Training a new employee is one of the biggest costs of doing business. Often, it’s intangible; hidden from view on your profit and loss statement. A new hire needs to learn – as quickly as possible – how to do the job correctly.

Industry experts estimate that the cost of the productivity that is lost as a new employee comes up to speed is 33% of their annual salary! That’s four months of wasted time.

Not to mention on-the-job-training mistakes that can cost you money and really eat into your profit margin.

Why does it take so long to break in a new employee?

Simple: We don’t give them the information they need in an easily accessible manner.

Three Simple Steps to Faster OnBoarding

Companies have reduced the time it takes to train a new employee by up to 80% with these three simple steps.

1. Make a list of all of the tasks that the new hire must perform as part of the job.

A hub-and-spoke diagram is the most effective way to show this. It allows both the trainer and trainee to see, at a glance, what tasks need to be done.

This visual should also include internal systems that an employee must learn, like the timecard system, the email system and the phone system.

2. For each regular task, carefully document the steps that must be performed.

The easiest way to record these steps is a flowchart, rather than a text document. A flowchart more easily shows the different steps that occur as the result of a decision.

3. Create a simple access system to this information using a hub-and-spoke diagram.

A hub is a place where you can group large amounts of information electronically. Link the task documentation to each shape in the hub and link to useful documents. The manuals for the phone, copiers and other internal systems are examples of this, as shown in the graphic below.

The hub becomes an on-boarding reference for a new employee, providing easy access to all the information they need. Once in place, it is available as a permanent reference. Cross-training another employee to do the job, or replacing this employee in the future, will be much easier. All your new hire has to do is open the hub then point, click and learn. It really is that easy!

The Best Tools for the Job

You could use a word processing document with links to other documents to build a hub, but it’s far easier to use a tool designed specifically for this purpose. SmartDraw is that tool.

SmartDraw is designed to help you build interactive hub-and-spoke diagrams (mind maps). It lets you link them together effortlessly. You don’t need to waste time creating and formatting your visuals – SmartDraw does it all automatically. Want to export them to a Word® document or PowerPoint® presentation? With SmartDraw, you can do it in a single click! Download a free trial of SmartDraw today!

Successful business people know that to communicate effectively, you need visuals. Studies have shown that communicating with visuals is up to six times more effective than using words alone.

But if you’ve struggled to come up with effective presentation visuals using Excel^® charts, you aren’t alone.

Excel offers several types of charts and graphs with some customization features. The problem is, unless you’re a “power” Excel user, their charts can be difficult and frustrating to use.

Even if you are a wizard with Excel charts, there is only so much you can do with them. Excel is an excellent spreadsheet program but as far as visual presentation, well, let’s just say it’s an excellent spreadsheet program.

Charts that are Quick, Easy, and Intuitive

SmartDraw, on the other hand, is designed for creating great visuals. It does most of the work for you, automatically. Unlike Excel, which requires the average person to spend a lot of time hunting through tool bars, drop down menus, and so forth, SmartDraw offers options that are easy and intuitive. Most of your work can be done directly on the chart itself.

Let’s look at a very simple Excel data table and use it to create a basic line chart using both Excel and SmartDraw.

In Excel, we have to click the graphs tab from our spreadsheet, which opens a default graph on the screen. After serveral clicks, and probably a few searches on the “Help” tab, we have defined data from the table above, our Excel chart looks like this:

This chart is a mess and, frankly, the task of completing it can be daunting if you aren’t experienced using the charting features in Excel. Clearly, there’s going to be a lot of work needed to clean this up and make it presentable.

Okay, let’s bring in the same Excel data table using SmartDraw. We begin by selecting a line chart template and clicking on the “Import from Excel” button on the SmartPanel. SmartDraw asks us to select the data we want to use from our table. Next, we click on one of the standard chart formats and SmartDraw gives us this as a starting point:

What a difference! This chart is almost presentation ready right now. In fact, you can click on the data labels, type in the title and information you want, and have a very basic chart that’s ready to go in seconds.

Now let’s go back over to the clean-up job on our Excel chart. After several more points, clicks and a considerable amount of jumping between toolbars, we have a chart that looks like this:

One of the first things you’ll notice about the above chart is that the X-axis labels lie below the “zero” line on the vertical axis. Because we have some negative numbers, those labels run right through the data on the chart. This is the default setting in Excel, and while it can be corrected, the fix isn’t at all intuitive. (In fact, if you haven’t done it before, you’ll probably need to do a web search to find the answer, which is what we had to do – and, well… good luck with that!) If your data include negative numbers, this can be a frustrating situation. Chances are you’ve probably seen a PowerPoint^® presentation with a chart that looked like this ugly thing.

