Solving The Presentation Puzzle
Uncovering Hidden Organizational Clues
Through Visual Communication
Do you ever feel like there’s too much
information out there? When you want the answer to one
little question, you have to sort through hundreds of
possible solutions.
Most would agree that simple is better,
and Doug Collins of GumshoeKI, Cincinnati, Ohio, has
based his business on this concept. Through knowledge
investigation and visual communication, GumshoeKI
“detectives” help companies put their
finger on exactly what’s holding them back.
A customized version of Microsoft Visio
aids these associates in this process and helps
maintain improvement in the organization long after the
consultants are gone.
To find out whodunnit, mystery-novel characters with
Fedoras and long cigarettes usually hire private
investigators known as P.I.s, or
“gumshoes.” GumshoeKI, Cincinnati, Ohio,
whose suffix letters identify it as a “knowledge
investigator”—is encouraging companies to
do a little detective work of their own.
There are a few differences. Companies, in
contrast to mysterious damsels, don’t want to
know whodunnit; they want to know how to do it: How to
know, out of a surfeit of information, what’s
important to themselves and their customers; how to
pare complex company metrics down to the skinny; how to
take the complicated and make it simple. Getting
information is not the problem. Presenting it in a way
that’s understandable and useful... ah,
there’s the rub.
“Organizations need to find out
what’s important to them,” says Doug
Collins, GumshoeKI’s principal. “In working
with customers we’ve found it comes down to
helping them decide. There’s been a very large
push in the industry toward group collaboration and
teamwork. Although sometimes powerful, it can be hard
to make decisions in a team environment.”
Through dialogue and visual feedback, the
sleuths gain better clarity and understanding of a
company’s goals and direction. They act as a
filter, trying to pull important facts (clues, if you
will) from volumes of information.
“There’s definitely a research
aspect to it,” says Collins. However, he adds,
the problem is not getting the facts; it is making
current fact-getting methods more effective. The
Internet is a prime example. “The web has gotten
so large and extensive that for a lot of people,
it’s overwhelming to the point that they
don’t even approach it anymore as a serious
research tool,” he says.
How do you take the teeth out of
“too much information” sources like the
Internet? Knowledge investigation and visual
communication.
Knowledge investigation is finding the
clues. Visual communication involves grouping ideas
into logical clusters and presenting them as a whole.
It involves flow charts and sometimes the creation of a
company “dashboard,” displaying complex
data as a bottom line reading on a graphic, like a
car’s speedometer. Knowledge investigation and
visual communication boil down to finding out what is
important and putting it in a straightforward
framework. “We hope to make life simpler,”
says Collins. “And simple is a thousand times
better than complex.”
Through feedback, they attempt to
condense, prioritize and consolidate informational
resources into one central location. The end product is
an online environment which internal leaders update and
maintain, with their day-to-day priorities in
mind.
“One of the problems with a typical
consulting engagement is the consultant will come in
and raise motivation during the length of the
engagement, but when the consultant leaves, the energy
level goes back to where it was,” Collins says.
In an attempt to avoid this phenomenon, GumshoeKI
trains employees to serve as “guides” who
are supported, remotely, after the consultants have
gone.
The methodology, which GumshoeKI calls
GRASP, is based on human nature. “In order for
people to decide how to proceed, they have to mentally
‘grasp’ the set of circumstances in which
they find themselves,” Collins says. grasp, then
proceed. Look, then leap. The leap, then, takes place
within a customized, simple-as-pie version of Microsoft
Visio, which GumshoeKI calls “Caper.”
Caper allows the in-company guides, who
can be fully trained inside of 20 minutes, to put
information into an online environment.
“We’ve found that a lot of
people would like to make use of web publishing, but
they’re relying on their group’s IT
department to make that happen,” says Collins,
who notes that this approach is often slow and
inefficient. “Here, it’s pretty much, you
push a button and it’s ready.”
The online environments, which are
typically in the frame of the intra- or Internet, are
called “visual nets.” The nets are broken
into areas for project information, discussion and
collaboration and strategy. They become a one-stop
shopping place for all of the company’s dispersed
informational resources.
The leaders in the company—the
guides— control the visual net. “If
you’re responsible for, say, strategic planning
for a business unit, then you would be considered a
guide for that activity,” says Collins. “If
you receive an e-mail with an idea for how to improve a
process or how to look at a certain competitor, it
would then be your responsibility to post that
information within the context of the visual
map.”
Visio, from which Caper was derived, is a
diagrammatic tool. As a result, much of the online
environment is in the form of flow charts and branching
logic webs. Each major step or concept in these
diagrams is linked to a page with further information
about it. Each page, then, is maintained by its own
guide, whose responsibility is to attach important
ideas, meeting minutes, movies, pictures or PDF files
involving the topic or sub-topic to that page. A guide
can link to resources on the world wide web,
too—anything from Amazon.com to the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers. Thus, all information
on engineering an exhaust manifold (for a car company)
is gathered together in one place and overseen by
someone who works on the project day-to-day.
An added benefit comes at progress report
time. “We advise against creating
presentations,” says Collins. “When
you’re working on a project and asked to present
to a team, oftentimes you have to leave off from the
work you have been doing and fire up PowerPoint.”
Instead of creating a separate presentation and
interrupting the workflow, the visual map itself can be
presented with the aid of a laptop and a
projector.
“It’s a visual representation
of workflow,” Collins says. A group is simply
showing notes—it’s work-in-progress. The
information is more timely. The process is more
simple.
E-rooms, provided by third-party
organizations on the web, offer secure areas in which
far-flung companies can come together to
“meet” and exchange information. A library
area holds resources in one central place, sort of like
a communal filing cabinet. There are discussion areas,
a calendar and sub-folders which hold archival
information on different areas of a project. Users can
drop information into e-rooms so the rest of the group
has access to it.
The collaborative nature of the visual web
also helps the right hand to know what the left hand is
doing. “With large geographically dispersed
organizations, you’ll find individuals doing
similar work and having no idea their colleagues are
doing work in parallel,” he says. “One of
the things we try to do in building community is
identify people and profile them, so others see
they’re part of a larger community.”
The bottom line is simplicity and
organization. Failure to prioritize is a time-waster,
as is digging for information, because the best
information in the world is useless if it can’t
be found. Can a company like GumshoeKI help? Maybe. If
they can help a company to understand—really
understand—one, where they are now and two, where
they need to be.
Like a lot of companies, we evolve as our customers
evolve,” says Collins. “We set up an
environment where they can realize their
goals.”
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