Part 7 (1/2)

In 1967, as we've said, the biggest airlines flying in and out of Texas all operated according to the ”hub and spoke” model of air transport, which offered the airlines the most convenient way to move the maximum number of pa.s.sengers. By delivering pa.s.sengers from many spokes to a central hub, then flying them out on another spoke, the airlines could avoid the difficulties a.s.sociated with operating countless direct flights between cities. While this model worked well for the airlines and for pa.s.sengers traveling long distances, it was not at all convenient for local, short-distance air travel.

Although it took four years of legal wrangling by Herb to get started, by 1971 Southwest was in the air. By focusing only on a small group of cities, Southwest was able to combine operating efficiencies with a convenience and price that Texas-based businessmen found highly desirable. That, combined with gung ho marketing that included hot pants wearing stewardesses and ”free” fifths of Chivas for pa.s.sengers who purchased full-fare tickets, ensured that Southwest soon became the airline to beat on domestic routes, a legacy that has been proven in thirty years of unbroken profitability, an otherwise unheard of record in aviation.

QUESTION 5: THE WAY THINGS ARE VERSUS THE WAY THEY COULD BE.

A recent work efficiency study conducted inside one of America's largest banks revealed an unsettling number: The constant communications enabled through e-mail, instant messaging, Web-based tools, conference calling, and video conferences left senior managers with an average of only four minutes to spend on any given task before being interrupted. The data was only slightly better for executive vice presidents and VPs, directors, and staff. Everyone at the bank was feeling as if they were slipping further and further behind on what they needed to get done, while simultaneously they saw that their stack of to-dos just kept growing.

Seeing the numbers, the bank knew it had to act, and fast. If the highest paid decision makers couldn't spend more than four minutes without interruption, how could they possibly take the time to make good decisions? A small SWAT team of internal thought leaders was called together to see what could be done. Sitting in a room with a whiteboard, the team was quickly able to visually show the problems.

The simple sketch showed the world in which the bank employees lived ”today.” For very good reasons, the bank had cultivated an environment where open communications was valued above almost all else. Letting branch managers speak directly to senior managers allowed regional issues to be resolved quickly.

But instead of employees being happy that they could always reach out to one another, message overload caused many people to give up on answering any device. Of course that wasn't possible either-among all the noise there was still a tremendous amount of valuable information being shared.

Sometimes a clear articulation of the status quo is all that a project needs to get it moving. But not this time: The SWAT team realized that if they couldn't come up with some way to address this problem, it was unlikely that anyone further up in management could either. They hadn't been called together just to say ”we know what is wrong.” They knew they needed to find an answer.

They started by imagining what things would look like when they had succeeded-when people could communicate with whomever they needed to whenever they needed to, and at the same time the receiver could choose when and how to be notified of the incoming messages.

Status quo: The bank's SWAT team sketched out the company's time crisis.

The team then created a view of what the perfect world might look like: everything filtered by sender, priority, urgency, and personal preferences.

On the second pa.s.s of ”what might be,” the team got to a more realistic solution: inbound and outbound filters.

The team was happy with that. Although it did nothing to address how, it at least showed the situation they'd like to have, and served as a starting point for imagining a better future. Then it dawned on the team that they may have gone too far in putting themselves into the picture. They had become so defensive about their own time and keeping a filter on what was coming in that they forgot to think about how to send information back out.

So they took another pa.s.s at their picture, this time recognizing that every sender is also a receiver, and that the receiver-if he or she wishes to have incoming communications filtered by urgency, relevance to a specific project, and overall importance-must then also take responsibility for indicating those same criteria in messages he or she sends out.

Senders and receivers sit on either side of a set of lenses that filter according to a whole range of criteria, some filtering messages on the way in and some on the way out. ”Channels” (phone, e-mail, IM, mail) become secondary to the type of message itself, and can be chosen by either sender or receiver, depending on their preferences.

Now the team agreed that they had a model for what to aim for. It was still highly conceptual and asked more questions than it answered, but they felt pleased with their afternoon's work. And they were especially pleased that they had been able to get their vision to this level without being interrupted.

WHITEBOARD WORKSHOP: TAKING THE SQVID FOR A WALK.

1. Pick an idea.

Think about a particular idea that you'd like to share with business colleagues. The idea could be most anything, from an insight you gleaned from a financial spreadsheet to a brilliant blog you read online to a new marketing message you'd like to propose. Since you'll be thinking about this idea for a while, pick something that you find personally interesting and which is relatively easy to explain.

If you're stumped, here are a few examples: A new ad for our product, based on a princess kissing a frog.

