All Archives

• How to Improve Efficiency and Productivity with Visual Communication
  [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
• Using Mind Maps in the Real World #4 – Instant Presentations
  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
• Using Mind Maps in the Real World #3 – Preparing for a Meeting with Clients or Partners
  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
• Using Mind Maps in the Real World #2 – Creating Meeting Agendas
  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
• Creating a Visual Company: What It Means and Why Productivity Hinges upon It
  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
• Using Mind Maps in the Real World #1 – Setting Goals
  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
• The Many Roles Visuals Play in Solving Business Problems
  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 Single Slide Presentation
  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
• Thinking about Strategic Planning
  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. Figure 1 – Process Value vs Plan Value The object of this post is not to resolve that dispute but to
• Fitting Your Management Practices to the Kind of Work being Managed
  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
• SmartDraw.com’s Strategic Planning Process from Start to Finish
  In my last post I introduced “Visual Strategic Planning,” a simple methodology that improves any strategic planning process by making it easier : To organize work among the members of the strategic planning committee or team by using mind
• Strategic Planning for the Strategically Impaired
  As a former head of strategic planning and management services at a $500M company, I can say without equivocation that the topic of strategic planning is an absolute quagmire of competing and conflicting models, concepts, and practices. For many people
• Visual Strategic Planning from Start to Finish
  Let’s face it – although most companies have probably heard of strategic planning and have done some on occasion, most do not have a well-defined process for doing it. And that’s understandable – strategic planning is a fuzzy and
• Introduction to Visual Strategic Planning
  I spent most of the space in my most recent post, “ Four Reasons Why Productive People Hate Strategic Planning ,” decrying the barbarically tedious nature of most strategic planning processes. To recap, most strategic planning processes: Take
• Four Reasons Why Productive People Hate Strategic Planning
  I have a confession to make – I consider myself to be extremely productive employee; even on days when I’m off my game I probably accomplish twice as much as the average person (and twice as modest about it.) Like most diligent people, most
• A Strategic Planning Tool: The Goals Grid
  One of the major products of any strategic planning process is a set of strategic goals and objectives. In this regard, the Goals Grid (see Figure 1) is a useful and flexible strategic planning tool. Below are listed some of its many uses: prompt and
• How Visual Aids Facilitate Strategic Thinking & Planning
  The title of this post suggests that visual aids can facilitate strategic thinking and planning and indeed they can. They can help focus thinking and discussion; they can clarify complex relationships; and they can illustrate abstract concepts. As the
• Fit & Fitness: The Yin & Yang of Organizational Sustainability
  Figure 1 - Sustainability Nowadays there is a great deal of talk about “sustainability” as it relates to organizations. Yet, for all the talk, it sometimes seems like wishful (or wistful) thinking. I think it’s an eminently practical
• Three Kinds of Business Strategy
  Figure 1 - Three Kinds of Strategy There are at least three basic kinds of strategy with which people must concern themselves in the world of business: (1) just plain strategy or strategy in general, (2) corporate strategy, and (3) competitive strategy
• Lessons in Bad Management: Felix the Flying Frog
  I first heard the parable of Felix the Flying Frog in the early 1970s. It appears in many places nowadays and its author is unknown. I think its staying power owes to the many points it illustrates – some subtly and some not so subtly. It has great
• Getting from Losses to Commitments: The Change Acceptance Cycle
  The purpose of this post is to review The Change Acceptance Cycle shown in Figure 1 and to extract from it some pointers for managers caught up in organizational change. The Change Acceptance Cycle Let’s start in the upper left, with a common form
• Corporate Culture: A Case of Monkey See, Monkey Do?
  Did you ever wonder how your company’s culture – that set of beliefs, traditions, and behavioral norms that determines “the way things work around here” – came to be? Or why, when you try to change it, it seems so resistant
• From Start Up to Shut Down: The Rise and Fall of an Organization
  Most people agree that organizations have a life cycle; that, like people, they pass through some identifiable stages. Some see seven stages, some see as many as eleven. All agree that movement from one stage to the next must be managed. Failure to do
• Strategy IS Execution: Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot
  Things don’t always turn out as planned. This is especially true of strategy. The strategy you contemplate or envision and that same strategy as it plays out are often two very different matters. Strategy as realized is the result of efforts to
• Five Ways Leaders Screw up their Change Initiatives
  The reported failure rate of change initiatives is about 70 percent. It ranks right up there with reengineering efforts (and for many of the same reasons). The success rate of change initiatives could be greatly improved if those who launch and lead them