[The following is an article by SmartDraw’s CEO, Paul Stannard that was originally published by www.eweek.com]

In today's fast-paced, multicultural business environment, companies are using visual communication techniques to overcome challenges such as operational inefficiencies and language barriers that can often exist between employees, customers and vendors. Visual communication techniques are being used to improve understanding of concepts, knowledge retention and long-term success.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is a well-known saying that sums up the reasons for using visual communication in the workplace. But beyond traditional organizational charts and diagrams, the use of visual communication in the corporate environment has typically been reserved for the advertising department. For everyone else in the office, text-based communication has long been the primary means to convey information since the bygone era of the corporate typing pool.

Fortunately, a myriad of tools such as the modern word processor and e-mail emerged to make the creation of text-based messages easier and more efficient. But have these tools really improved the effectiveness of our business communication efforts? Has the mode in which we put words onto paper or screen actually enhanced our ability to understand the meaning or impact of the message?

Research has shown that visual aids are incredibly powerful tools for enhancing both the understanding of concepts and knowledge retention in a variety of settings beyond advertising. Studies have shown that people "only remember 10 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they read, but about 80 percent of what they see and do."

The Department of Labor also suggests using visual aids to achieve more effective communication. It cites studies which found that not only does approximately 83 percent of human learning occur visually, but also that "retention of information three days after a meeting or other event is six times greater when information is presented by visual and oral means than when the information is presented by the spoken word alone."

Reasons to use visual communication

The use of visual communication in the business environment is gaining momentum due to its powerful ability to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of communication, both internally and externally. Aside from the aforementioned research, three factors are driving the adoption of visual communication in the workplace:

1. Information overload

With so much data being generated on a daily basis, the use of visuals to compress, distill and summarize complex information can make it easier to digest and comprehend massive amounts of data. The ability to encapsulate data into a compelling visual element such as a flowchart, bar graph or timeline makes it much more comfortable to absorb and retain the information presented. If given the choice, would you rather read a 50-page report or view a four-page visual summary on the same material?

2. Globalization

In our infinitely interconnected world, global companies must have efficient, effective means to communicate with employees, customers and vendors who speak different languages and dialects. The use of impactful visuals makes it much more effective to communicate even relatively complicated information to a diverse group of people—without the worry of someone misunderstanding or something being "lost in translation." Visuals allow multilingual individuals to quickly grasp concepts regardless of their level of language fluency.

3. Brevity

When communicating with spoken or written word, it becomes easy to ramble on, especially when trying to convey complicated information. Many believe that writing or saying more will aid in understanding when oftentimes the opposite is true. On the other hand, the very act of creating a visual presentation forces the creator to refine the message or argument, clarify points and summarize explanations. This "forced" clarity distills messages to their core meaning, which helps the audience achieve a better understanding.

Visuals allow your audience to see and understand relationships between information and concepts (and the interconnectivity of processes and structures) more clearly than words can ever do alone. By establishing context for the interrelated pieces of the puzzle, visuals provide a more uniform language that is devoid of clutter, revealing the most critical information. Think about it: in an emergency, would you rather have a map to the fire escape or written directions on how to get there?

Barriers to visual communication use

Despite all of these benefits, the widespread use of visual communication in the business environment has been a challenge for two reasons. First, the average business person simply does not have the skills or tools required to easily and quickly create visuals. Second, the amount of time and effort required to create compelling visuals has been so great that it has often been deemed not worth the effort.

Absent the kind of tools and features we've all grown accustomed to for text communication (such as the AutoFormat feature in modern word processors), the creation of visuals requires help from the art or graphics department. Assuming you have art or graphics talent in-house, presentations and proposals must be worked into the marketing work load. This could overwhelm an already bustling art or graphics department. If you outsource graphics work, the cost for visual presentations and proposals could quickly add up.

Modern visual processors

Modern visual processors allow companies to implement a visual communication approach across the enterprise and overcome the aforementioned barriers. This helps boost performance, reduce operating costs, and improve profitability and competitiveness. By empowering individuals with visual processing tools to quickly and easily create and use diagrams, charts and other visuals, "visual companies" can realize significant improvement in communication, understanding and growth—without completely disrupting the current workflow.

