The Grove’s approach to organization consulting has graphic facilitation as a core competency. In fact, David Sibbet, the founder of The Grove was one of the field’s pioneers. The method grew out of a distinctive West Coast tradition of facilitation inspired by architects and designers. In the early 1970s, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin developed his highly visual "take-part workshopping" to plan projects such as Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. Joe Brunon, also an architect, was using "generative graphics" to do conceptual brainstorming with research groups at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Michael Doyle and David Strauss, who set out through Interaction Associates to make facilitation a professional, third-party service for businesses and organizations, were both trained architects and used graphic recording centrally in their approach. Doug Englebart, the computer genius who invented the mouse, windows and hypertext in his "augmented human intellect" project at SRI International, involved a group of researchers including Geoff Ball in exploring working-group displays as the most powerful tool a group could have to boost productivity. Ball went on to become one of the earliest, full-time graphic facilitators working.

These influences provided an inspiration for David Sibbet, founder of The Grove. During eight years at the Coro Foundation's Northern California Center for Public Affairs, Sibbet began using large, interactive graphic displays—much like the pioneering visual thinkers before him—to help Coro Fellows understand power structures, group process, and organization systems as they interacted in the public arena. It became clear that this big-picture way of working consistently enhanced group participation, creativity, and follow-through. Demand for graphic facilitation grew spontaneously as people experienced its value. This led Sibbet to study theories of visualization and group process, and work toward an integrated approach that was teachable. It is called Group Graphics™ and is now the core discipline in The Grove’s approach to graphic facilitation. Sibbet decided to start what has become the Grove in 1977 as a way of sharing this method through consulting, training, and publishing.

From this foundation, The Grove has designed and facilitated thousands of group processes for businesses, schools, government agencies, foundations and community groups in Europe, Asia and the Americas, and has a network of associates worldwide. We now know that visual listening and supporting a group seeing what it is doing works whereever people are working together. We find that all group processes supported in this way…

are consistently more participatory as contributions are acknowledged, and instant feedback stimulates additions and corrections; become smarter and more creative as big picture displays support group understanding of systemic relationships and larger patterns in what we now call “big picture”; achieve greater productivity as people remember what they said both during the meeting and afterward, and use copies of the charts to re-access important understandings and agreements.

The Grove’s work in this area continues to evolve and has helped catalyze a growing field of practice. The field is actively populated worldwide by visual practitioners who refer to their work as graphic recording, graphic facilitation, meeting scribing, visualizing, imagineering, and information design. Grove methods are now being applied in personal development to support people reflecting on their goals and aspirations. Increasingly interactive visualization is a central feature in our work in information design. Through Grove Storymaps™ we are bringing sophisticated visual metaphors to help frame and communicate organization's critical messages.

As organizations in the 21st century transform in response to networked ways of working, it is becoming clear that a new literacy is evolving that embraces multimedia, interactive visualization, and unprecedented access to imagery. The Grove anticipated this development with Group Graphics® and continues to innovate in this area by exploring how our participatory, big-picture methods extend to virtual work. We see that graphic facilitation can embrace "multi-mediacy," with all the rich possibilities that spring from using what we've learned about graphic communication with other expressive media. As widely accepted as graphic facilitation and visually augmented group process has become, we feel like this field is just beginning.