Get Things Done with SmartDraw

Recruiting Firm Gets Visual; Wins More Clients with SmartDraw

Aaron Stannard — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:17:00 GMT

In the ultra-competitive world of management recruiting it is critical to successfully position your firm as a prospect’s best possible choice. For more than twenty years Frank Risalvato has used a number of tools to help get his message across, but none more effectively or faster than SmartDraw.

Inter Regional Executive Search (IRES, Inc.) has brought management level executives and employers together since 1991. Whether a corporation in New York looks to hire a CEO for their London operation, or an Anchorage engineering firm seeks top marketing executives for a new product line, Frank Risalvato and his team make profitable connections that often last for decades.

Communicate Visually for a Competitive Edge

Much has changed since 1987, when Frank first started in the recruiting business, from the types of employees companies need to the technology used to streamline the search process. Competition among executive search firms has been one of the biggest changes, especially during the past year. In recessionary times, there are fewer jobs offered and an intense frenzy of competition to recruit for the few companies that are hiring.

SmartDraw has become IRES’ secret weapon in this regard.

“Brand awareness is big in our circles,” said Frank of his industry. “Prospects need to know why they should use your services and why a recruiting fee might produce a good return on investment. The more ways you can communicate this and connect with them, the better.”

Frank’s team has been creating visuals for years to help educate clients and prospects about the company’s services, but the results haven’t always been as polished as he’d like.

“I came across SmartDraw when they sent me an email. Normally I delete marketing emails, but something caught my eye. I followed a link to SmartDraw.com and watched a video on making a flowchart and thought, ‘it can’t be that easy.’ I downloaded the trial version of the software and said, ‘it really IS that easy! This is what I’ve been looking to do for years—create all kinds of professional looking graphics without having to actually DRAW them!”

“Charts Gone Wild”

Frank bought SmartDraw on a Sunday and did what he calls ‘charts gone wild.’

“I had all these charts visualized in my head but couldn’t figure out how to create them efficiently. I was so excited, my wife thought I was nuts. And as for my office manager, I’d been asking her for help with charts for years but they were so tediously time consuming on Word, Excel—and Visio—forget about learning another time-consuming program. We’re just too busy for chart and graphic development–just like our clients are too busy to bother with the tedious recruiting process.”

SmartDraw was so fast and easy to learn, Frank made “three dead-on perfect charts in less than two hours that are already mandatory attachments in introductory material for all new clients company-wide.

In a few hours, I created a service matrix, a cost comparison chart, and other visuals I’ve wanted to make for years. The charts easily show how our fees stack up in comparison with the standard internal recruiting cost (using Society for Human Resource Management formulas). I can now show a prospect why our fees are more reasonable than they initially appear when visually compared against total real cost factors, such as time savings, lost revenue, alienating business or customers, and the entire process involved in screening and ultimately selecting a candidate.”

Frank admits that “it sounds like such a simple thing to do: make a chart or communicate your process visually. But you need to know how to do it. The more ways you can communicate and connect with a prospect the better. In our case, prospects can now see that while we aren’t necessarily inexpensive, our process works by getting the results desired and we get it done right the first go around. I’ve never seen anything like SmartDraw. I wish we would have had it years ago.”

In addition to owning and operating www.iresinc.com , Frank is a noted speaker and author in the management recruiting industry. He intends to showcase SmartDraw as an effective means to communicate visually to gain a competitive advantage in his recruiter training workshops and speeches to fellow recruiters.

SmartDraw 2010 Puts an End to Communication Breakdown

Aaron Stannard — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:22:00 GMT

2010 Version Includes Sought-After MS Visio® Filter, Large Scale Project Management, SharePoint® Collaboration

San Diego, CA.—September 1, 2009 - SmartDraw.com, maker of the SmartDraw, today announced the release of SmartDraw 2010, a new offering aimed at helping organizations put an end to communication breakdown by enabling the average businessperson to communicate effectively using visuals.

“In this economy nobody can afford new software that offers only a few fancy new bells and whistles,” says Paul Stannard, CEO of SmartDraw.com. “People and their organizations are only going to invest in new software if the product can offer substantial return on investment, and that’s exactly what we have delivered with SmartDraw 2010.”