Let’s go back to our SmartDraw chart. Unlike Excel, SmartDraw actually lets us point, click and edit virtually any of our changes right on the chart.

With a few clicks, you can see that we’ve added a title, some labels and a splash of color to our SmartDraw chart below. This chart was actually created in less time than the Excel chart above. Which of these two charts would you rather use at your meeting or presentation?

You could certainly stop at this point and have a very nice-looking chart to present. But let’s go just a bit further and add a picture to the background to really give this visual some pizzazz. There’s really no reason to just inform our audience when we can also entertain and impress them, as well.

In just a couple of minutes, you can make your SmartDraw chart look like this. Compare this chart to the ones you’re used to seeing in meetings and presentations. This is just one example, created easily, with no training or special skills using SmartDraw.

Because SmartDraw is a visual processor, it allows you to take your charts into new and exciting dimensions that just aren’t available to you in Excel. But because SmartDraw works seamlessly with the entire suite of Office^® products, you can use your SmartDraw charts in Word^® documents or PowerPoint presentations with a single click.

Get Started Now

Why use ordinary charts when SmartDraw visuals can be created quickly, easily, and are proven to be more effective? Impress your boss and your audience! Discover for yourself the powerful benefits of SmartDraw by downloading a trial.

"What Does That Mean?"

Those are the last words you want to hear from your audience! Have you heard the phrase "Bite the wax tadpole"? Are you just as confused as we are?

When the Coca-Cola Company was first introducing its product in China in 1928, it was searching from among the 40,000 Chinese characters (from which about 200 would make the sound, “ko-ka-ko-la”) without creating a nonsensical or adverse meaning. While the company was searching for the right character set, Chinese shopkeepers impatiently made their own signs without regard to meaning. Translation problems occurred. For example, in many dialects, one symbol for “la” means “wax.” As a result, signs were made that, when pronounced, created nonsensical meanings, such as “female horse fastened with wax,” “wax-flattened mare,” or “bite the wax tadpole.”

(Just for fun: we’ve uncovered some other humorous translation errors that you’ll find toward the end of this blog post.)

Visual Grammar Bridges the Language Barrier

Today, the rapid growth of visual communication in business can create a similar problem faced by Coca-Cola in China. Visual communication, just like the written or spoken word, can easily be misunderstood if not communicated properly.

Until now, there has been a lack of common rules – a language, if you will – for communicating with visuals. What the creator of the visual wants to convey is not always easily understood by those receiving it. This reduces the effectiveness of the visual for widespread communication.

To solve this communication problem, SmartDraw developed Visual Grammar—a set of simple rules that ensures effective visual communication. Just as a word processor automatically applies proper formatting to text documents, SmartDraw automatically applies Visual Grammar rules to every visual. As a result, the visual language barrier is bridged.

• Visuals are consistently formatted, no matter who creates them.
• Attention is focused on the message – not the formatting.
• Productivity improves because the potential for miscommunication is reduced.

Look at the flowchart below. The logic flows from the left to right, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top. The shapes used for each step are random. Instructions are virtually incomprehensible. Do you want to attempt to figure this out? Do you suppose the author’s audience even tried?

Basics of Visual Grammar

Visual Grammar is based on two simple rules:

1. The Consistency Rule
2. The One-Page Rule

The Consistency Rule

The appearance of equivalent shapes, lines and text in a visual should be consistent (i.e. the same).

For example, our flowchart uses the same color, font and size for each shape. Only the start and end shapes have a different outline to indicate their status as starting and ending points.

Gratuitous use of different colors, sizes, spacing, shapes and fonts only distract the reader, just as they do in text. By eliminating this distraction, the reader can concentrate on the content of the visual.

The One-Page Rule

The visual must fit on one page and the text must remain readable. If the visual is intended to be viewed on screen, consider the “page” to be the area of the screen that is visible without having to scroll.

This rule is common sense, but it is also the most often violated. What happens when there is too much information to fit on one page? The answer is to create a hierarchy of multiple linked visuals, each of which does fit on one page.

These are Funny – If They Don’t Happen to You!

Good visual communication means not letting your message get lost in translation. As promised, below are some translated messages that didn’t quite hit the mark.