Much like the familiar word processor, visual processors automate the creation, formatting and integration of visuals in everyday business communications. This makes it easy for anyone to develop and use professional-quality visuals in meetings, strategy sessions and reports, as well as in e-mail messages and other common documents.

Through the deployment and use of a visual processor, visual companies can see immediate ROI by relieving the work load on the graphics or art department while winning more business through more effective communication of proposals. The ability to visually communicate features and value propositions provides an edge over the competition and helps to shorten the sales cycle. Visual companies also benefit from fewer misunderstandings and errors, and expectations are more readily met because they are more clearly understood.

Just as e-mail forever changed the way we create and transmit text information, today's visual processors promise to revolutionize business communication yet again by allowing the average person to easily create compelling visuals—with an intuitive process and familiar interface for a short learning curve and quick time to competency. Thanks to seamless integration with legacy business software, modern visual processors make the adoption of visual communication and the transformation of your company to a visual company, a natural and comfortable evolution.

If you followed “The Single Slide” presentation, then you’re already familiar with the concept of making instant PowerPoint presentations using mind maps and animation for sequencing. Suppose you’re an HR manager responsible for developing a training course for new hires in the marketing department – you might very well begin your training with a brief overview presentation introducing all of the main concepts that your trainees will learn. You can use a mind map to build such a presentation instantly:

Here’s what this mind map would look like as a presentation, courtesy of SlideShare:

Mind maps are a great tool for preparing for meetings or conference calls with clients and business partners, because they allow you to get your thoughts, questions, and discussion points organized quickly and easily. Here’s an example of a client meeting mind map that a PR firm might use in preparation for a meeting with a client who’s about to release a new product:

Click here to see a full-sized version of this client meeting preparation mind map.

In order for the PR firm to effectively promote the release of ExampleCorp’s new product, they need to know the guts of the product’s feature set, its intended user, where / when it can be purchased, and so forth. One PR person could sit down and hammer out a mind map like this in a few minutes, and use it to organize structure their conference call. The PR firm could even share it with the clients and have it serve as a mind map meeting agenda.

Mind maps are one of the most versatile types of visuals, and you can use them to simplify and solve thousands of routine business issues like preparing for meetings with clients. What other uses can you think of?

Mind maps can be used for just about anything, and last time I demonstrated how you can use mind maps for setting goals and objectives. Mind maps are popular because they’re easy to produce and the gratification from using them is immediate, and this is why visual companies have their employees use them to create meeting agendas, such as the one below:

Click here to see a full-sized version of this meeting agenda mind map.

This is a mind map a CFO created in order to outline her talking points for a regular financial performance meeting. This meeting agenda mind map probably took her no longer than five to ten minutes to prepare in SmartDraw.

She began her agenda by adding four major discussion topics to her mind map:

• Last month’s revenue;
• Last month’s expenses;
• Profits; and
• Upcoming initiatives and expenses for this month.

For each of these discussion items she added a number of important sub-items, such as last month’s expenses broken down by department and annualized profit projections basted on the year-to-date profit figures.

If the CFO wanted to add more detail to her agenda mind map such as trends in an individual department’s expenses or more detail on sources of new income, she could easily do that by adding additional topics to her mind map, which she can do in SmartDraw with a single mouse click or a keyboard shortcut.

Creating a meeting agenda with a mind map like this is a great practice, not only because it’s easy to do, but it because helps busy CFOs like the one who produced this mind map get their thoughts organized quickly so they can spend less time thinking about discussion topics will be and more time preparing the facts, figures, and content needed to enable productive discussions.

What’s a Visual Company, and why does your company need to become one? These questions, among others, are answered by SmartDraw Founder and CEO Paul Stannard in “Creating a Visual Company: What it means and why productivity hinges upon it.” Here’s an excerpt:

“In a Visual Company people communicate visually with flowcharts, mind maps and other visuals just as frequently as they do with written documents. Why?

We live in exponential times. It’s estimated that more unique information will be generated this year alone than in the previous five thousand years combined!

We’ve all heard the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Visuals let you condense information into a form that is both quickly digestible and shows connections and relationships. In a fast changing world, using visuals helps solve the information overload problem.

I believe that within five to ten years, all companies will be visual companies.

