Reflection - Visualization

Challenge & Selection

The tool that I have used most so far, is the tool of “visualization”. At work, I have the role of the  business manager/developer and as such I need to make sure that everyone involved (stakeholders)  in the process understands what we are talking about. By that I mean: IT, Compliance, Front Office  colleagues, senior management, etc. The previously mentioned stakeholders come from different  backgrounds, fly at different altitude and use different vocabulary, and that’s the beauty of  visualization: you can usually get by without words and images/drawings usually resonate on a  almost meta-level, allowing you to achieve a common understanding much faster than with written  texts.

Application

Most recently I used the tool of “visualization” in the process of drafting a concept for a “prospecting  engine” for a company. The company already had several tools in place for that purpose, but none of  them was widely used, and the reasons for that were plentiful: not user-friendly, redundant data  entry, stand-alone tools, etc. Besides aiming to fix all those painpoints, I wanted to get to a solution  that would also allow us to leverage part of the value chain that can be sourced from third party  providers, such as “data of potentially interesting prospects”.

As mentioned above, when looking at such a venture in our company, one quickly ends up talking to  the majority of the divisions: Legal & Compliance, Sourcing, IT, Front Office but also Marketing, and  in order to pitch the idea one usually gets one shot. At this point the great strength of visualization  comes into play, and the statement we’ve heard in the online course is absolutely correct: you do not  have to be a talented graphic designer! My sketches are usually rather clumsy, but the effect is  absolutely astonishing. Images are so much easier to understand than words and leave much less  room for interpretation. A quick drawing with a few arrows almost magically shows the intended  flow of data, something that even a full page of text wouldn’t accomplish.

I usually use the sticky version of a whitepaper because you can pretty much stick them to any wall  and draw on them with lots of different pens and thus you can get started right away. Once the initial  sketch is done, the discussions start right away, and people can add to the drawing by making  amendments with pens in different color, or add sticky notes. By doing so you can very quickly  engage the different stakeholders into an active (drawing) dialogue and one ends up with a nice first  draft of the idea which automatically underwent several iterations.

Insight & Approach

Further along in the process, we obviously did come up with written specifications. There is no way  around that, but even in those papers, parts of our initial drawing were re-used! It was really great to  see that! Whilst I have been using this tool for quite some time, I am very happy to have completed  this online course and have received more professional and scientific background about it from  Angela Myer. It was very inspiring to learn that the tool of visualization unlocks different parts of our  brains and that it allows us to think in a nonverbal way. Thanks to those insights, I will use this tool  even more often going forward. I am very hopeful that it will unlock the potential of our company –  the full range of ideas of my colleagues!

First version of the drawing

