As the world gets more complex, the problems we confront involve more pieces, more connections, more stakeholders, and change more rapidly than ever before. Because of this complexity, things are less clear: there is more confusion and less certainty about what the real problems are and what to do about them. We often get into trouble by treating things as being more simple than they really are.
Because the problems we face are more complex, it is more critical than ever to bring together diverse groups of people – transdisciplinary groups of people who understand the various facets of the problem – and knit them together into effective teams. Often however, such diverse groups end up talking past each other instead of with each other. The very people who should be working closely together remain divided by different knowledge, experience, attitudes, and interests. Bringing these diverse people together into effective teams requires new and better ways to share our knowledge, learn together, and coordinate our activities.
Communication is both the glue that binds teams together as well as the vehicle that enables the team to share its ideas and catalyze action. To get action, to make change happen, we must educate and persuade other people; other employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, or the public at large.
But, as our ideas, our strategies, and our products grow ever more complex, our ability to clearly communicate their essence grows ever more difficult: the complexity of the situation outstrips our ability to talk sensibly about it, and we thus find it difficult to make clear and compelling arguments to others
We help our clients gain clarity by creating Visual Models of the complex problems they're grappling with. These visual models provide clarity by enabling us to see – literally see – the various elements of the problem and how they fit together. Visual models help us to get our minds around difficult problems by giving us a tangible model to work with, a model that represents the problem in its all its complexity and enables us to understand, to debate, to think critically, and to think creatively about what the real problems are and what the real solutions might be.
We help facilitate group learning, decision making, and cohesiveness by putting visual models in the center of the conversation. Visual models can enhance group performance by:
- Catalyzing conversation
- Providing a shared view of the problem to which everyone can agree or productively disagree.
- Bringing the problem – some system 'out there' in the world somewhere – into the meeting room: providing a tangible model of the problem with which we can play ‘what if…’ games, thinking through new scenarios, and imagining new possibilities.
- Easing communication between diverse groups with different jargon, different perspectives, and different agendas
- Directing people’s energy to attacking the problem (instead of each other)
- Promoting group ownership, acceptance, and stakeholder buy-in
- Enhancing coordination, coherence, and consensus among the group
- Engaging our aesthetic sense and thus providing a more interesting and inspiring means of communication
By showing people what we're talking about – by synergistically combining words and pictures – we can get our ideas across more clearly and more memorably. We help our clients communicate more effectively by creating visual materials – illustrations, presentations, web sites, brochures – that get people's attention, efficiently convey information, stick in people's minds, and motivate action.
In most organizations there is untapped intelligence and energy that can be unleashed through the cultivation of shared understanding and vision. To the degree that well-designed and carefully thought-out visual images can enhance understanding and engagement they can help us tap into that energy and achieve our common goals.
As my approach revolves around 'seeing whole systems' and forging a more comprehensive view of the world, my interests, correspondingly, range broadly across business, science, art and the humanities. My broad generalist background serves my clients in two ways: First, it allows me to understand my client's issues and communicate with them at a high level. Second, it allows me to connect those issues to other ideas or different ways of looking at things that may be outside my client's area of expertise.
The images I create spring from a theoretical understanding of how visual images work (or fail to work) and from an attempt to tap into the image schematic basis of meaning. Applying that theory – creating images that work – requires both technical skill (I hand-sketch a bit, work mostly in Adobe Illustrator, and know my way around many other imaging tools) as well as enough talent and taste to create images that are clear, informative, and appealing (to this, my work must speak for itself).
To create images that really work – that are functional as well as 'decorative' – it is important to understand both how images communicate as well as how images compliment other kinds of communication. To effectively integrate images into an overall communication strategy I try to ground my approach to visualization in an understanding of:
- Semiotics
- Graphic Arts
- Information Graphics
- The Visual Arts
- The Verbal Arts
- The Performing Arts
• Modeling: As qualitative model-makers we should understand something about how people successfully, or unsuccessfully, create accurate and useful models of the world. We should know something about:
• the philosophy of science
• epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge)
• the psychology of (ir)rationality
• Complexity: Over the last six years a field has emerged that applies concepts from complex-systems science to the management of human organizations. The goal of this field is to help us recognize the inherent complexity of the problems with which we're confronted, and to give us tools for thinking about and managing that complexity. I have followed the development of this field through my involvement with NECSI (The New England Complex Systems Institute) and as a fellow at ISCE (The Institute for Complexity and Emergence).
To apply the insights of complex-systems science we must connect them to the everyday reality of problem-solving teams. Teams themselves are complex dynamic social-systems whose successful operation is the emergent result of many different elements working together. The better we understand what those interdependent elements are, and how they work together, the better we can facilitate the team's success. To that end I bring an integrated view of:
- Decision Making
- Organizational Learning
- Dialog
- Critical & Creative Thinking
- Emotional Intelligence
- Cognitive Psychology
- Reflective Psychology
- Evolutionary Psychology
Working from existing client materials – reports, plans, web-sites, marketing and sales materials etc., supplemented by interviews and additional research, I can put together a visual model – a diagrammatic map – that brings together the many pieces of the problem – the people, issues, organizations, processes, etc. – into a single integrated view. This map presents a high-level summary, an integration, of the stack of original material, making the information accessible and useful in a way it wasn't before.
This map is then subject to a number of rounds of discussion, debate, and revision (the discussions around the map are where much of its value lies) until it stabilizes into a form that captures an accurate and comprehensive view of the problem.
The images I create have their greatest value when they're helping people to think things through. My actual involvement in that process varies according to the nature of the engagement. I may:
- Create images that are used by others to facilitate their meetings.
- Be a passive observer: taking visual notes and distilling them into an integrated overview of the proceedings to be used at subsequent meetings.
- Work in parallel with the group and/or the group's facilitator to create visual models – on white-boards or large pieces of paper – that focus the conversation and capture the salient ideas brought forth.
- Take an active role in facilitating and guiding the dialog. For example I can facilitate a series of model-building/problem-solving meetings that move the group through problem definition, exploration, decision making, and planning.
Often my clients have existing ideas, strategies, plans, or products that are in need of better visual explanation. This may be because they are currently using mostly words and would greatly benefit by using words and pictures. Or they may have an existing set of visual materials – PowerPoint slides, web graphics, sales brochures etc. – that are not working as well as they should, and an upgrade to something more clear, informative, and interesting is needed.
Working from existing materials and/or from conversations, I can create a set of images that convey the ideas you need to get across, and help you tell the story you're trying to tell. This set of images can be modified appropriately to support live presentations, web-sites, printed material, or other media.
For example, lets look at how this might work for a strategic planning project:
We might start by putting together a preliminary map of the strategic vision based on discussions with the organization's leaders, reading existing materials, and from a few days of additional research. This preliminary map is then used as the centerpiece of 3 or 4 rounds of facilitated strategy meetings to build a common vision of what the strategic issues are and what the strategic direction should be. Once the strategy map stabilizes, and the strategic approach is approved, the map can be modified and refined to create visual materials – presentations, web-sites, brochures – that can be used to convey the strategic vision to the rest of the organization and /or to other external stakeholders. Feedback from the staff, employees, and other stakeholders may be incorporated into future versions of the map to create an ongoing, evolutionary, strategic planning process.
- Decision Making
- Strategic Planning
- Product Design
- Change Management
- Knowledge Management
- Creative Thinking
- Team Building
- Dialog Facilitation
- Leadership & Strategic Communication
- Marketing & Sales Presentations
Home/Office: 781 259-4073
Cell Phone: 781 424-0349
Email: mclemens@idiagram.com