• Athens hotel - Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11am daily.
• Leipzig elevator - Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit up.
• Tokyo hotel - It is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such a thing is please not read this notice.
• Bangkok dry cleaners - Drop your trousers here for best results.
• Sarajevo hotel - The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
• Hong Kong tailor shop - Ladies may have a fit upstairs.
• Moscow hotel - You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday.
• Swiss menu - Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.
• Hong Kong advertisement - Teeth extracted by the latest methodists.
• Copenhagen airline - We take your bags and send them in all directions.
• Acapulco hotel - The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

Have you suffered from or witnessed a case where yours or someone else's message was lost in translation? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Onboarding can be a daunting task for all those involved, including the new hire, the manager, and the training manager. However, effectively using visuals can put everyone at ease and, more importantly, using a consistent training plan with effective visuals will put everyone on the same page and ensure that your new hires are set up for success. A common worry of training managers is if new employees are actually completing their training programs and are truly understanding what it means to complete their jobs successfully. Starting a new job can be rather intimidating and it is important to ensure that new employees have access to all the information they need and are retaining the information they receive. We've gathered some of the visuals that our training manager uses to train SmartDraw employees. Since a large part of training our employees includes ensuring that our new employees understand how to use our software, there can be an intimidating amount of information to receive, process, and apply. While some of these visuals may seem particular to other software companies, we have applied these same visuals to our customers in other industries.

Onboarding Resource Hub

We've written about how Hubs can be extremely valuable to teams and new employees previously, but we want to emphasize how they truly benefit both new employees and training managers. Hubs provide a central location for all the information that a training manager must communicate to new hires and ensures that new hires will always have direct access to all the information they need to succeed in their role.

Some information you might consider adding to the Resource Hub includes:

• An organization or team chart that clarifies who the new hire reports to and where they should direct any questions. You might consider linking to your company's VPM Collection, which connects the organization chart to the job roles of each employee.
• Videos that explain aspects of the company or, if you are also a software company, tutorials of how to use your software. If you are not a software company, but your new employees should be learning how to use software that your company uses, you can link to videos that explain how to use that software.
• Any support materials that you present to your new employees, such as hand outs, diagrams, instructions, forms, and any presenter notes.

Using a Workbook or Daily Log

Our training manager gives our new employees booklets with daily log sheets that allows the new employees and their managers to track their progress during their training. Even though email is a preferred and more efficient method of communication, the Daily Log provides your new employees with a more personal or intimate method to communicate to their manager and training manager.

Our booklets contain schedules for activities, knowledge checks, and "Daily Log Pages." There is a Daily Log Page for each day of our training boot camp and trainees are asked to hand write their responses to the following questions:

1. Name one thing you learned today and that you can apply to your role tomorrow.
2. What challenge did you discover today?
3. Now that you are aware of that challenge, how will you overcome it?
4. Name 3 positives, areas that you found beneficial as part of your training.
5. Name 3 deltas, areas that can be improved in future boot camps.

Ensuring Retention with Knowledge Checks

Often it is impossible to tell if new employees are actually processing all the new information they need to know until it is too late! The last thing you want is for your new employee to be in a critical situation and not know what to do just because he or she doesn't remember the basic training from the first week on the job.

At SmartDraw we use Knowledge Checks throughout the training process. The terminology is intentional. The term "test" conjures us mixed emotions and, at time, negative feelings. With the term "knowledge check," we are confirming if that information from a training session is retained. If not, it will need to be reviewed. The Knowledge Check is a tool that can be used for the following:

Providing the instructor or presenter with the focus of their sessions

• Providing feedback to the instructor as to how they delivered their training
• Confirming whether the participant was focused and participating in the training
• Assisting in determining the level of difficulty of the curriculum or subject matter

We use our survey system to create tests for our new employees and include short exercises in the Daily Log workbooks for our new employees.

Creating Accountability with Goals Worksheets

In order to continue the momentum of our training sessions, or Boot Camp as we call it, our training manager designed a 30 Day Performance Plan. The idea is that each new hire will review their Daily Log entries of their challenges and how they will overcome them. Based on what they wrote, they will then develop three goals that they plan to achieve in their first 30 days officially on the job. At SmartDraw, we utilized the SMART goal methodology.

The Goals Worksheet allows the new hire to go through a questioning process in a step by step manner and they are kept accountable by setting up meetings with their supervisors to determine their success in reaching their goals. So, participants complete the goal worksheet independently and then discuss their goals with their manager to create an action plan. After 30 days, the new hire and manager should meet to discuss how successful he or she was in reaching the goals.

By using a collection of visuals, such as those outlined above, you will ensure a successful onboarding process for each and every employee. This process keeps all those involved accountable and ensure consistent training. What do you think of our proposed methods? What do you do to ensure your new employees are trained appropriately?

