For Impact

Blog

The Value of A Good Visual: Immediacy

For Impact Ideas | | Tom Suddes

Bill Franks, Chief Analytics Officer at Teradata and a Faculty Member at the Institute for Analytics, authored a book TAMING THE BIG DATA TIDAL WAVE.

He posted a powerful explanation of THE VALUE OF A GOOD VISUAL at the HBR Blog Network.

I have been pounding on this idea for years and years … but it still seems like a ‘hard sell’.

There’s a big reason that people use the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” (As most of you know, in our world, “A ‘napkin’ (visual) is worth 10,000 words.”)


As Bill Franks reinforces, our brains are meant to see in pictures. He uses a really powerful example to illustrate this … a MAP OF THE UNITED STATES.

Think about it. A MAP is one of the most powerful visualization tools ever created! It shows relationships, relativity, and much more.

You can immediately see the size of states, contiguous states, what state is part of what region, etc.

Now just think if we took the map away, as Frank points out, and only had a set of data (text) that talks about location or size or borders or other information.

Read the article to gain a deeper understanding of this … and THEN APPLY IT!

For example:

  • Visually capture in the simplest way … your purpose, meaning, vision, reason for existence.
  • Create the most compelling and easily understood visual of your business model. (See 3 examples here.)
  • Create a visual timeline that shows your founding, start-up, track record and credibility … and your SCALE & GROW plan. (See 3 examples here.)