Part 11 (2/2)
As we reach the end of this book, I have one final story to share, and it's the best example ever of how not to present a problem-solving picture. It's a scary story and on the surface may appear to undermine much of what we've talked about here-at least that's what I thought when it took place. Only on reflection did I come to realize that the story, in fact, makes the case for visual thinking stronger, especially since addressing it forced me to go back and look at my approach to visual thinking all over again.
A year ago, I was hired to join a team of business consultants working on a huge technology project sales pitch. Each member of this team was handpicked for his or her proven expertise in a particular field, and each had been all over the world selling and leading successful projects. As I stepped into the conference room to meet them for the first time, I was already impressed. If you planned to spend $100 million on a new enterprise-wide technology system, these were the people you wanted: They just looked right.
Although I was brought in to help out just on the charts, I had a wonderful time working with this team, and even succeeded in convincing them to use pictures during key parts of their sales presentation instead of the usual bullet points. Having seen audiences fall asleep after the second page of bullets, the team was all for it, and after nearly three weeks of work we were all amazed by what we'd been able to accomplish. Together we'd managed to boil down a hundred pages of material into just six handouts and a dozen slides, without compromising any of the core materials and without losing the overall storyline of the proposal.
The showpiece of the presentation was a multiple-variable plot similar to the one we just created for SAX Inc. It ill.u.s.trated the client's industry by mapping together several variables (compet.i.tors, market share, industry work flow, sales over time) that were individually familiar to the audience but had never before been seen together in one place. The result was a picture that offered up numerous insights. It showed that the client's business model placed them at several unconnected steps across their industry; it showed that while they led in two of those steps, they lagged in others; it showed that their biggest compet.i.tors focused on dominating only single steps, etc. In other words, it was a picture that could launch any of several fascinating conversations, all of which were important to the client's decision-making process and all of which the team was prepared to run with.
As the chart guy, I didn't have a speaking part on pitch day, so I was given the unfamiliar role of sitting in the back of the auditorium where I could judge audience response and take notes for debriefing later. When our team entered the auditorium to deliver the pitch, I was ready to be amazed. I was, but not for the reasons I'd expected.
Lauren, the team leader, opened the pitch brilliantly. She was a great speaker-charming, engaging, loud. She led with a funny anecdote that got a chuckle from the room full of client executives, technologists, and finance people. It couldn't have been a better start.
But then she hit the ”next slide” b.u.t.ton, looked up at the multiple-variable plot with its four layers of seamlessly integrated visual information, precognitive attributes, intuitive coordinate system... and froze.
It was like watching a cartoon: Lauren's mouth opened but nothing came out; her eyes darted across the fifteen-foot projection screen but saw nothing. As Lauren stood there, hands locked in midgesture, the room held its breath, waiting for her to explain what they were looking at, what it meant, and why they should care. But no sound was heard. I twisted in my seat, agonizing, barely able to keep from shouting out, ”Lauren! Just say what this chart shows and start pointing!”
Mercifully, I managed to remain silent, and Lauren-the consummate consulting professional-wasn't going to let a bunch of colored bubbles on a chart knock her off track for long. She took a breath, recovered her composure, and said, ”We created this chart to show where you sit in your industry. Next slide please.”
We didn't win the project.
In the debrief we all agreed on what had happened: Although Lauren and the team now knew how to create a problem-solving picture, we'd never discussed how to talk about one. When she got up on stage in presentation mode, Lauren's mind expected the slides behind her to contain words in lists, something that she'd spoken to hundreds of times. But when she turned around and saw colored b.a.l.l.s and bits of text connected by lines and arrows, her mind went blank. Where was she supposed to start? What was she supposed to say? Other than the headline and the labels on the coordinates, there was nothing there to read: no bullet points, no summary, no words.
I knew at that moment I'd stumbled upon the greatest challenge to solving problems with pictures: Although we know how to look, to see, to imagine, and to show, n.o.body since kindergarten has told us how to talk about what we see. Just like singing, dancing, and drawing, we once knew how to show and tell, and we did it without bulleted lists. Not anymore.
For a time, I despaired: Was there no future for anything other than simple tables, Venn diagrams, and bar charts as presentation tools? How could that be, after all my research and personal experience in seeing how well pictures worked? Then I remembered the English breakfast and the countless other pictures I'd worked on with teams across dozens of companies in half a dozen countries, the pitches I'd seen won based on nothing more than a single chart that the CEO immediately ”got,” and the project teams that understood what they were supposed to do only when they'd reviewed that detailed Gantt chart. No, I thought, the problem isn't with the pictures-the problem is in remembering that show and tell are two different words.
Then it hit me: We already have the answer, and just like the visual thinking process itself, the answer is something we all do all the time without even being aware of it. In fact, the process for talking about a picture is the visual thinking process. Let me show you what I mean. Let's go back to SAX Inc. for a moment, and make that final $9 million pitch to the executives.
