall. Browse the rest and pick the one that fits the meeting in front of you.
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