Studies show that communicating with visuals is up to six times more effective than communicating with words alone. When you look at information presented visually, you can immediately see the key ideas and the relationships between them, instead of having to take the time to read a lengthy report.”

You can read the full article in its entirety here at StrategyDriven.

Mind maps are one of the most versatile visuals in the business world, largely because they’re easy to make and provide instant gratification for people who create and share them. Mind maps can be used for virtually anything, ranging from organizing your thoughts to scoping out tasks for a project, and they often serve as the starting point in the thought process for many visual thinkers.

One popular application for mind maps is to use them for setting goals and objectives, and here’s an example of a completed mind map to that effect:

Click to see a full-sized version of this image.

These are goals for an individual, but from the mind map you can appreciate the goal-setting process this person used. He (Jordan McKinney) began by organizing his goals into four groups:

• 12 month goals;
• 24 month goals;
• 5 year goals; and
• Lifetime goals.

The next step he took was to add specific objectives to each group of goals, such as “[m]eet and surpass supervisor’s 90 day expectations” under 12-month objectives or “[m]anage a department” under his 5-year objectives.

And that’s it – Jordan added increasingly specific goals to each topic until he was satisfied with what he had, and this whole process took him all of ten minutes to organize his goals and objectives into a coherent format.

If Jordan needed to reorganize his goals or add new high-level groups (such as 10-year goals), he could make those changes in SmartDraw in a matter of seconds. Jordan can insert new goals or objectives on his mind map with a single mouse click or a keyboard shortcut, and rearranging his goals on the mind map is just as easy.

This is just one real-world example of you can use mind maps to tackle real-world solutions quickly and more effectively than you could do otherwise.

Diagrams, charts and other visual aids can play important roles in solving business problems.  One role is in identifying problems.  Another is in drawing attention to them.  A third is in diagnosis.  And a good visual can even play a key role in presenting the solution to management.  In this post, I’ll touch on identifying and drawing attention to problems as an area where visuals have important roles to play.  In subsequent posts, I’ll look at the role visuals play in other stages of solving business problems.

Consider the bar chart in Figure 1 below. It shows the annual volume of student tests administered for one of Testing Company A’s lines of business over a five-year period.

What does it tell you? Well, not much, actually. It shows steady growth in tests administered over the five-year period. No problem, right? Now look at the chart in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows the same growth figures for Company A, however, stacked on top of Company A’s figures are the figures for Company B, the chief competitor to Company A in this line of business.

Figure 2 shows what executives at Company A considered alarming information. First, Company B was catching up – and rapidly. It had gone from about one-third of the market in year 1 to more than 40 percent in year 5. Company A had actually lost market share. Equally important, the total number of tests administered indicated the market itself was growing – and growing faster than Company A had realized. Company A was losing share in an expanding market! Needless to say, executive attention was quickly focused on this problem.

Here’s another quick example. Take a look at Figure 3 below. What does it tell you about the amount of time the workers in question (claims examiners) are spending at their work stations and how much they’re spending away from it? That should be pretty obvious: about 60 percent of their time is spent on station and about 40% is spent away from it. A logical question at this point is where is that other 40 percent going?

As Figure 4 illustrates, the examiners were spending about 40 percent of their time standing in line. Twenty percent was spent standing in line at the one, high-speed copy machine in their work area and the other 20 percent was spent standing in line at their supervisors’ desks, waiting to obtain their supervisor’s approval for a proposed resolution to a claim.

These simple little pie charts helped focus managerial attention on a problem they didn’t even know existed.

Visuals can also play a role in getting a fix on a problem, on pinning down its nature and location.

Figure 5 is a simple flowchart representation of a registration processing operation at a major testing company. The division director was concerned about the reject rate in this operation and an effort was launched to lower it.

Data regarding the reject rate were showed that the reject rate averaged 60-70 per cent per run. Of the 60-70 percent of the registration forms that were rejected, about half (30-35 percent) could be resolved by resolution clerks and the other half (another 30-35 percent) were returned to the applicants who had submitted the flawed registrations. It was clear that there was nothing wrong with the registration processing operation itself and that the problem tied to registration forms that were incomplete and that contained invalid entries. In other words, the input to the processing operation was flawed. The business problem was a lot of expensive rework, a lot of upset registrants and an increasingly concerned client.

