Reflection – Visualisation

Challenge

During the past 6 months, I have been working as a Business Analyst in a Change Management  project for a non-for-profit organisation, my role is to identify the current state of the organisation’s  departments, in other words its process/people/tools/information.

Selection

I started using visualisation before I took this course and honestly, I did not know that I was using  until now. I think it was an automatic decision since it worked well for me to understand the  problem myself. Drawing helps me and the stakeholder to streamline the process flow.

Application

In my first meeting with any head of department I briefly explain the WHY behind of the project, and  to explain WHAT will need to be documented I use visualisation as my frontline HOW. In my current  context, I first draw a current state box and an arrow pointing to a future state box, highlighting that  understanding the current state box will benefit in various ways to reach the future state. But  because the capabilities are not documented we have a fuzzy current state box. Moving forward I try  to make the meeting a little more interactive and ask the manager to share current tactics to achieve  current objectives, again I list these tactics inside a box and draw and arrow pointing to the  capabilities box, again I gather a high level current capabilities and drawn an arrow pointing to yet  another box the future objectives.

Insight

It’s indeed a very simple application of the tool but it has proven to be very effective. This tool allows  two major insights –  unlocking capabilities, as it unfolds managers can identify new capabilities and  the other insight is a well understood process by the managers.

Approach

In some situations, I have added yet another layer of building blocks – the services provided by each  department. Looking from the services perspective also helps to understand what tools, processes,  policies and information needed to deliver an outcome.

