The last few days I have been thinking of the value of visual tools in strategy quite intensly. When I was standing in front of our business strategy library I realized how few of these books use visual techniques to make things clearer. Often there is not much more than charts and quite a number of strategy books are text only. The topic of visual techniques and communication has been on my mind because we are currently in close contact with XPLANE, a company whose tagline is “the visual thinking company”. They help businesses communicate complex business issues with simple images. One thing I realized was how XPLANE and Arvetica each create value through visual techniques in different areas with different tools.
Arvetica: Our main strength is to synthesise the essence of business issues, such as strategies and business models in simple diagrams. These are based on concepts (e.g. strategy maps) and are mainly composed of boxes and arrows. The value lies in creating a rapid understanding and the highlighting of how issues are related to each other. Images communicate relationships between objects than text documents. How can you quickly and clearly describe an interdependant multi-channel market approach with words?
XPLANE: Their main strength is their ability to illustrate complex business issues (e.g. change management) with drawn scenarios. They create a quick understanding with their comic-like pictures, because humans easily relate to stories. In many cases it is not sufficient to illustrate business issues through boxes and arrows only. Human scenarios that describe business issues in an illustrative manner help people relate to a the topic much easier. For example, the above image illustrates how to deal with difficult clients.
I’m quite exited that I will be able to learn more about visual techniques in business from XPLANE. I firmly believe that this will be one of the hot topics in strategic management in the coming years. In business strategy we still poorly communicate when it comes to visuals…
Alex, let me just say that I admire the work of Xplane ever since my first subscription to Business2.0 in the late 90’s of the last century! I fully agree with you on the role and impact the work of David and xplane could have on ‘classical’ business communication.
However I would focus the domain of application more from strategic management to strategic leadership and and change. In this context may I remind you on the part of our conversation prior to the point you’ve pressed the record button when I’ve visited you last time in Geneva?
While traditional businesses might perceive visualisation more as an end rather than a means to achieve something greater I see the value of business process visualisation more in the context of Mission & Leadership. These comprise: Purpose, Strategy, Behaviour and Values.
Once your organisation is able to thoughtfully visualize all of these areas I’m pretty sure you’ll get what Tom Peters calls a WOW-Organization. And while talking about Peters you will recall that he’s been one of the first ones with his book “re-imagine” to make excessive use of visualisation (more via images) rather than text. [A discussion of the quality of this visualisation done by Dorling & Kindersley is however a different discussion ...]
Hope to see you tomorrow
Ralf.
Ralf, you’re absolutely right! Visualization is a wonderful communication tool. It’s much more efficient to communicate a desired change or new strategy in a company by sending around an image with a scenario (comic like), rather than a cumbersome text document. This indeed facilitates leadership and a common vision and culture in a company. XPLANE wonderfully illustrates this with its own company culture map:
http://communicationnation.blogspot.com/2007/01/xplane-culture-map.html
By the way Ralf, too bad we missed each other this time in Geneva. There will certainly be a next time to chat around a glass of wine and good dinner
Hi Alex,
What a wonderful post! Thank you for thinking of us.
Hope you are well,
Dave