Eliminating Workplace Problems through More Effective Communication

SmartDraw is a software product that enables the average business person to communicate more effectively through visuals. Studies have shown that communication which includes both words and visuals is up to six times more effective than words alone. A flowchart is a more effective tool for explaining a process than a long list of numbered steps; an organizational chart is a more effective tool for communicating the structure of an organization than a page-long written description; and so forth.

Most people don’t use any kind of visual when they communicate because most think that it’s too difficult to do.

SmartDraw 2010 automates the tedious tasks that used to make drawing difficult and makes it possible for the average businessperson to communicate complex information and ideas clearly and quickly.

Business Problems You Can Solve with SmartDraw 2010

SmartDraw 2010’s improvements are aimed at helping you do the following:

Eliminate Poorly Defined Projects - Projects often run late for several reasons, not having all of the actual work being identified properly being one of the most common reasons. SmartDraw 2010 helps you prevent this from being a problem by giving you the ability to begin your project as a mind map which you can use to indentify all of your tasks, and once that’s done you can seamlessly transition from a mind map to a project chart that you can use for scheduling.
Avoid Boring, Ineffective Presentations – The reason that most presentations that you’ve listened to are nothing more than boring walls of text where the presenter reads each individual bullet point word-for-word off of every slide is because PowerPoint® isn’t a great tool for planning or even building a presentation. SmartDraw 2010 makes up for PowerPoint®’s limitations by giving you the ability to properly plan entire presentations with storyboards, sequence your charts and diagrams with animation, and you can even build full PowerPoint® presentations directly from SmartDraw.
Keep Larger Projects Under Control – Complicated projects that involve a large number of people and tasks often spiral out of control because the people managing them can’t properly track progress or manage the details of who’s supposed to be working on what. SmartDraw 2010 gives you the ability to keep larger projects under control with smarter, more flexible project charts; you can hide and expand groups of tasks to avoid information overload, track progress more clearly, view your project as a timeline, and more.
Prevent Botched Jobs – Botched jobs occur when people are unclear about who is responsible for what, or the technical details of the job are not well-understood, or when employees have not been properly trained to do their work. SmartDraw 2010 can help you prevent botched jobs by giving everyone in the organization the ability to communicate work details, responsibilities, and anything else effectively using visuals. You can embed all of your visuals into any Microsoft Office® document, share your work with Microsoft SharePoint® integration, or even import Microsoft Visio® documents directly into SmartDraw.

If you’d like to learn more about how SmartDraw 2010 can help you and your organization overcome communication problems, you can watch SmartDraw’s guided tour video or you can download a free trial of SmartDraw.

How to Plan Presentations Using Mind Maps

Aaron Stannard — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:23:00 GMT

If any of you read Dumb Little Man, a popular productivity blog, you might have read my guest blog entry on Wednesday entitled "5 Steps to Planning an Effective Presentation." One of the points that I touched on in that article was how mind maps are a simple, yet effective tool for planning presentations.

I've written before about using mind maps to organize my thoughts, and using them to organize what you're going to say in a presentation is more of the same.

Why Spending 5 Minutes Outlining Your Presentation is Worth It

As I said in the DLM article, you can be the most charismatic presenter in the world with the world's most well-designed PowerPoint slides, but if you don't have

a clear idea of what your objectives are,
a clear idea of what you're going to say,
and a plan to achieve those objectives using your content

then you're going to be just as ineffective as that guy who does nothing but plaster bulleted lists all over his slides.

Mind maps are easy and simple - it takes five minutes to draw one. If you're going to invest a lot of effort into giving a presentation, why not spend a few minutes planning your presentation with a mind map?

I had to give a big, scary marketing proposal last week here at SmartDraw - you know what I did? I started with a mind map; I used it to outline my goals and the content I wanted to cover. But where was my plan? I used a flowchart to storyboard my presentation, and I'll telling you about that experience next week on Working Smarter.

How to Do It

I'm going to use a mock-up marketing presentation as my example.

1. Start with the Goals and Main Pieces of Information

I start my mind map with five nodes, one of which is the goals and the other is the background. Every presentation has to have goals: that's non-negotiable. Presentations aren't supposed to be corporate performance art - they're meant to communicate a common message to an audience. Your goals define what you want your audience to get out of it. Do you want them to make a decision, to learn something, or what?

The next important part of the outline is the background; a presentation is just like any good story - you need to have some context.