How long do you typically spend finding that one document that you never seem to be able to find, but always seem to need? SmartDraw’s hub template is great for a quick and easy way to organize your documents, links, and other SmartDraw files. If you are spending all this time searching for important documents and links, think about the time that the rest of your team is spending just looking for a resource that they need to do their work everyday! Hubs are a great tool for organizing team documents and resources and can even bring your new employee's up to speed more quickly. Instead of giving your new employee a thick binder full of information or a long laundry list of links, hubs allow you to communicate a wealth of information organized into logical, easily-digestible groupings.

Creating a SmartDraw Hub

Starting a Hub in SmartDraw is simple. To start, you simply click the Hub template icon under Popular.

Using the SmartPanel docked to the template, you can quickly add new documents, visuals, and websites, or even other hubs. Hubs let you mix and match the type of information you organize from documents to presentation, spreadsheets, visuals, hyperlinks, or even other hubs. For quickly creating your Hub, you can use all the same shortcuts that you can use in other SmartDraw visuals and group the resources in logical hierarchies.

Creating a Team Resource Hub

When managing a team, it can be difficult to make sure everyone knows where (and has access to!) all the project files and resources your team needs to track and complete their work. Each team or department should have their own unique hub with important team information, resources, and a summary of the projects your team is working on. When considering what you want to include in your team hub, think about what you most often receive the most questions about and what might be useful for a new employee joining your team. Here is a sample IT Department Hub:

This IT Team Hub includes a team chart and contact information, both of which are useful for helping your team understand the structure of the team and contacting other team members in IT emergencies. The Hub also includes some documents that are commonly referenced and documents that the team uses for managing the computer systems of the company. Each of the nodes on the Hub is hyperlinked to the document. This is easy to do using the SmartPanel Add Hyperlink button in the SmartPanel.

Your team might also find it beneficial to use icons to indicate what type of hyperlink each node links to. We have some different icons you can select by using the Change Icon button in the SmartPanel.

If your Hub starts to get a little difficult to manage, you may want to break up your Hub into a couple different Hubs. This might be especially useful for a Marketing Department with several brands, projects, or product releases to manage. You can use the SmartPanel button New Linked Hub to start building a new hub that is automatically linked to the original hub. Of course, if you already have an existing Hub, you can hyperlink to that SmartDraw file as well.

Tips for your Team Resource Hub

When thinking about documents or links to include in your hub, consider the following:

• What are the documents or links that you most reference (and help you in your work everyday)?
• When your team gains a new member, what documents do you find yourself sharing over and over?
• What are the questions your team keeps asking?
• What projects are your team working to complete?

A great presentation is one that connects with the audience. The most impressive data, analysis or statistical information is useless if it can’t be easily and quickly understood. So don’t just tell your story, show it!

Charts are a great way to present information that can be visualized, processed and understood by your clients and colleagues. The easiest, fastest and most powerful tool for creating great charts is SmartDraw.

Presenting Data

Data-driven charts allow the audience to perceive your message at a glance, rather than puzzling over a list or table of data. Furthermore, it is easier (and more persuasive) for the audience to see trends and comparisons on a chart than to calculate them from the raw data. With your chart as support, you can then speak to your conclusions, insights and recommendations—both showing and telling the audience your message.

There are four types of charts that cover most of the data you want to present: the pie chart (and its cousin the relative value chart), the vertical bar chart, the horizontal bar chart and the line chart.

The Right Chart Depends on the Message

As with any presentation or document, you must first understand the message you wish to convey. After that, you can choose the right data set and choose the right chart. The last step is to make your chart both visually compelling and quickly understandable by your audience.

In general, one of biggest mistakes in creating graphics for a presentation or document is using the wrong visual for the message. This is especially true when presenting data. The wrong chart only serves to confuse the audience or reader.

From Message to Data to Chart

If your message is about the share or distribution of a total, a pie chart or relative value chart is appropriate. If you are comparing shares from different categories, then a stacked bar chart works better than multiple pie charts.

If your message is about a comparison of values, the bar chart is the most appropriate chart. Again, if you have multiple categories, such as years or product lines, a grouped bar chart or a pairing of bar charts work best.

If your message is about a trend over time, the line chart not only shows the values, but also gives a visual feel for the rates of change. To show values from discrete time frames, such as sales total per quarter, a vertical bar chart may work better than a line.

Charts created for frequency distributions and correlations will use line and vertical bar charts.

Visual Impact

You've got your message, your data and the right chart type. But how do you make it persuasive and memorable?

First, consider incorporating images into your charts. Image charts are not only eye-catching and memorable, but also help your audience grasp quantities and relative values quickly.

