Reflection – Visualization – A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Challenge  A common challenge I face when trying to design change is that I am often remote from the parties that  are involved in the session.  We are all in different offices, in different time zones, and come from  different backgrounds and levels of understanding.  A lot of my peers utilize wordy presentations with  many bullet points that lead to distraction during the presentation due to people reading the slide.   Alternatively, some of my peers utilize no presentation materials and simply rely on verbal transfer of  information and collaboration.

In a recent project I had to convey concerns with how our software is delivered to our customers.  A lot  of the concepts are very esoteric and require a lot of domain knowledge to understand.  I had to create  a presentation to lay the groundwork for the need to change to people ranging from direct line workers,  managers, executives, and even people outside of the company.  The presentation had to be remote,  but it could include visuals through desktop sharing tools and video conferencing.

Selection  Despite the remoteness, the selected tool was visualization.  I chose to take advantage of the desktop  and video sharing to help convey my message that the way that we design and develop our software is  completely different than how our customers deploy it.  From the lesson on the visualization tool, we  learned that visualization unlocks another side of the brain that is more powerful and creative than just  words.  This tool allows me to take concepts where I may have had 7 bullet points on a slide and  condense it down into couple of pictures that have a much larger impact.  My thought was that a picture  is quite literally worth a thousand words.  Instead of me trying to describe my concepts in industry  jargon, I could let the pictures bring together the more abstract concepts.

Application  To apply this tool, I did utilize Microsoft Power Point.  I clearly defined the problem statement, and one  of the first slides I utilized was a slide to show in an abstract way, how our internal environments differ  from our customer environments.  I found a picture showing a white glove lab environment to picture  our own internal process, and a picture of the wild west to illustrate the customer environment.

The purpose of this was to really hit home on the challenges that we face as a company and to open the  door for discussion on how we can improve our software delivery to the customers.  Prior to this  approach, it was all just words trying to convey the problem, but it really was not brought home to the  executives that there really was a problem until they were able to picture it in an abstract form.

Past the initial presentation, we used the power point in a shared location as a “vision board” to apply  thoughts on how to improve our software delivery.  Participants were encouraged to add graphs,  drawings, or pictures to help illustrate things that could be improved or really the ideal state for our  delivery program.

Insight  By applying a very visual approach to the problem definition, we ensured that everyone was on the  same page for understanding the scope and the magnitude of the problem.  The “vision board” power  point allowed group collaboration across the miles.  In the past it has been very difficult to hold ideation  sessions with a group of remote participants.  This added an element of fun and challenged that really  ignited some innovative thinking.

Approach  An alternate approach could have included the more encompassing mind mapping tool.  This would  have required a physical space or some way to simulate in the virtual world.  It would have been more  expensive to bring everyone together, but it could have provided a richer outcome with more opinions.   Going forward, there may be a way to incorporate group think by having different groups create  PowerPoints to share.  Those presentations can then be critiqued and modified by the other teams  eventually being brought together to create a more cohesive vision.  In any case, the visual aspect  should not be lost, and people should be encouraged to utilize whatever pictures, drawings, graphs they  have available to convey ideas.  Too many things get lost in just using words, and words can be  interpreted a number of different ways.