The background for this marketing presentation might consist of what the company has tried before, what's worked, what hasn't, where the market is going, what our customers are saying, etc... The background basically takes old information and uses it as a basis for all of the new information that you're going to present later.

The other three bubbles (Targeting Strategy, Outreach Strategy, and Content Strategy) consist of the new information that I'm going to present.

2. Flesh Out Everything

The next thing consist of simply fleshing out everything: the goals, the background, the new information, and everything else. Pretty simple. I didn't go all-out on some of the details because I wanted you all to be able to read the text, but you get the idea.

3. Color Code Areas of Emphasis

Some aspects of the presentation are more important than the others, like the goals. I use color just to make the most crucial elements stand out - that way I can take those points into more consideration when I storyboard my presentation.

Ideally you want everyone to remember everything, but realistically you have to pick a few key areas of emphasis and really hit those points home. Here's what I did for my mock marketing presentation:

And that's pretty much it - I have everything I need to start storyboarding my presentation. I know what content I want to cover, I know what I want to accomplish, and I know what parts of my presentation are more important. The best part? It only takes a few minutes to draw the mind map.

Want even more information on using mind maps to plan presentations?

Here's some additional information for your consideration if you want to learn more about using mind maps to plan presentations:

Build PowerPoint® Presentations Directly from SmartDraw 2009.5

Aaron Stannard — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:18:00 GMT

Well, it’s that time of year—time for a major update to SmartDraw 2009. The biggest feature in this update is our improved storyboarding capability – if you’re a regular reader, you’re probably familiar with the benefits and practice of storyboarding presentations. In SmartDraw 2009.5, we made storyboarding even better—now you can literally build your entire PowerPoint® presentation from SmartDraw using our storyboarding SmartTemplates.

If you’d like a demonstration, feel free to watch the screencast below:

Other New SD2009.5 Features:

In addition to the storyboarding, we’ve also made some other improvements to SmartDraw 2009:

Integration with Microsoft Project® - One feature that’s been requested for a long time is the ability to import and export Gantt charts (project charts) to and from Microsoft Project®. Well, all of you project managers out there have your wish. You can now import and export Gantt charts from SmartDraw 2009.5 to Microsoft Project®.
Import Chart and Graph Data Directly from Excel® Files – In the original release of SmartDraw 2009, you could only import Excel® data by copying it to the clipboard. In 2009.5, you can import data directly from Excel® files themselves, which is much easier. SmartDraw 2009.5 also accepts data import from .CSV and .TXT files if you used delimited data.

If you’re a SmartDraw 2009 owner then I highly recommend that you download the patch and try out these new features.

SD2009 Owners: Download the 2009.5 Patch (it’s free)

If you’re a SmartDraw 2009 owner (most blog readers are), you can download the 2009.5 patch right here.

If you don’t own SmartDraw 2009, you can upgrade existing versions of SmartDraw or try it for free.

Getting It Done On-Time with Simple Project Management

Aaron Stannard — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:26:00 GMT

The most important aspect of any project, personal or corporate, is cost and cost is determined by the answers to the following two questions:

How much time am I going to need?
And how many people am I going to need?

My background is primarily in software development and like most modern forms of work it's very much a project-driven field. Software developers are notorious for always delivering their projects late and over budget. Why? Because project managers don't fully scope out all of the tasks that must be done, and then they assign arbitrary times to their list of vague overly broad parts of the project.

I use two techniques to solve these problems: I use a mind map to identify all of the tasks and then a project chart (Gantt chart) to assign how long each task will take.

This sort of project management may not be necessary for the tiniest of projects, but for most projects you are going to need an organized, measured approach in order to accurately anticipate costs and to keep your project on schedule.

How I Manage Projects Using Business Graphics

In my last semester of college I was involved in a marketing project along with three other students - we had to perform some basic market research on the behalf of our client, an online niche news service.

We had to gather information from four target audiences:

What attracted current subscribers to the service;
What might draw potential new subscribers to the service;
What might draw large advertising networks to publish with the service; and
What might draw smaller, direct advertisers to publish with the service.

I'm going to use this small project as an example for the purposes of this article.

Step 1 - Scope Your Project with Mind Maps

I've written before about using mind maps to organize your thoughts and ideas. Mind maps are a great tool for organizing one's brainstorming but mind maps are also a great project management tool, and they are especially helpful for breaking down a project into smaller components.