In the first two examples, visuals played important roles in identifying and drawing attention to a problem no one knew existed. In the third example, the visual served to quantify a sensed problem and to identify faulty input as the chief cause.

In a future post, we’ll look at how visuals can also play a role in actually solving business problems.

About the Author: My name is Fred Nickols.  I am a writer, an independent consultant and a former executive.  Visual aids of one kind or another have played a central role in my work for many years.  My goals in writing for SmartDraw’s Working Smarter blog are to: (1) provide you with some first-rate content you can’t get anywhere else, (2) illustrate how important good visuals can be in communicating such content and (3) illustrate also the critical role visuals can play in solving the kinds of problems we encounter in the workplace.  I encourage you to comment on my posts and to contact me directly if you want to pursue a more in-depth discussion.

I work as a marketer for SmartDraw.com, and throughout the course of my work I often have to present proposals for new projects and initiatives to my supervisors, training sessions for new hires, and the occasional performance summary. In all of these situations I am either explicitly or implicitly expected to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, a task that I among many others find to be generally loathsome and tedious.

So, being the efficiency-minded organization that we are, members of our management team started presenting their plans and initiatives using only a single PowerPoint slide. The “single slide technique,” which is what we’ve called it since, requires using a simple mind map to outline all of your major points and sequencing using animation to reveal them piecemeal as you walk through your presentation with your audience.

Here’s an example, and yes, it uses multiple slides because SlideShare doesn’t support animation. I highly recommend expanding it to full screen so you can read it properly.

What are the benefits of this approach?

• It can be produced in just minutes;
• The presenter can refer back to previous points and topics without having to refer to an earlier slide because the older content is already on screen;
• The relationships between topics on the mind map help keep you organized;
• It doesn’t give you the opportunity to fall into bad habits such as reading your presentation word-by-word off of long series of bulleted lists – instead it forces you to adopt good speaking and presenting practices; and
• The Single Slide Presentation still gives you the ability to control the flow of your presentation using PowerPoint®’s animation capabilities to sequence the different topics and sub-topics on your mind map.

I’ve presented a handful of presentations since using this technique and it takes me fifteen minutes or less on average to prepare them. That, in my opinion, is the single greatest benefit of this technique.

Strategic planning is viewed by some as an absolute waste of time and energy and by others as an absolutely critical part of managing a business.

The object of this post is not to resolve that dispute but to provide some insights for those who wish to ensure their strategic planning efforts deliver value to their organization. There are four main points to be made in this post:

• The Value is in the Process
• Fit the Process to Your Company
• The Process is Iterative, not Linear
• It is a Human Process

The Value is in the Process

The first thing to know about strategic planning is that its greatest value is to be found in the process, not in the plan. That’s right; most of the value of strategic planning stems from the thinking, discussion, debate, analyses, insights, common understandings and commitments to action made during the process, not their documentation in the form of a written plan. This is not to say that there is no value in the plan itself but the value of the plan is far less than that obtained from the process. Graphically, this can be illustrated as shown in Figure 1. Another way of illustrating the disproportionate value from the process and the plan is a simple pie chart (see Figure 2).

Fit the Process to Your Company

The next thing to know is that one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to assume there is one right way to do strategic planning and that your company should do it that way.

To plan – strategically or otherwise – is to do two things: (1) specify a set of desired outcomes and (2) identify the actions that will lead to them. What it takes to accomplish this twofold aim varies with the type of business, the people involved, their values, the information and data available or obtainable, time pressures and many other considerations. To be sure, there are some elements of strategic planning that many people would agree should be present in all cases (e.g., a scan of the environment, mission and vision statements, objectives, strategies, action plans, etc); however, the emphasis given each will vary. For example, a non-profit company is likely to place more importance on mission than a for-profit company. Some additional variations follow.

A PEST analysis (see Figure 3) involves an examination of the political, economic, social and technological aspects of a company’s environment. In the course of performing a PEST analysis, a high-tech firm is likely to pay more attention to the technological environment than a grocery wholesaler. And a defense contractor is likely to pay more attention to the political segment of the environment than a large clothing retailer. The strategic planning process can also vary in terms of sequencing. Some argue that a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) should be performed after objectives have been established because the SWOT should focus on and apply to those objectives; others argue that a SWOT analysis should be performed in relation to the company, not its objectives and thus a SWOT analysis can and should be performed before any objectives have been established and serve as a basis for establishing those objectives. To reiterate the key point being made here: You should fit the strategic planning process to your company and its requirements instead of picking up an already-defined strategic planning process and trying to force your company into that mold.

