Working Smarter : Communication

Visuals versus Text: What Makes You Say “A-Ha” Faster?

Rich — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:31:00 GMT

In a previous entry, “Why Communicate Visually,” it was asserted and backed by scientific study that communicating visually is a far easier and quicker way to comprehend both simple and complex information for 8 out of 10 people.

Skeptical? Would you like to see for yourself? Below are three side-by-side visual versus text comparisons of the same information. Which of these engages you more quickly and creates the “a-ha” moment first?

Restroom Location at a Family Restaurant

VISUAL

TEXT

Directions to restroom from front door

- Walk towards the kitchen for about 15 feet.

- Make your first right past the tall palm tree.

- The first door to your right is the restroom for Women.

- The second door to your right is the restroom for Men.

Company History

VISUAL

TEXT

- In 2005, Standard mobile phone sold approximately 22.1 million units. In the same year, 6.1 million units of Smart Phones were sold.

- In 2006, standard phones sales dropped by 7 million units compared to the previous, while Smart Phones increased by over 2.5 million units.

- By 2007, Smart Phones passed standard phones in total units sold by nearly double.

- In 2008, Smart Phones sold 24.7 million units, while standard phones continued to decline only selling 5.7 million units.

Department Organizational Structure

VISUAL

TEXT

- Bill Jones is the Marketing Director for the company.

- Natalie Ryan reports to Bill Jones and supervises the Graphics Coordinator Samantha Davis.

- Connor Michaels is also a mid-level manager serving as the Website Manager. Travis Duncan, the Web Coordinator, reports to Connor.

- Jan Smith is the head Copywriter and Editor and manages one other Staff Writer Jeremy Yates.

- Thomas Dodd manages the internet Marketing strategy and supervises Carlos Lopez, who serves as the team’s Marketing Analyst.

As you can see, bulleted information is not always the easiest way to absorb and comprehend information. With visuals, one is able to comprehend more quickly an abundance of information and recall it from memory more easily.

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Why Communicate Visually?

Aaron Stannard — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:11:00 GMT

This is a lesson from our new eCourse called Communicating Visually, which was authored by yours truly.

If you were to ask every manager on Earth to list their five least favorite managerial activities, all of them would include "putting out fires" on their list. We all know what it's like to have to put out a fire – a fire starts when somebody screws up and suddenly your project is in jeopardy. You, being the person in charge, inevitably have to swoop in and put the fire out, and putting it out requires a lot of last minute scrambling, long nights, weekends in the office, and plenty of stress.

Fires occur because of poor communication. Perhaps someone doesn't understand why what they're doing is important or who is actually responsible for what. But somewhere along the way some part of a major project or assignment falls apart and you, the manager, are the lucky one who gets to put it back together. It gets worse: bad communication is endemic, so you're going to be putting out lots of fires. You move from crisis to crisis, fixing care of one urgent, mission-critical screw-up after another. You're stressed, you have too much to do, you can't go home early, it becomes harder to schedule vacations, and on and on.

But wait a minute – we identified the disease responsible for creating crises: bad communication. Rather than treat the symptoms of bad communication, the fires, why don't you start treating the disease of bad communication? How can you communicate in a manner that makes your specifications absolutely clear and easy for your co-workers to remember?

A Better Way to Communicate

How can we communicate both clearly and memorably? Do we simply repeat ourselves more? Communicate slower? No.

Instead, we should communicate visually. We've all heard the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words," and it's true – what takes one thousand words to explain correctly can be described much more easily using a simple picture.

Not only is it easier to communicate something using a picture, but it's also much easier for people to remember things that have been communicated to them visually. Psychologist Jerome Bruner of New York University has studied the art of communication, and his studies have shown that:

People remember 10% of what they hear;
20% of what they read; and
80% of what they see and do.

Most people are visual learners; a recent study by the U.S. Federal Government suggested that up to 83% of human learning occurs visually. The study also indicated that information which is communicated visually is retained up to six times greater than information which is communicated by spoken word alone.

Manager's problems can't resolve their miscommunication problems with their teams by merely speaking more or writing more – you can't scale failure into success. Instead, we should augment what we've been trying to say with pictures. It's that simple.