When not using an image chart, you can still follow some guidelines to make sure the chart supports your message as strongly as possible. Use color (and lack of color) to compare, contrast and highlight the part of the picture that aligns with your message. Don't clutter your chart with too many gridlines, data labels and axis labels. Only show what is needed to draw the viewer to your message.

When you’re finished creating your visual, you can insert your SmartDraw charts into a Word^® document or create a PowerPoint® presentation with a single click!

Get Started Now

Why use ordinary charts when SmartDraw visuals can be created quickly, easily, and are proven to be more effective? Impress your clients and your colleagues! Discover for yourself the powerful benefits of SmartDraw.

Genius. Legend. Visionary.

These are but a few of the ways people have described the late, great Steve Jobs But beyond his business acumen, the man behind Apple® computers and Pixar Animation Studios was perhaps the greatest keynote speaker of our time. There are more than 57,000 links to his presentations on YouTube.

What made his presentations so amazing that people all over the world want to see them? More importantly, how can the rest of us learn from Steve to inspire our audiences the way he did? In her excellent book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, Carmine Gallo takes us behind the scenes and offers Steve’s ten secrets that you can use for presentations that will inform, engage and, yes, astound your audience.

Ten Secrets for Insanely Great Presentations

According to Carmine Gallo, before planning your presentation, it is critical to know the answer to the question that matters most to your audience: "Why should I care?" It is important to know how the point you are making or the product you are selling will change or improve the audience's lives. Here are Steve Jobs' ten secrets for giving great presentations:

1. Plan in analog. Brainstorm in advance of creating your presentation. You can use a pen and paper, a whiteboard or, better yet, a mind map like this:

DO NOT use PowerPoint to outline your presentation. It should only be used in the final step! (More on this later.)

2. Create Twitter-friendly headlines. Describe your product or service in 140 characters or less. Preferably, much less. Steve introduced the MacBook Air as simply, "The world's thinnest notebook." About the first-generation iPod, he tweeted, "It's one thousand songs in your pocket."

3. Introduce the villain.  Steve saw a presentation as a three-act play that must tell a story, but what is a story without a hero and a villain? Before he introduced the famous 1984 ad to a group of Apple salespeople, he set the stage, casting “Big Blue” as Goliath. ”IBM wants it all,” he warned, and defiantly asserted that only Apple stood in its way. His dramatic moment sent the crowd into frenzy.

While the villain doesn’t have to be a competitor, it must be a common foe that your audience will want to join with you in rallying against. Your product is then revealed as the conquering hero.

4. Create visual slides. As Carmine writes, “Neuroscientists are finding that the best way to communicate information is through text and pictures, not text alone.” As for bullet points, Steve never, ever, used them and neither should you. Carmine has a section in her book titled, “Bullets Kill” that describes why you should avoid using PowerPoint to create your presentation.

Think about what happens when you open PowerPoint. A blank-format slide appears that contains space for words—a title and subtitle. This presents a problem. There are very few words in a Steve Jobs presentation. Now think about the first thing you see in the drop-down menu under Format: Bullets & Numbering. This leads to the second problem. There are no bullet points in a Steve Jobs presentation. The software itself forces you to create a template that represents the exact opposite of what you need to speak like Steve!

Take a look at the following comparison of bullet-point slides compared to the same information, presented visually.

5. Practice, a lot. Most people read their presentations off of their PowerPoint slides. This is why most presentations are boring. Steve treated every slide as piece of poetry and every presentation as a theatrical event. He wasn’t a natural presenter; he worked very hard at it. Rehearse your presentation, toss the script and look at your audience. Practice at making it look effortless.

6. Obey the ten-minute rule.  It’s a scientific fact that the brain gets tired after ten minutes. Steve’s presentations typically lasted an hour and a half. He would break them up into short intervals of ten minutes or less by interspersing videos, demonstrations, or guest speakers. Don’t let your audience get tired or you’ll lose them.

A great way to keep your audience’s attention when presenting information is though sequencing, which builds the story within a visual one step at a time, making the information much easier to digest.

7. Dress up your numbers. We often deal with large numbers or data that an audience can’t comprehend without context. Breaking them down and presenting numbers visually can overcome this. Notice how much more effectively the chart below illustrates sales figures as opposed to a matrix of data.

8. Reveal a 'holy smokes' moment. Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Steve Jobs always produced a memorable moment in a presentation. When he introduced the MacBook Air, he told his audience that while everyone had seen manila envelopes floating around the office, what they had never seen was someone pulling a notebook computer out of one—which is precisely what he did. The audience went wild and images of that moment remain emblazoned in people’s minds more than 4 years later.