The ultimate goal with our mind map, for the purposes of project management, is to narrow the scope enough such that the tasks identified on the map are specific enough to be easily understood by the project members.

I'm going to begin my mind map with the four target audiences that I mentioned earlier.

That's the first step - the next step is to start adding more specific subtasks as branches to each of the original tasks, like how I have done in the picture below:

Now we're ready to move onto our project chart, given that our mind map is complete.

Step 2- Convert Your Mind Map into a Project Chart (Gantt Chart)

We used a mind map to clearly scope out all of the tasks that will go into executing our basic market research project - now we need to use a Gantt chart to schedule our project and monitor our project's progress.

In SmartDraw it's actually really easy to convert a mind map to a Gantt chart because SmartDraw will automatically do it for you, as we demonstrated in our most recent screencast "Managing Projects with SmartDraw."

Here's the product of our initial conversion to a Gantt chart:

I had to crop out some portions of the Gantt chart in order to make it fit into this blog post, but you get the idea - we have an initial Gantt chart to work with and now we need to begin determining the appropriate start dates and durations.

Step 3 - Schedule and Order Tasks on Your Gantt Chart

We have a basic order of operations that we need to follow in order to complete the data analysis for our market research project:

Prepare survey/questionnaire material
Prepare prospect lists (if necessary - we already know who our current readers are, for instance)
Prepare distribution letters (if necessary)
Identify distribution channels
Distribute surveys and conduct interviews
Analyze results

Some tasks can be conducted in parallel, such as preparing questions and paring prospect lists, but some tasks can't begin until others are completed - you can't conduct an interview without any prospects, for instance.

After taking all of these factors into consideration we can begin defining our start dates and durations, which would make our Gantt chart look something like this:

The lines in red represent the deadlines for our primary tasks, so they include all of the deadlines set by the subtasks contained within the Gantt chart hierarchy. I've included a link to a full-sized version of this Gantt chart in PDF format below:

[PDF] Example - Market Research Mind Map and Gantt Chart.pdf

As you can see, the Gantt chart is small enough and simple enough to be clear and easily understandable by the other members of my team - they all know when each deliverable is due and when we need to start work on any given portion of the project.

Step 4 - Measure Your Progress with the Gantt Chart

My four man marketing project has a total duration of 10 business days - updating the Gantt chart with new Gantt bars, "progress bars," wouldn't really be necessary given the small scope of the project - however, in the context of larger projects with larger teams it's important to communicate your unit's progress to the other units that compose the project team, especially if their tasks are dependent upon the completion of yours.

Learn More about Project Management Using Mind Maps and Gantt Charts

If you'd like to learn more about project management using business graphics you can watch our most recent screencast "Managing Projects with SmartDraw."

Also, if you'd like to play around with the diagram that I used in this example, you can download a free trial of SmartDraw and open the example file below.

[Example] Example - Market Research Mind Map and Gantt Chart.sdr

Three Ways SmartDraw Can Make Presenting Easier for You

Aaron Stannard — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:02:00 GMT

Given that we just published a free eCourse all about creating presentations with captivating introductions, I think now is a good time to remind some of our readers about all of the cool ways that SmartDraw can make life easier for the average businessperson. Most of us are not regular presenters—perhaps a few times a year we have to present a proposal, report, marketing piece or training seminar.

I certainly fall into that class of presenter and I suspect that most of our readers do also; fortunately, our product, SmartDraw, can make life a lot easier for average presenters like you and me. Here’s how:

Plan Your Content Using Storyboard Templates

The key to having a good presentation is having your material organized in a logical, coherent fashion. Storyboards are an effective way of achieving this type of organization quickly, easily and efficiently.

If you want a refresher on why it’s a good idea to use storyboarding when you’re planning a presentation, check out this earlier post I wrote entitled “Having Trouble Putting a Presentation Together? Try Storyboarding.”

In SmartDraw, you begin by opening up a new instance of SmartDraw and select the “Storyboards” template from the SmartTemplate Selector on the left.

Then you click on the blank storyboard template.

Add new boxes for each main topic. If I’m presenting a new project proposal presentation, I might want to build six slides explaining:

Who is responsible?
What are we doing?
When is this due?
Where are we allocating resources?
Why is this important?
How do we do this?

So I will go ahead and place that onto my storyboard.

And then add the topic-specific details beneath the box of each topic.