The Process is Iterative, not Linear

Most people who have any experience with strategic planning and many authorities will agree that the process is iterative, not linear. There is a certain amount of “bouncing around” from issue to issue and there is interaction between the various stages so that each affects the other. Thus, later stages can “feed back” and lead to revisions in earlier stages and early work clearly carries implications for later stages, which is to say it “feeds forward.” Yet, despite its non-linearity, the strategic planning process is often depicted in a remarkably linear and sequential manner (see Figure 4).

Some attempt to get around this linear depiction by illustrating the process in a cyclical manner (see Figure 5 below). Yet, even a cyclical model is linear in its own way. Neither a linear or cyclical model really gets at the truly interactive and interdependent nature of the stages of strategic planning. On my part, I prefer a model like that shown in Figure 6. It, or a model like it, makes clear that there are options for moving in all directions from any one element to any other. That reflects reality.

Whatever model you choose to use, keep in mind that it will shape your thinking and your approach so choose it and use it carefully. This is especially important in light of the requirement to fit the process to your company instead of the other way around. So find one that seems reasonable and then adapt it to fit your company.

Strategic Planning is a Human Process

The last point to be made in this post is an obvious one: the strategic planning process is carried out by people (see Figure 7). There are no software packages that will decide upon a mission, interpret the implications of a complex business environment, set objectives, formulate a strategy or implement it. Consequently, another obvious point is that you need to involve the right people in the process and you need to make certain the process accommodates human beings.

Here are some factors to consider:

• Involving key stakeholders
• Bringing to bear a variety of viewpoints, especially the process perspective
• Ensuring adequate representation of functional and operational areas
• Legitimizing honest debate and disagreement
• Keeping the process open to skepticism, criticism and suggestions for improvement
• Getting your best thinkers involved, regardless of their technical specialty
• Including the decision-makers in all stages of the process

Finally, remember the age-old advice derived from centuries of military planning and operations: “No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.” You must be alert to and willing and able to adjust and adapt your strategy and tactics to the circumstances you encounter, not those you assumed or hoped would exist. Strategy, then, is always an emergent phenomenon and strategic planning is really nothing more than a process for thinking through and getting clear about the results you’re after and how you intend realizing them. All are subject to change.

About the Author: My name is Fred Nickols.  I am a writer, an independent consultant and a former executive.  Visual aids of one kind or another have played a central role in my work for many years.  My goals in writing for SmartDraw’s Working Smarter blog are to: (1) provide you with some first-rate content you can’t get anywhere else, (2) illustrate how important good visuals can be in communicating such content and (3) illustrate also the critical role visuals can play in solving the kinds of problems we encounter in the workplace.  I encourage you to comment on my posts and to contact me directly if you want to pursue a more in-depth discussion.

Introduction

You wouldn’t manage a file clerk the same way you would a research scientist, would you? Of course not; you would adjust your management practices to take into account the fact that these two people perform very different kinds of work. Therein lies the central point of this post: Management practices must be adjusted to fit the kind of work being managed.

The Mix of Work: “Canned” Procedures and “Crafted” Responses

All work falls into one of two categories: routine and non-routine. Routine work consists of activities that have been prefigured, that is, specified in advance. They are essentially “canned” procedures. Non-routine work consists of activities that are configured or “crafted” by the worker in response to the situation at hand. The work of most people consists of some mix of canned procedures and crafted responses; however, the distribution of work between the two can be markedly different from job to job. For example, the work of a food server in a fast food restaurant or an assembly line worker or that file clerk mentioned earlier is marked by a lot of canned procedures and is significantly different from the work of a design engineer, a software programmer or that research scientist mentioned earlier, which consists mostly of crafted responses.

The diagram on the right illustrates the mix of work being discussed. On the left side of the diagram the bulk of the work consists of canned procedures. On the right side most of the work consists of crafted responses. These two kinds of work – canned procedures and crafted responses – pose very different management requirements and challenges.