We don't calculate profitability correctly.

In the past year, China became the world's second largest auto manufacturer behind the United States.

2. Draw a circle and give it a name.

Get a stack of six sheets of blank letter-size paper and a black pen. On the first sheet, draw a circle in the center of the page.

Now give your idea a name. It could be as descriptive as ”a plan for redefining how we calculate profit and loss,” as abstract as ”the frog campaign,” or as simple as ”China: 10 million cars and counting.” Don't spend too much time on selecting the name-for now you're going to be the only person who will even hear it-but pick something that has meaning for you and your idea.

Write your idea's name in the center of the circle and write the SQVID letters below it.

3. Create your SQVID pages.

On each of the five remaining pages, write the word that corresponds to the SQVID letter at the upper left, and the opposite word on the lower left. When you are finished, you should have five sheets with one set of two words written on each.

Simple-Elaborate Qualitative-Quant.i.tative Vision-Execution Individual-Comparison Change-Status quo They will look like this: 4. Fill out your SQVID.

On each of the five sheets, make a quick sketch of how you might visually represent your idea according to each word. For example, if we had picked ”the frog campaign,” we might have something like this: Complete a simple set of sketches for each sheet. If you need inspiration, go back and review your apples at the beginning of this chapter.

What Is Happening The act of filling out the SQVID forces your mind's eye to look at your idea from many sides in a structured and repeatable way. The five questions you've just answered make different demands upon how your mind sees and activate many different thought centers in your brain, from those that notice measurement and shape to those that register time, s.p.a.ce, and change. The sketches you've drawn visually represent all the fundamental ways you can see an idea. The exercise not only stretches the imagination, it simultaneously brings your idea into clearer focus, ready to be finalized for showing in the next chapters.

*See Appendix C: Resources for Visual Thinkers.

* For more on the basics of the right- brain/ left- brain split, see Appendix B: The Science of Visual Thinking.

CHAPTER 7.

FRAMEWORKS FOR SHOWING.

Way back when we started talking about the visual thinking process, I mentioned that many people are uncertain about how to solve problems with pictures because they are uncertain about their ability to draw. This tendency to equate visual thinking with the creation of elaborate and refined drawings is just plain wrong. It approaches the process of visual thinking backward, limiting our most powerful problem-solving ability before we've even had a chance to really use it.

That's because showing-the step that contains the closest thing to a drawing lesson-happens at the end of the visual thinking process, not the beginning. In fact, business-people who try to start the process with showing-which is what happens 90 percent of the time-get so distracted by drawing skills, computer programs, and visual polish that they miss the real value of this step. Showing is not only our chance to wrap up our ideas so that we can share them with somebody else, this step is also when we invariably make our biggest breakthroughs-but only if we've already looked, seen, and imagined well.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road Showing is where it all comes together. We looked, we saw, we imagined; we found patterns, made sense of them, and found ways to visually manipulate them into a picture never before seen. Showing is how we share this picture with others, both to inform and persuade them-and to check for ourselves whether others see the same things.

In order to show well, we need to complete three steps: Select the right framework, use that framework to create our picture, and then explain our picture to somebody else. Only one of those steps requires any drawing, and yet that's the one that nearly everybody gets hung up on.

The Three Steps of Showing 1. Select the right framework.

To get started, we need two tools to select the right framework. We've already used the SQVID to help focus our idea, and now we'll use it again, along with a new tool that we'll see in a moment, to select the best framework for composing our picture. It won't be difficult because there are only six frameworks to choose from-and again, we've already seen them all.

2. Use the framework to create our picture.

With the most appropriate framework selected for the problem we need to solve, we'll start by laying in the appropriate coordinate system, then gradually adding in the data and visual details that make our picture show (and tell) the right story.

3. Present and explain our picture.

Whether we'll be there in person to present it or not, our picture still needs an explanation. Sometimes that may take a thousand words, sometimes none at all. Either way, a good problem-solving picture is always straightforward to explain, no matter how complex its content or meaning. If the picture has been drawn according to the six ways we see and takes advantage of precognitive attributes, our audience will almost always ”get” it long before we've stopped explaining.

Seeing Becomes Showing Chapter 5 closed with the idea that being aware of how we see isn't just useful in helping us break problems down into distinct visual elements, but also provides guidance on how we can show. Here's what that really means: Since our vision system normally sees things according to specific pathways, it makes sense to take advantage of those same pathways when creating pictures that other people are going to see. In other words, if we see in six ways, it makes sense that we should be able to show in six ways as well.

The six ways we see (again): who/what, how many, where, when, how, and why.