Part 12 (1/2)
Imagine: How can we manipulate or take advantage of emerging patterns? Are there open opportunities? What is not visible here? Where have we seen this before?
Option one: We explain how spending a little on platform upgrades could likely reestablish our lead in feature offerings, but would have only partial impact on improving overall security, reliability, and flexibility.
Imagining aloud means talking through the options that our picture presents and making the empty s.p.a.ces come alive. As we introduce option one-the low-cost Band-Aid-we draw in exactly what we're describing, making it obvious that the potential impact of staying on the same platform will be slightly improved services and features-perhaps even enough to keep us ahead of SMS-Peridocs for a time.
Then we draw in option two, describing how a $9 million platform redesign will enable us to make real improvements in all offerings, and position us to stay ahead of the rising open platform crowd-beating them by joining them.
Option two: We explain how a $9-million rebuild, using open standards, will s.h.i.+ft us into leaders.h.i.+p on the fastest growing side of the picture.
Now the executives will have one more big question. ”OK,” they'll say to us, ”you've spent a lot of time with this picture, what do you think we should do?”
Show: This is what we think it all means. Do you see the same things? This is what we think our options are. Do you agree?
And now we finally come to why we need to go with option two and spend the big money: Regardless of our market position today, there is no way we will be able to compete on flexibility, security, and reliability in the coming years on our present platform. Open platforms will simply beat us. We've led this industry for the past decade, and if we intend to keep our lead, there's only one way for us to go: Rebuild from the ground up using open standards. As far as we can see, it's not even a question.
If we want to stay in the lead in the industry we created, we've got no choice but to rebuild on a new open platform.
Our argument is made. The meeting is far from over, but our picture has served its purpose. It introduced more concepts more quickly than we ever could have done with words alone; it made those concepts easy to see, understand, and remember; and it provided a visual framework upon which we and the executives will be drawing more arrows and options for the next hour. Big decisions are about to be made. Let's hope that we've been honest with what we've drawn.
Sometimes a Pizza Is Enough, Sometimes It's Not The differences in style-and the a.s.sociated successes-between Lauren's approach to showing her picture during the big pitch and what we just saw in the SAX Inc. conference room are enormous. Still, they all boil down to just one thing: If we're going to use a picture to sell, we have to be prepared to talk about it.
This brings us to the last problem in this book, namely, Is a problem-solving picture ”bad” if it requires an explanation? After all, doesn't the old adage ”a picture is worth a thousand words” tell us that good pictures always stand on their own?
The answer is no. All good pictures do not need to be self-explanatory, but they do need to be explainable. It's a rare problem-solving picture of any sort that can carry a clear message, convey powerful meaning, and inspire deep insight without at least a caption. Certainly a basic portrait, bar chart, or simple timeline should be understood immediately, but when we think about the more elaborate and insightful pictures required to show complex interactions of when, where, how, and why, the point isn't to replace all the words; the point is to use a picture to replace those words that are more effectively conveyed, understood, and remembered visually.
The best way to think about this is to think about pizza. More to the point, what we really need to think about is when pizza is the ideal food to serve guests versus when a three-course sit-down meal is more appropriate. Here's what I mean. For most business meetings that take place on a day-to-day level, our expectations as partic.i.p.ants are usually pretty low. We've met all these people before, heard most of what everybody has to say, and have plenty of other things we could be doing. Those are what I call pizza meetings: They're more like having a bunch of neighbors over to watch a game on TV than having everybody get dressed up to share a gourmet meal. Either way, everybody needs to be fed, but at a pizza meeting the only expectations about the food are that it's filling, tastes pretty good, and doesn't require a lot of cleanup.
Most business pictures are pizza: They need to be simple, easy to digest, and contain few enough ingredients that they don't cause indigestion. These pizza pictures shouldn't need a lot of explanation. They're there to push the meeting forward and get everyone fed on the information as quickly and satisfyingly as possible. More customer data has been collected? Great. Give it to us as a bar chart. A new work stream and deadline have been added to the project? Fine. Where's the one-line timeline? That's it? Great, got it. Thanks. Later.