Consider an example: you're trying to tell your webmaster that you want to make a slight modification to your layout – which of these two communication mediums is less likely to be misinterpreted:

Writing

Dear Webmaster,
I'd like you to make a slight change to SmartDraw.com's homepage:
Please make the font underneath the big image on top of the page a little larger than it is currently. You know the text that I'm talking about? The text to the left of the "play video" image? That text. It needs to be made a bit bigger so it's easier to read.
And I don't mean ALL of the text to the left of the "play video image" – just the sub-header. You know that text which is in bold just above all of the other text? That text.

The text in the rest of the paragraph. Just the bold text in the sub-header. It needs to be bigger; maybe 14pt or so.
Please let me know if you need further clarification.

Thanks,
Manager

Visual

Dear Webmaster,
Please modify SmartDraw.com's homepage. See below:

Thanks,
Manager

Which version is clearer? The visual version is indisputably clearer. I have a word bubble which points directly at the sub-header I want modified and I even drew a box around the darn thing for good measure. There is zero ambiguity about what I want. As for the written version – who the hell knows what the webmaster would change?

This is just one example of something that can be communicated visually – in fact, anything can be communicated visually.

What Can Be Communicated Visually

Let's say that you're managing a project for your company; like any project, you have to come up with a project plan before your team can begin work. Most folks simply use their project plans to provide answers to the six classic questions:

Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?

However, in project manager speech, these six questions usually look something more like this:

Who is responsible for this?
What needs to be done?
When will this be done?
Where will we focus our efforts?
Why is this important?
How are we going to do this?

So, how can you be sure that your answers are clear and easy to remember? By communicating visually. For instance, if the project you were managing were a construction project, you might answer these questions using the following graphics:

None of these graphics are particularly difficult to produce, especially if you use an intuitive tool like our product, SmartDraw. These types of graphics are called "business graphics" because they are simple and easy enough for the average businessperson to use; you don't need to be an artist to be able to produce clear business graphics which communicate your plans clearly and memorably.

In the following lessons of this eCourse, we will show you how to come up with your own answers to these six questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?) using the appropriate kinds of business graphics, and we will explain how these business graphics will help you resolve frustrating communication issues by adding clarity and improved data retention to the picture, no pun intended.

If you liked this post, make sure you sign up for Communicating Visually.

Also, I'd like to thank Chuck Frey from the Mind Mapping Software Blog for sydnicating this same lesson on his excellent blog. The more people out there who begin communicating visually, the more efficient we all become.

Winners Over-Deliver – Are you a Winner?

Rich — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:00:00 GMT

There are some statements that are used to death, that when I hear them I simply roll my eyes (or gag). Statements like:

“Our company exceeds client expectations.”

“We offer value-added services.”

Or my personal favorite:

“We go the extra mile for our customers.”

Even the worst companies on Earth make these statements and plaster it all over their marketing materials and website, and pepper them throughout their conversations and presentations with prospects and clients. The irony? How can you possibly exceed client expectations, by promising you will?

The only way for anyone in your organization to be perceived as a “winner” or champion in the eyes of your clients is to over-deliver. And that starts with under-promising.

First, I want to make a clear distinction. I am not advocating that you promise a “lesser quality of service” to your clients. I am merely suggesting not promising the world on a silver platter. And after the service has been performed then communicate back to your client how you specifically went well beyond what standard service providers would have not normally done for them. How will your client feel about the job performed then? Elated!

Here’s an example:

Let’s say I am a contractor hired for a job of constructing a new addition to a house for a new client. In the hiring process, I learn what really is important to the client is having the job completed by a specific date, June 1^st, because the client plans on hosting a high school graduation party for their son. The completion date is extremely important and is communicated as such throughout the initial hiring conversation.

So rather than promising the client that “the job will be completed 3-4 weeks in advance, and will exceed your expectations,” but simply “we will provide a quality job completion on-time by your desired deadline of June 1st.”