There are four aspects to the requirements and challenges posed by these two kinds of working activities:

1. The main measure of performance.

2. The focus of control.

3. The location of control over working.

4. The role of the worker.

The appropriate management practice for these four dimensions takes a very different form depending on which of the two kinds of working activities is being managed. These are discussed next.

The Main Measure of Performance: Compliance or Results?

The main measure of worker performance when the work consists of canned procedures is compliance with or adherence to those procedures. But, by their very nature, crafted responses cannot rely on compliance as the chief measure of performance; instead of doing what someone else has figured out, the worker must figure out what to do. Consequently, the main measure of performance with respect to non-routine work or crafted responses is the extent to which required results are realized.

The Focus of Control: the Worker or the Work?

Because compliance with procedure is the chief measure of performance regarding routine working activities, the focus of control naturally centers on the worker. Control relies on supervisors ensuring that workers follow established procedures. But because compliance is neither feasible nor the aim with respect to crafted responses, the focus of control shifts from the worker to the work itself; more specifically, to the results required. The work of the manager shifts from ensuring compliance through supervision to supporting the attainment of results.

The Location of Control over Working Activity: Management or the Worker?

When compliance is the measure of performance and the focus of control is on the worker, the location of control over working activity rests with management, often with the direct supervisors of the workers in question. But because crafted responses are at the initiative of and under the control of the worker, the location of control over working activity shifts from management to the worker. This is a hard pill for some managers to swallow.

The Role of the Worker: Instrument or Agent?

With respect to canned routines, the role of the worker is viewed as an instrument or extension of managerial will. This is because the chief measure of performance is compliance, the location of control rests with management, and the focus of control is the worker. With respect to crafted responses, the role of the worker shifts to one of being an agent acting on behalf of and in the best interests of the employer. This is because the main measure of performance is results, the focus of control is the work itself, in particular, results, and the locus of control rests with the worker.

Implications

Clearly, the two different kinds of work present very different challenges for management, not the least of which is figuring out how to fashion an approach to management that will accommodate both kinds of work.

Many current management practices have their origins in times when most of the work of most people consisted primarily of canned routines. Automation, mechanization, and the shift to knowledge work have changed all that. Many workers, if not the majority of them, are in jobs where the bulk of their working activities requires them to figure out what to do. Yet, the workers and not the work itself are still the main focus of control; management remains the location of control (even if only as an illusion) and management insists on exercising control over the workers in the mistaken belief that doing so will give them control over the work and its results; workers are still viewed as instruments of managerial will instead of as agents acting on their employer’s behalf and in their employer’s best interests; and, worst of all, managers still act as though they can demand and obtain compliance from people whose work demands of them that they craft their responses instead of carrying out canned routines. If ever there was a “disconnect,” it is between management practices that rely on exacting compliance with canned procedures intended to produce uniform results under highly standardized conditions and work that requires workers to craft their responses so as to satisfy what are often varying expectations of results under widely varying conditions.

So what’s to be done? It would be awkward and inconvenient not to mention impractical to expect managers to use one approach for canned procedures and another for crafted responses. Yet, it seems doubtful that using compliance-based approaches will work with people whose work requires them to craft their responses. Fortunately, the approach that works with crafted responses will also work with people who are expected to follow canned procedures. Only one management approach is required; unfortunately, it’s not the one that is in place today. The challenge facing management is to overhaul its own practices, to shift from controlling people and exacting compliance to supporting people and eliciting contributions; to shift from directing and demanding to supporting and enabling; to shift from viewing workers as instruments of managerial will to seeing them as agents acting on behalf of their employers; to focus not on the worker but on the work, in particular, on results.

The diagram below serves to recap and summarize the discussion above.

About the Author: My name is Fred Nickols.  I am a writer, an independent consultant and a former executive.  Visual aids of one kind or another have played a central role in my work for many years.  My goals in writing for SmartDraw’s Working Smarter blog are to: (1) provide you with some first-rate content you can’t get anywhere else, (2) illustrate how important good visuals can be in communicating such content and (3) illustrate also the critical role visuals can play in solving the kinds of problems we encounter in the workplace.  I encourage you to comment on my posts and to contact me directly if you want to pursue a more in-depth discussion.