And from here, I have a good, rough outline of my entire PowerPoint® presentation. In fact, here’s what this outline would look like in PowerPoint® 2007’s “Outline View:”

Export any Diagram or Chart to PowerPoint® Easily

One of the most popular features that SmartDraw has had over the past several versions is its interoperability with Excel®, Word® and PowerPoint®. With the touch of a single button, you can export any diagram, whether it’s a flowchart, a floor plan, or anything else directly to Microsoft Office®.

To export from SmartDraw to PowerPoint®, simply open up your diagram in SmartDraw.

Click on the “PPT” button on the Quick Access Toolbar.

And then your diagram will appear in your current instance of PowerPoint®. Or if you don’t have a running instance of PowerPoint®, SmartDraw will start one for you.

And that’s it!

Animate Your Charts and Diagrams in SmartDraw for More Effective Deliveries

If you’d like to have even more control over how you deliver your SmartDraw diagrams during a PowerPoint® presentation, you can pre-animate them directly within SmartDraw before you export them! Here’s a two minute video which explains how you can sequence any diagram in PowerPoint using SmartDraw:

Financial Consultant Helps Clients Get the Picture with SmartDraw

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:14:00 GMT

Jon Golding is CEO of Golding Consultants, an international financial consulting firm with a major presence in the UK and Caribbean. His clients are generally global entrepreneurs, expatriates or diplomats with financial assets in two or more countries. Golding is charged with developing the business by screening new clients, as well as working as a team leader in problem analysis.

"Our job is to get to the root of the client's problem, understand why it is a problem, and illustrate what it looks like so the client can get a clear understanding," said Golding. "We are then in a position to construct a solution and set goals."

A big part of problem-solving is presenting the information in a visual manner to facilitate communication with the client.

"We use visual charts or graphics because it's easier for everyone to focus on and understand, and they are much more effective than reports that don't get read or understood," said Golding.

In the past, his firm had been using their own tools, templates and methods which they had created over time using programs like Visio^®, Excel^®, WORD^® and PowerPoint^®. Eventually, a colleague gave SmartDraw a glowing recommendation, and Golding decided to give it a try. Immediately, he could see that SmartDraw offered several advantages over what they had been using.

Golding found that SmartDraw offers hundreds of SmartTemplates such as mindmaps, flowcharts, decision trees and more—each loaded with a command set specific to the diagram type. Users simply enter the information and SmartDraw does the rest—building the graphic automatically. In addition, the templates can be modified quickly and easily.

"SmartDraw is very easy to use, and it offers a great wide selection of templates that we can customize easily," said Golding. "The product also widens our problem solving skills by offering a fantastic range of ideas outside the scope of the problem, that enable us to come up with new solutions."

SmartDraw's ease-of-use coupled with its automated drawing features helps Golding's team save hours in time.

"Time savings is the biggest asset to my team. It saves us 60% of our time compared to what we were doing before," said Golding. "In addition, it allows us to standardize our solutions and not 'reinvent the wheel.'"

In addition, Golding's team found that SmartDraw's web design capability was excellent for designing web pages. He praised the flexibility of the web design templates, as well as the wide choice of professional-looking color schemes.

SmartDraw also allows users to save SmartDraw documents to PDF, WORD^®, PowerPoint^® and Excel^® in a single-click.

"The ability to save in many formats such as WORD^® and PDF is a huge benefit," said Golding. "It takes the design to a finished product in no time at all."

And what do his clients think? According to Golding, most of his clients are very impressed with the documents created in SmartDraw, and ask him which firm they hired to make the polished and professional designs. Golding is so impressed with SmartDraw that he plans to build the company's value proposition around the program.

"SmartDraw takes us a quantum leap from what we were doing before," claims Golding. "Picture Power is our Value Proposition and SmartDraw is our Value Tool. From what we've seen, we don't think we'll be disappointed!"

To learn more and to download a free trial, visit www.smartdraw.com

Creating Gantt Charts and Timelines for Litigation

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:21:00 GMT

The Case
Paralegal Nancy Rice works as a project manager at Hohmann, Taube & Summers, a law firm specializing in civil litigation. She frequently needs to create charts and diagrams related to legal cases.

"I have to create Gantt charts, timelines, and other visual aids to illustrate the series of events leading to the particular lawsuit," said Rice.

Rice used to create these diagrams in PowerPoint^®, until she got so frustrated that she decided she'd had enough.