Then again, a lot of meetings involve a whole different set of expectations. Imagine that we're the new boss and we're meeting the board to relay the impressive results of our first ninety days. Imagine that we've just acquired a new company and we need to convey to senior staff how our business model is going to change; imagine we're meeting a client for the biggest pitch in our company's history. Guests at these meetings expect to be impressed, to learn something they didn't know, to see something they've never seen before... and pizza pictures aren't going to cut it.
These meetings are like full-blown sit-down dinners, and the pictures we show need to convey substantial insight, open up interesting conversation, and support important decision making. We're talking here about delivering more than just informational satisfaction. We need to provide the pictorial equivalent of a three-course meal. That's when our elaborate how and why pictures become the order of the day: They contain a lot, they show a lot, and-as we just saw in the SAX conference room-they require a lot of explanation.
Nothing wrong with that. At our metaphorical sit-down-dinner meeting, our guests not only have more time, they fully expect to be engaged in detailed conversation and are willing to make the commitment of time and energy necessary to ensure they're getting the most from what we've got to show them. You say we need to think about branching into new international markets? Interesting. What makes you say that? Investing in a new product development now? How could that be? You need nine million dollars? Show me why.
It's in these instances-when our guests' expectations are high but their willingness to partic.i.p.ate is equally high-that we should always pull out the big pictures. The elaborate maps, the comparative timelines, the quant.i.tative value chains, the visionary plots. These pictures serve as launching platforms from which ideas can grow, which is the whole point of problem solving. We don't show an insight-inspiring picture because it saves a thousand words; we show it because it elicits the thousand words that make the greatest difference.
CHAPTER 16.
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS.
Visual Thinking: The Take-Anywhere Problem-Solving Toolkit That morning on the train to Sheffield, I not only learned about the power of a napkin, I also learned that what we all really need is a reliable problem-solving toolkit that we can take with us anywhere; something that we can pull out of our pocket at a moment's notice to help us look at problems, see what makes them tick, imagine ways to solve them, and then show our solutions to somebody else. We need a universal visual thinking toolkit-and since we'll be using it at a moment's notice, above all it has to be memorable.
Three-Four-Five-Six: The Visual Thinking Swiss Army Knife One last visualization exercise. Imagine that you're sitting at the airport cafe waiting for your flight. You see a couple friends or business colleagues walking past and wave them down. As they join you, they ask what you've been up to lately.
”Solving problems with pictures,” you say. ”Learning to get better at visual thinking.”
”Really?” they say. ”What's that all about?”
”Let me show you,” you answer as you pick up a napkin and pull a pen from your bag.
As you roughly sketch the outline of a Swiss Army knife, you say, ”Picture visual thinking as the Swiss Army knife of problem solving. It has several different blades to help visually solve almost any kind of problem, but they follow a simple pattern so it's easy to remember what they all do.”
”First are our three basic visual thinking tools: our eyes, our mind's eye, and our hand-eye coordination.”
”Next come the four steps of the visual thinking process. Four steps we already know how to do: look, see, imagine, and show.”
”Then we have the SQVID, the five questions that help us open our mind's eye: simple or elaborate, qualitative or quant.i.tative, vision or execution, individual or comparison, change or status quo?”
”Last come the six ways we see, and the six corresponding ways we show: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why.”
”That's my visual problem-solving toolkit. I don't have to remember any more than that, and I can use it to help with any problem, anytime, anywhere.”
”That's pretty interesting,” your first colleague says. ”I've got a little time... can you show me more?”
”Of course,” you say, as you reach for another napkin.
”That is interesting,” says the other colleague. ”I want to think about it some more, but I've got to run. Do you mind if I keep the napkin?”
”Not at all,” you reply, handing it over with a smile.
In two minutes you've captured your own idea, shown it to others, and pa.s.sed it along. That's how visual thinking works, and that's how to solve problems and sell ideas with pictures.