9. Sell dreams, not products. When it looked at the iPod, the world saw a music player. What Steve Jobs saw was a tool to enrich people’s lives. Howard Schultz of Starbucks didn’t have a passion to sell coffee; his vision was to create an experience: a ‘third place’ between home and work where people would want to gather. The dream met the customer’s need and the product sale took care of itself.

10. Have fun! When was the last time you saw someone enjoying giving a presentation? Steve Jobs had fun in every keynote. He made jokes at his own expense. While most people give presentations to deliver information, Steve always created an experience that his audience would enjoy and remember. Most importantly, he sold them on becoming a part of his dream, not his product.

How SmartDraw Will Help You Knock Their Socks Off

SmartDraw is the best tool for helping you to create an insanely great presentation – it offers mind maps and storyboards for the creative process and an array of templates for creating amazing visuals. One of the great things about SmartDraw is that you don’t have to be able to draw to use it—everything is automated and simple.

PowerPoint, on the other hand, sucks you into thinking about slides, transitions, animations and themes without carefully considering more important concepts like content, message, and sequence of information. As mentioned, the very design of the software forces you to use text and bullets that are the exact opposite of a great Steve Jobs type presentation!

You can build a well-organized, visually rich and animated presentation using SmartDraw. Once your work is finished, SmartDraw will convert it into a PowerPoint slideshow that is ready to present with one click. Amazing but true!

Check out this tutorial to help you get started using SmartDraw to create your next presentation.

Visuals! Skeptical? We've all heard the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words," and it's true – what takes one thousand words to explain correctly can be described much more easily using a simple picture.

Not only is it easier to communicate something using a picture, but it's also much easier for people to remember things that have been communicated to them visually. Psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University has studied the art of communication, and his studies have shown that:

• People remember 10% of what they hear;
• 20% of what they read; and
• 80% of what they see and do.

Most people are visual learners; a recent study by the U.S. Federal Government suggested that up to 83% of human learning occurs visually. The study also indicated that information which is communicated visually is retained up to six times greater than information which is communicated by spoken word alone.

Still not convinced? Below are four visual versus text comparisons of the same information. Which of these engages you more quickly and creates the "a-ha" moment first?

Comparison 1: Note to Webmaster

Text

Dear Webmaster,
I'd like you to make a slight change to SmartDraw.com's page:
Please make the font underneath the big image on top of the page a little larger than it is currently. You know the text that I'm talking about? The text to the left of the "play video" image? That text. It needs to be made a bit bigger so it's easier to read.
And I don't mean ALL of the text to the left of the "play video image" – just the sub-header. You know that text which is in bold just above all of the other text? That text.

The text in the rest of the paragraph. Just the bold text in the sub-header. It needs to be bigger; maybe 14pt or so.
Please let me know if you need further clarification.

Thanks,
Manager

Visual

Dear Webmaster,
Please modify SmartDraw.com's page. See below:

Thanks,
Manager

Winner: Visual!

The visual version is indisputably clearer. There is a word bubble which points directly at the sub-header I want modified and I even drew a box around the text in question for good measure. As for the written version, who knows what the webmaster would change??

Comparison 2: Restroom Location at a Restaurant

Text

Directions from the front door:

1. Walk past the cashier and turn left.

2. Turn left and walk straight past all the tables.

3. Walk into the door in front of you..

4. When you enter door, you will see doors for the men and women restrooms.

Visual

Winner: Visual!

After seeing the visual, let's think of all the possibilities for confusion in the text directions. If the person did not know to make the first left, then they might end up in the kitchen! The visual clearly shows the path to be taken to the restrooms.

Comparison 3: Company Sales History

Text

• In 2008, Standard mobile phone sold approximately 22.1 million units. In the same year, 6.1 million units of Smart Phones were sold.
• In 2009, standard phones sales dropped by 7 million units compared to the previous, while Smart Phones increased by over 2.5 million units.
• By 2010, Smart Phones passed standard phones in total units sold by nearly double.
• In 2011, Smart Phones sold 24.7 million units, while standard phones continued to decline only selling 5.7 million units.

Visual

Winner: Visual!

I don't know about you, but after the second bullet point, I could barely remember the numbers from the first bullet point. The bullet points have several numbers being compared and it is far easier to understand the relations between the numbers by looking at the chart that clearly shows the trends and relationships over time.

Comparison 4: Department Organizational Structure

Text

• Bill Jones is the Marketing Director for the company.
• Natalie Ryan reports to Bill Jones and supervises the Graphics Coordinator Samantha Davis.
• Connor Michaels is also a mid-level manager serving as the Website Manager. Travis Duncan, the Web Coordinator, reports to Connor.
• Jan Smith is the head Copywriter and Editor and manages one other Staff Writer Jeremy Yates.
• Thomas Dodd manages the internet Marketing strategy and supervises Carlos Lopez, who serves as the team’s Marketing Analyst.

