Your business in visuals—The High Performance Igniter?

Things I’ve been thinking about

Your business in visuals.

I was recently reading a 400 page text only book that had a ton of great information, but was a bit like drinking through a fire hose.

There was so much information and a need to understand a lot of historical context that wasn’t in the book.?

It was hard to catch everything.?

So, I asked the author if he had any visuals to show the concepts he was trying to get across.

No.?

It was pretty clear after the exchange that the thought had never occurred to him to create any visuals to help people focus and digest the information.

He had been steeped in the information for a few decades and knew how everything connected and all the backstories.

But for someone seeing it for the first time, 400 pages of 100% text was tough to get through.

Visuals go back?tens of thousands?of years.

It’s how people communicated information.

When we are young, it’s how we learn…initially through pictures with verbal narration.

Yet as we get older, text gets heavier and visuals get fewer.

Lets take this back to the work place.?

When people start a new job, they get a pile of paperwork (much of which is compliance focused) to fill out and sign.

Maybe they get a policy and procedure manual that is text heavy with a few diagrams.

They need to learn about the company requirements, how it operates and their job.

It’s like drinking through a fire hose.

And as they move up through the ranks, they’ll hear things from time to time about the business or goals.?

Maybe see some power points with the topics of the day.

But after all that, does that person really understand what the business does? Who its customers are? And how the product or service is made and delivered?

Most don’t because they’ve never seen the company as a whole, only their part.

Imagine a different way.

Back when I worked in the pulp and paper industry, I drew a diagram of the business to help me understand how all the pieces fit together.

Then it dawned on me, it might help others too.

So, I would sit down and talk with people in different parts of the company and draw the diagram on a white board to explain what we did and how they fit in.

This is not quite the same process, but is a similar?visual?so you can see what I’m talking about.

It was amazing to see the engagement on their faces and hear comments about how helpful that type of interactive session was.

The same approach can be used for the?customer journey, IT systems mapping, financial results,?a day in the life of an?employee,?quantities of products sold, the amount of raw materials consumed.?

Visuals are an easy way to explain business.

They’re also an easy way to find out if you have over complicated systems and processes that need to be fixed.

What would it be like if you were able to show people your company in visuals on day 1?

Then continue to share your journey and results as a company on an ongoing basis?

You might just find your people are more connected to your business and what you are trying to accomplish.

So, if you’re at this point and wondering where all the visuals are, here’s the funny thing.

In my search for public visuals to link to, I was directed to companies who sell visualization software and tools.

And they largely included videos of people talking about visualizing data or marketing brochures.?

With no visuals!

To make sure you have some food for thought, here are a few places to help with thinking differently about how to visualize:

Visual Capitalist?displays some of the top stories in business (and has a few examples of displaying what companies do).

Tableau is one of the big data aggregation and visualization tools. It powered many of the public Covid dashboards through the pandemic.?This?has a number of different examples of how to visualize different types of data.

To your growth and success,

Heidi