"I wanted to see what else was out there, so I searched on the Internet and came across SmartDraw."

The Star Witness
Rice was impressed by SmartDraw's ease-of-use.

"It was so easy to download and navigate," she said. "The built-in tutorials are also convenient and easy to follow."

The SmartDraw web site offers dozens of tutorials and example diagrams for flowcharts, Gantt charts, timelines, and more, making easy work out of any project.

With thousands of symbols for each type of diagram, and SmartDraw's simple "drag and drop" drawing, even the most complex visual aids are only minutes away.

"The ability to create timelines that show a series of events to a client is very important," said Rice. "SmartDraw is an excellent tool for this."

Closing Arguments
Rice now uses SmartDraw daily.

"I'm able to make better-looking diagrams than ever before," she said. "SmartDraw makes me look prepared and professional. My supervising partners are impressed!"

SmartDraw saves her three hours a day, freeing her time for other legal projects.

The verdict?

"Nothing beats professional visual aids in presentations," said Rice. "I would definitely recommend SmartDraw to other paralegals."

From Personnel Confusion to Clarity: Kelso Police Department Uses SmartDraw to Create Citywide Organizational Chart

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:14:00 GMT

When the City of Kelso, Washington needed a better way to keep track of city personnel changes while also allowing citizens to easily identify city officials, Ed Nelson knew just what to do. Using SmartDraw, he created an at-a-glance view of all city employees in their proper reporting structure.

Ed Nelson, who has worked as an IT contractor for the past seven years after retiring from a 24-year career as a sergeant, has seen his share of city employees joining and leaving the ranks.

He's also seen many different types of organizational charts regularly submitted by each department listing employees and their job functions following each change.

"We didn't have one chart where we could easily view personnel. Some of the charts by submitted by departments were in Word®, some were on a spreadsheet, some were just written down," recalls Ed. "Citizens would come into the department and say, 'I just talked to someone from Public Works,' not knowing who it was. We knew that we needed to have one chart, with every employee's position and photo, and how their position related to others in order to respond to citizens more effectively."

Emerging from Organizational Chaos

Ed looked for a tool to help bring clarity to the city government's human resource pool, and discovered that the solution was already in the department.

"I had bought the Legal Edition of SmartDraw so I could have the templates for crime scenes and police forms. But when I explored it further I discovered how really easy it was to create flowcharts and organizational charts."

Ed then went to work on a citywide organizational chart.

"I quickly made a chart of one department and included the employee's photo above their name. Then, I decided to join each department together. The chart kept getting bigger and bigger because once people saw it, EVERYONE had to be on there, from the police officers and city council members to the secretaries and front desk clerks."

Ed sent the large, all-inclusive chart to print on the department's plotter, and a 10' by 36" chart emerged that was readable to all. Today it is proudly displayed in the department's receiving room, along with copies on the walls of the city manager's office and well as city council chambers.

Ed jokes that "the city was so happy with how the chart turned out, they were going to throw me a party!"

Figure 1. City of Kelso organizational chart, created in SmartDraw

Ed admits that prior to the purchase of SmartDraw, he had tried Visio® to create organizational charts. "It was a nightmare. I had a hard time with it, trying to draw everything myself and moving the boxes around. Visio® was really confusing and it felt convoluted to me. I'm very glad we ended up with SmartDraw."

Change is Not a Problem

Creating the chart in SmartDraw was not only easy, fast and professional-looking, but changing the chart is also a breeze.

"It is so simple to go into SmartDraw and change a librarian's name, or change a position when someone gets promoted. If a position gets eliminated, that's easy to change, too. Everything is drag and drop and the chart reforms automatically and perfectly," notes Ed, who says he has updated the chart 10-15 times so far and sometimes prints out only the edited section to save paper.

Used on Many Levels

Today, when the city manager gets a compliment or a complaint from a citizen walking into the office, "people can say, that's the guy, right there!" The charts have also helped citizens who attend council meetings and want to know who the city prosecutor is, or who is the police chief. The charts represent an easy visual way to introducing city employees in a way that is memorable.

City managers also use the charts for budgeting purposes, when personnel issues are in consideration.

"The city managers have used it for discussions about departmental consolidation or moving supervisors around. In the current economic client, it's easy to use the chart to determine if one person is going to retire, how they can reconfigure other departments around that change."