Visual

Winner: Visual!

It is infinitely easier to understand the marketing departments organization by looking at the visual than by reading the bullet points above. With SmartDraw, you can even add photographs of each of the employees into the organization chart. Check out how to do that here.

As you can see from the above examples, written text is not always the easiest way to absord and comprehend information. With visuals, you can more quickly comprehend information and recall it from memory more easily. Need more examples? Take a look at all the examples within SmartDraw and imagine how much more difficult it would be to understand the written version of that information. You can see all the examples by downloading a copy of SmartDraw.

Every organization has one: The employee that we can't do without.

"Only Brian knows how to generate the monthly sales report."

"Mary is the only person who can enter the payroll data."

"Without Jack, we can't restart the server."

We have nightmares about them leaving. We struggle when they are sick or on vacation. How did we get into this mess? Simple: we never documented what they know and what they do.

Three Simple Steps to Achieve Peace of Mind

You can quickly document the work any employee does using these three steps:

Step 1: Make a list of the regular tasks that each employee does.

A visual hub-and-spoke diagram is a nice way to show this.

Step 2: For each regular task, carefully document the steps that must be performed.

The easiest way to record these steps is a flowchart, rather than a text document. A flowchart can more easily show the different steps that occur as the result of a decision.

Step 3: Make the information easily accessible to other employees and train them.

Linking the flowcharts to the hub diagram is a very easy way for anyone to find each regular task, and then look up the steps for each. Make sure other employees know where this documentation is and train them to perform each one as a backup to the person who normally does the work.

This kind of documentation can be stored on a server that can be accessed by everyone and becomes an important resource to your organization. Once you document these regular tasks, you'll be surprised at how many improvements you can spot and how much you can improve the efficiency of your team. Once your people are cross trained, you may also realize that you can get the job done with fewer employees and save money too.

Check out how SmartDraw's Visual Process Management makes business process documentation infinitely easier!

Other Uses For Your Process Maps

The first thing you should do with your process map is show it to the people who actually perform the operation it describes. Do they actually follow this process? You may be amazed to find how much the actual process differs from how you think it is being done. A process map can be used to agree on a standard procedure for an operation and make sure everyone follows it. This cuts down on errors and can lower costs and delay. Suppose a more expensive shipping method is being used unnecessarily?

The second thing you should do is step back and take a look at the process. Is it the most efficient way to get the job done? Can it be simplified? You can't optimize a process unless you can describe the way it's being done now. In our example, four different shipping methods are being used. Is this necessary?

Finally, once you are satisfied with the process, you can document it with the flowchart and use it to train newcomers to the job. Post it on the wall where the work is done. It's also a good idea to review the process with the people doing it periodically to make sure that it's still being followed, or determine whether it needs to be updated.

Many of our customers, such as L+L Printers, used SmartDraw to document their processes and improve their productivity. We have a great customer profile video where you can learn more. Go ahead and try working out your daily processes and building flowcharts. If you want to use the flowchart I created in this article, you can use the link below to download it. You will need a version of SmartDraw on your desktop to view the file. If you do not already have SmartDraw on your desktop, you can download a free trial here.

Try out SmartDraw's flowchart templates today!

This is a guest blog entry by RuthJoy Razon, SmartDraw Software’s Training and Development Manager. And, yes, she actually made this family emergency plan. And, no, we didn’t pay her to do it!

What if my phone ran out of battery? What would I do if I didn’t have access to my computer or iPad? What if we lost power all together? What would we do? How would I communicate with my family to find out if they were okay?  In the state of an emergency or natural disaster, this and many other questions and concerns rushed through my head. This led me to develop Our Family Emergency Plan.

As a San Diego resident, I am not a stranger to natural disasters. In the past five years we have experienced some major disasters from the Wildfires of October 2007 that destroyed at least 1,500 homes and over 500,000 acres to the Massive Power Outage in September 2011 that impacted 5 million homes to a number of earthquakes as high as 5.9 on the Richter scale. And just this past weekend, there were earthquakes in southern California.

What my family needed

As a first generation Filipino- American, I have had to assimilate and learn about the American culture. As a result, I have also had to translate some of the American cultural norms to members of my immediate and extended family.  I created this Family Emergency Plan with my family in mind.  For my parents’ generation, English was not their first language so I knew whatever I developed needed to be intuitive and user friendly for my aunts and uncles. In the state of an emergency, I also know that I cannot count on my family having access to their computers assuming we have little or no power during a natural disaster. It is for this reason that I chose to use a collection of visuals and planned for the entire plan to be available via hard copy.