However, the goal for your team is to have the job completed before then, and when you meet with the client for the final approval targeted on May 25^th, which is 7 days ahead of schedule, the client will be thrilled. The final step is to communicate specifically how you and your team made this job completion ahead of schedule for them, and how seriously the team valued this importance. Here’s an example:

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I am certainly glad to hear you say how much you both like the new addition. We ran into a few instances that made it seem as if your original target date would be difficult to meet. For example, the carpet you selected was difficult to order and had a long delay for arrival, so I personally called the manufacturer to express how important it was that we receive the carpet from them more quickly than the intended delivery date. They were able to expedite the order and I asked my team to work quickly upon its arrival so that we remain on schedule for you because I know how important is to you to be able to host the planned graduation party for your son. And low and behold we were able to complete the job to your satisfaction a week ahead of schedule for you.

Also, I wasn’t sure how experienced you were on planning events, so I took the opportunity to create a basic floor plan of the new space so that you can maximize it to your preference. I hope this helps you in planning your event.”

Talk about hitting a homerun! The client is satisfied that the job has been completed, is ecstatic how the team performed to make it all happen ahead of schedule, feels that their needs were heard and valued by everyone involved, and received an additional token of value with the event floor plan template. By delivering more than promised, the overall experience is championed and leads to the likelihood of recommending your services over others.

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Video: a Cartoon That Makes it Easy to Understand the Credit Crisis

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

When I was perusing some of my favorite blogs this morning I came across these two videos which artfully use visualization to explain a complex economic problem, the 2008-2009 credit crisis.

The cartoon probably doesn't address some of the important nuances of the crisis, but it succeeds where most of the major newspapers and opinion pages have failed: it explains a complex economic problem in a way that is fun and easy for the masses to understand.

This is why "a picture is worth a thousand words." Most people think visually – when we’re given a piece of information our brain attempts to understand it by visualizing it. This is why analogies are so popular – we describe a massive decrease in the index of a stock market as a “crash” because a crash is something that our brain can visualize into something more understandable. So how come more people don't try to communicate using visuals like these cartoons?

Because communicating visually used to be hard - it used to require that you have some sort of artistic talent, but no longer. That's no longer true with products like SmartDraw, which have automated just about any drawing that the average businessperson might need. So why not learn how to communicate visually and become a effective communicator, like the author of these cartoons?

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Managers: Your Projects Fail Because Your Communication Stinks

Aaron Stannard — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:18:00 GMT

The most frustrating part of project management is when people on your team screw up the directions. You told them to do X, they did Y, and so forth. It happens all the time, especially on projects that are unfamiliar or new to your team. And when someone inevitably screws up, what do you have to do? Show them exactly how to fix it—if the team screws up often enough, you’ll inevitably have to slip into micromanaging the entire project.

So what can you do? You don’t want to treat your co-workers like robots, able to do the work only when told exactly what to do down to the very last letter, but at the same time they seem to make bad decisions when you give them too much leeway. What’s the problem?

Most of the time the problem isn’t your team, it’s you. Well, I meant that it’s us—all managers are at fault to some extent. Specifically, it’s our communication with our team members that’s the problem. We know what we want done and we try to communicate that as best as we can, but we usually fall short. Here’s what most of us do wrong:

We communicate too many critical details verbally—Studies have shown that oral communication (speaking) is not only the most-often used form of communication, but it is also the least memorable. People remember only 10% of what they hear on average versus 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see.

We only tell them “what they need to know” which often isn’t enough – Managers tell their team members only “what we think they need to know” but all too often we don’t know what they need to know. Does the new guy in IT know that you’re never, ever supposed to take more than one of the web servers out of the cluster when deploying a new version of the website? Well, if you assume that he knows that and therefore don’t bother warning him before you instruct to him to deploy a new version of the website, who’s fault is it when the website goes down? Yours.
We don’t properly explain the business objectives behind the projects – Team buy-in is important; if your team doesn’t understand how their work advances the business’ objectives then the chances that they might do something counter-productive increase. If you asked your MarCom team to design a prospecting email that shows off your company’s latest product without telling them that the email’s intended for non-customers, then there’s a good chance that my team might not include the appropriate calls for action, right? Right.

So the next time you see that one of your team members goofed up on a project, rather than get angry at them, figure out what you can do better. Here’s how you can get started:

Write key details down, draw pictures & diagrams, and give printed / electronic copies to your team members for reference (instead of just saying them)
Refer back to documented standard processes when they’re relevant for specific projects (instead of making assumptions about what people do or don’t already know)
Clearly explain how your project advances business objectives X,Y,Z (instead of just handing them the project with no explanation)

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