Look, See, Imagine, Show: The Four Steps of Selling an Idea with a Picture Quick review: We've created a series of pictures to help us solve the problem of flat sales at our accounting software company, SAX Inc. Those pictures lead us to a possible solution-spend $9 million to completely rebuild our software platform. OK, that's one problem solved, another created. How are we going to convince our executives to spend $9 million on a major project when we have flat sales? To address that, we created another set of pictures. We mapped our executives' decision-making process, exposing cause and effect with a flowchart so we could see what we'd need to show, and then we prepared an elaborate, quant.i.tative, visionary, comparative, forward-thinking picture to tell them the whole story.
Imagine that we've scheduled a meeting to present our ideas to the execs. We're in the conference room thirty minutes early, preparing for the execs to arrive. No worries. The way we're going to approach this is exactly the same way we made our pictures: We are going to take the execs with us through the four-step visual thinking process as we look at a landscape of information, see those things in it that matter most, imagine what they mean, and then show the result. The only difference is this time the information landscape is a plot we've already created, and we already know exactly what we want to show.
Look, see, imagine, show. We've done it before and now we'll do it again.
As we're waiting for the execs, we're not booting up our computers, looking for wireless connectivity, or trying to hook up the projector that never shows the right resolution, but that doesn't mean we don't have pictures to show. And we're not stacking up color-printed decks in front of each seat, but that doesn't mean we don't have sheets and data to hand out at the appropriate time. No, what we're doing is drawing our picture on the whiteboard, as big as we can. We're sketching in the coordinates and first four variables of our plot (compet.i.tors, platform, features, last year's revenue), preparing to convince our execs why by engaging them in an interactive (truly back and forth), live (but that doesn't mean unscripted), back-to-basics (but that doesn't mean simplistic) visual thinking session.
This is what we draw on the whiteboard before the execs come into the room-the t.i.tle, coordinates, key, and first five variables of the plot.
With our drawing done, we sit down and take a breath. Right on time, the execs arrive. Our execs don't like small talk these days, so we stand up and immediately direct their attention to the whiteboard.
”As we all know, we've got a major problem to solve. Sales of SAM have flattened, and if we don't get sales back up in the next year, we stand to lose our top spot in the market. Our group believes that we've identified a solution, and we want to share it with you by taking you through this visual overview of our market.”
Brief aside. The fact that we've got an elaborate picture drawn up on the whiteboard is already working in our favor. Since the executives can immediately see that we've got something well thought out in mind, but can't completely understand everything on it, they are anxious to hear what we have to say. They'll likely even give us a moment more than usual to get to the point. This is when we start looking aloud.
Look: What's the picture all about? What's included and what's not? What are the coordinates and dimensions?
Looking aloud means that we aren't going to toss our executives into the middle of the metaphorical bowling alley. We're going to take their hands and walk them there, pointing out the coordinates and dimensions of the place as we go, giving them a moment to figure out where we are and what we're supposed to do now that we're here.
With that approach in mind, we start the tour of our picture. ”Our goal in creating this model was to build a baseline of our industry according to several critical factors, ranging from platform to feature set to revenue. We believed that by looking at the business in this integrated way we would see our problem in a new light, potentially illuminating new and unexpected approaches to solving it.
”There's a lot included here-and there's going to be a lot more-so let me quickly show you what we have. First, we looked at what types of compet.i.tors we face, whether running on proprietary or open systems, which we plotted here along the bottom.” We point out the horizontal axis.
”Next, we asked what kind of features each company's software offers, whether a full suite or just a few. We plotted that here, going up the side.” We point out the vertical axis.
”Then we added in last year's revenues using proportionally scaled bubbles plotted onto the appropriate quadrants of the chart. You see us up here in the lead with revenues last year of $25 million and the fullest feature set running on our proprietary platform, while you see MoneyFree way down here, with few features running on an open platform, and next to no revenue.” We point out the bubbles at the extreme ends of the scales.
We look at the execs and see nods; they're with us so far. Time to let go of their hands and take a step back: We're about to drop a bomb.
See: What are the three most important things that stand out? How do they interact? Is there a pattern emerging? Is there anything critical that we don't see?
Seeing is about pointing out what's most important in the picture-something that we haven't even drawn in. So, as we say, ”Here are those same companys' revenues projected for next year,” we draw in next year's bubbles starting with our own quadrant, explaining about the SMSoft-Peridocs merger, etc., then draw in MoneyFree, and finally Univerce.
One by one we draw in next year's bubbles, starting in our corner and saving Univerce for last.
”Not only is Univerce expected to grow ten times in revenue, it could very likely surpa.s.s us in features as well, knocking us into third place in offerings and size.” Boom.
Our executives see the point now and the questions start to fly. Some are defensive, like, ”That can't be right. Where did you get those numbers?” Some are aggresive, like ”What in the heck is Univerce up to?” Some are cautiously exploratory, like ”Hmm-is there anything we can do?”
The first question we answer precisely because we know exactly where the numbers came from, and that's when we hand out the detailed data spreadsheets we created while researching the picture. The second question we answer by describing next year's antic.i.p.ated increase in security and reliability on the open platform and the immediate impact that it will have on sales of open software. As for the third question-”What can we do?”-we're ready for that one, too. ”Thank you for the perfect segue,” we respond, ”let us take you through two possible options that we've identified.”
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