Getting Started

If you’re planning on creating your own Family Emergency Plan, I have some advice:

How I used SmartDraw templates

Each visual was intentional and well thought out. When communicating visually, you have to take into account basic elements such as color, size, shape, and text. In a family of fifty, where ages range dramatically, you may also need to consider the terminology or language used as well.

I based the emergency plan on the information found on two websites: FEMA and the American Red Cross.  There is a wealth of information that can be found online, the key is to be able to narrow it down. I recognized that my budget wasn’t sufficient to create complete emergency backpacks for 15 households and that I would not have the time to go to each household to make sure their homes were earthquake or fire safe. With that said, I decided that I would give that responsibility to each household.

Emergency Visuals for the Home

Emergency Preparedness Checklist

I knew that if I made the kit too big, it would appear to be too complicated or time consuming. So, I limited the “Emergency Preparedness Checklist” to two pages.  There were 6 Key Areas: how to create an emergency plan, how to prepare a disaster supply kit, a home hazard scavenger hunt, if you need to evacuate what you should do, if you need to evacuate and you are sure you have time, and general fire safety. In addition, I also included several social media resources for those family members who wish to follow on twitter or like on facebook or simply to allow them to have easy access to the FEMA, Red Cross, as well as San Diego and Bay Area emergency information.

The above visual is just a glimpse of the list I put together for my family. Click these links to download both SmartDraw files:

Emergency Preparedness Checklist Part 1

Emergency Preparedness Checklist Part 2

Family Household Phone Tree

Through the combination of data and phone plans, our mobile devices enable us to be truly mobile.  We have no need to be tied to our computers as our phones enable us to have similar, if not identical, access.  Yet, it may not be safe to assume that everyone is on email and everyone in your family has a data plan or texting capabilities. This is the case among several of my more “seasoned” relatives.  Thus, the development of a classic phone tree was necessary.  I divided the phone tree into local, statewide, and out of state family members. I wanted to account for the fact that during an emergency, local phone lines will be highly congested.  By establishing an out-of-state contact, you are more likely to be able to make contact. This led me to designate key points of contact (1) southern California, (1) northern California, and (1) Out-of-State. In addition, I developed a flowchart providing the directions as to how to use the Phone Tree.  It is designed not only in case of an emergency, but if there is news such as a birth in the family.

Here is a part of the family phone tree I made:

To download the full SmartDraw file, use this link:

Family Phone Tree SmartDraw File

I even made flowchart that outlines the instructions for how to use the phone tree (Click the image to enlarge):

For the SmartDraw file with instructions, use this link:

How to use Phone Tree SmartDraw File

Emergency Visuals for the Car

Make a Plan in a Moving Vehicle

When in an emergency, we are faced with trying to decide what our next steps should be. Do we rush home? Who will pick up the kids? Should I pick up some food and supplies? To help reduce panic when faced with questions like these, I wanted to develop a simple visual that would walk an individual through some basic steps to ensure their safety before looking into the safety and location of others. I found graphics online that helped me illustrate what actions to take and I could incorporate into the visuals I made with SmartDraw.

Download the full SmartDraw file here:

Emergency Plan In Your Car SmartDraw file

Family Households & Offices

Before evacuating or leaving their current location, I thought it was important that each family member ensure that other members in the area have transportation. In order to ensure that this took place, we would have to know not only the locations of their homes, but also their work locations. You might also consider adding the locations of schools and child care centers that your family utilizes in case the emergency took place during school hours.

Putting it all Together

The visuals were part of a larger gift. I purchased bright red backpacks, hand crank radio flashlights, and a first aid kit for each household.  On Christmas Day, I passed out the emergency back packs to each of the 15 households in my family.  Then, I explained each visual. By the time I was done walking everyone through their backpacks I was overwhelmed with hugs and kissed from each family. Prior to that date, I had been reaching out to gather information from each household and the whole package allowed them to see the true value of having this information at hand. They were skeptical when they first heard what I was developing and they were shocked that it was so easy for me to make something so professional-looking.

Other Visuals You Could Include

• Pocket or wallet size version of the plan – two versions: Adults and Children
• Floor plan of your home and the location of your meeting spot near the house and in the neighborhood.  Include the evacuation paths.
• Head shots of each family member with a brief description on the back of each photo (name, nicknames, birthdates, height, weight, eye and hair color, allergies, medications, unique identifiers such as tattoos or birthmarks).