The Three Basic Tools of Visual Thinking

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The Visual Thinking Process
1. Eyes
2. Hands
3. The mind’s eye
Three basic tools

There are really only three tools you need to become great at solving problems with pictures with pictures: your eyes, your mind’s eye or imagination and a little eye-hand coordination. You don’t need any technology–this is a case where the hand is mightier than the mouse.

Visual thinking is the ability to draw pictures that illustrate the solutions to a business problem. The real power in this methid lies in the fact that you don’t need to use a computer to generate the drawings for you. Instead, you do them by hand using whatever materials are close at hand–even the paper napkins in a restaurant if that’s all you have available.

Note that the pictures used to solve business problems or to explain ideas are not works of art. They are not line drawings of the Mona Lisa or anything of that caliber. Instead, visual thinking uses handdrawn sketches that incorporate basic shapes, lines and arrows and stick drawings of people.

Hand-drawn pictures are better than those generated by computer because:

People like to see what other people have drawn: they respond better to hand-drawn crude pictures drawn step by step than they ever do to polished graphics that are obviously computer generated.

Hand sketches are quick to create: and therefore easy to stary over if you need to change something. This encourages a certain degree of trial and error, which is healthy and stimulating.

Software often gives too many options: drawing packages generally offer a number of different ways to draw the same thing. Sometimes you can get so caught up in playing with these that you lose track of what you original point was.

This is a case where less is more: simple drawings gazump the impact of highly sophisticated drawings when you’re trying to get a point across.

Probably the most acclaimed success story of visual thinking was the establishment of Southwest Airlines. In 1967. Herb Kelleher was a New Jersey lawyer who had been hired by Rollin King to help him close King’s failed regional airline. At dinner one night, Ricked up a napkin and made a quick sketch:

Rollins suggested that instead of creating an airline that tried to serve large cities like everyone else was doing, it would be better to run a small airline that served just the three biggest towns in Texas. All of the other airlines were operating a hub and spoke model–fly people to a central hub first, then to another hub and then to a smaller city. That meant people had to catch multiple flights to go from one city to another sometimes.

Southwest legend says that Herb agreed with Rollin on two tings: first, that the idea was crazy, and second, that the idea was brilliant. On its own, their simple map illustrated the fundamental operating principles of the company that Herb and Rollin agreed to start that evening: fly short routes between busy cities, avoid hubs, and where possible fly into smaller, secondary airfields. One napkin; one good idea; one profitable airline.

–Dan Roam

Four years later in 1971, Herb Kelleher helped launch Southwest Airlines to serve the three cities specified on that napkin. By combining operating efficiencies, convenience, low prices, a zany corporate ethos and some very gung-ho marketing, Southwest become successful by focusing on just a very small group of cities. The company has gone on to grow from that early base and has managed to rack up one very impressive statisticit has an unbroken record of thirty years of profitability. This is a feat never before achieved in the history of aviation. It just goes to show what sketching an idea on the back of a napkin can achieve.

The experience of Herb Kelleher and others illustrates perfectly the benefits of the visual thinking process–of trying to solve problems by drawing pictures. The advantages of this approach to business are:

As you draw simple sketches, you can clarify what exists in your own mind only as a vague idea. Drawing pictures makes your ideas more concrete than if you just try to describe them using words.

By drawing sketches by hand on the back of any piece of paper that is available–even a napkin if necessary–you don’t rely on having the skills to make some other kind of technology work. There’s just you, your thoughts and a pen.

As you develop simple sketches in a group setting, this invariably invites suggestions and comments from other people. The act of sketching out what is being discussed encourages some inspired discussions, which is good.

Finally and importantly, if you’re making a presentation from a sketch, you’ll find that you can discuss things systematically without the need to rely on notes, bullet points or a written script. Sketches are excellent ways to structure a business presentation.