Visualization for solving complex problems     Challenge  I work in the financial services industry and often interact with business people who develop complex financial  consumer products. Developing these products is a very involved process and, as you can imagine, requires  crunching large amounts of data to tweak parameters that can decide the success of the product in the market.  The statisticians, most of which speak the same language, are not particularly good at interacting with other  members of the team like operations, marketing and customer service, all of which are equally responsible for the  success of the product. After all, if the customer service team is not able to understand the product and its  intricacies, how will they answer customer questions satisfactorily! Similarly, if the marketing team doesn’t  understand the product features that make it better than the competitor's product, how will they design effective  communication strategies for the product. For the success of the product, it is vital that all the team members  understand the product as it was designed and meant to serve the customer's need.     Selection and Application  To resolve the issue of financial product designers not being in sync with other team members, I often employ  crude drawings and practical working examples, referred to as Visualization tool in the lectures, in my workshops  where the product is being discussed in detail. I was pleasantly surprised to see that something that I relied in my  everyday work was being reaffirmed by Angela Meyer as a very effective tool to bring sanity to otherwise chaotic  meetings.  Visualization is, essentially, putting an idea on the board so that everyone can connect to the problem and solution  in the same manner. Complex problems can be interpreted by people in different ways in their head and this can  lead to ineffective utilization of time and resources. To avoid such inconsistencies in everyone's understanding, I  often pick up the marker and start putting numbers and figures on the board while the product designers are  describing a feature. My visualizations are crude rendition of the descriptions and mostly include number, stick  figures and block diagrams. Such simple tools have the power of channeling everyone's mind in the same direction  and help avoid any unintended confusion.     As an example, let me narrate a recent incident where a product was designed to give the customers an additional  level of financial security if they were involved in a condition that required Long Term Care. In such a case, the  additional feature, if chosen by the customer at the time of purchase, could waive a significant liability and keep  their investments safe. Initially, most of the participants in the workshop were not able to grasp the idea because  protecting investments without periodic fee was unheard of. However, a simple illustration of a stick figure walking  a tight rope with a safety cord tied to their belt was more than sufficient to make everyone understand the idea of  additional layer of protection. With a few more questions we were able to bring everyone in sync and the  marketing material also included the same illustration for intuitive customer interaction.     Insight  A simple tool made my interactions with the participants in the product workshop very manageable. I observed,  when everyone has a common understanding of the problem, then the collective productivity of the team is much  more than when everyone is taking the conversation in different directions. The team is even able to uncover  issues that were missed by the product designers because they were never involved in marketing or customer  service. Sometimes, such involved conversation lead to a product tweak in order to make it more marketable or  serviceable. This not only has a immediate impact on delivery timelines, but also had a rippling effect in the overall  project timelines. Because all team members have a common understanding of the product and all the potential  hurdles, there is a common language being used in all management reporting. The sponsors are also updated on  the latest hurdles and can provide additional external support if required.     Approach  I am looking forward to explore the potential of other tools in my daily workshops, especially the learning launch  tool described in module 4. The learning launch tool will help us do a quick product launch in a small group of  customers and gather insights for a better nationwide launch. Because of the inherent complexity of financial

products, the customers find it difficult to navigate the products and usually require an advisor to guide them in  the investment process. With a learning launch, we can simulate a small regional launch where the advisors  interact with real customers and build a repository of confusion points amongst customers. Such a handy list can  be utilized by many internal teams to build better marketing communication, training packages and customer  service processes.

