What Is Structured Visual Thinking™?
Structured Visualisation — Changing The Fortunes Of Business & The Enterprise
Published in
7 min readMar 6, 2016
We’ve recently updated the website:
We’ve spent a lot of time extolling the virtues of co-creation, structured analysis of the situation — getting inside the mountains of available information— leveraging the passion and energy of collaborating visually.
Thankfully the idea has gained traction with busy leadership teams who understand the impact it has. However, there always remains questions so we’ve answered as many as we can here.
Mostly visually of course.
1. The Typical Call To Action?
We get engaged when there’s an identified opportunity or challenge.
Sometimes we get called upon because other attempts to resolve the challenge (or exploit the opportunity) have failed. There are many causes for that — the general fatigue for the change that’s been going on. The opportunity just failed to happen, people just didn’t engage or get what was going on — the challenge or opportunity proved too hard for traditional methods.
In addition, the business needs alignment, direction, clarity, engagement, new vision — fresh thinking. It just knows that it wants to change — to make an impact.
Stuff Like That.
2. We Want To Make A Difference
And we want to make that sustained — we want to do it all properly — and that means many things but, to begin with, it involves getting everyone set up to succeed.
“Preparation sounds like an obvious thing to have to do — but we still get asked to turn up at a moments notice to help a ‘team meeting’ through a ‘challenge’...”
We increasingly loathe doing that because it’s not likely to bring about the sustained change/value that we know it could. And we know it would if there were better planning and thoughtfulness alongside.
3. Change Is The Word
Everybody we speak to is struggling with the idea of change.
It’s a given — whether it’s a challenge, an opportunity or a burning issue that just has to be fixed. The scepticism around the topic is enormous. Every intelligent leader we deal with knows they have to use the best tools available to bring about the right kind of change.
And they are increasingly aware that techniques that may have worked in the last decade are very likely not to work now.
New Tools For Different Times
That’s What Drove Us To Develop Structured Visual Thinking™.
We’ve proven that for real change to occur and the best possible outcomes we need to think and work very very differently. That means to structure, to collaborate visually and think far more rigorously than ever before.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
We’ve proven in hundreds of assignments that REAL change only happens through the right preparation, collaboration, critical thinking, understanding and structured techniques. We add visualisation and creativity to that.
4. We Called It Structured Visual Thinking™ For Good Reason
‘Structured’ because we were clients ourselves. We were often marooned in meaningless strategic planning sessions without purpose or direction.
‘Visual’ because we know that it makes all the difference. Especially in creating engagement and understanding.
And ‘Thinking’ because the average business doesn’t do enough of it. It’s all based on what we call Framework Science™
And when they do think they often don’t think about the right stuff. They are caught in the subjective and find it very hard to look at the bigger picture.
Find Out More On Framework Science™
5. What We Do
It’s Not The Same
Ours isn’t a traditional method because we don’t live in traditional times. Smart leaders know that. And they also know that objective and impartial support at critical times is extremely valuable. They also want these results fast.
We Don’t Want To Solve The Wrong Problems Really Well. We Don’t Have The Time
6. We are NOT Graphic Facilitators
OK let’s get this one clear.
We have nothing against graphic recorders or facilitators. But there’s quite a difference between that skill and what we do. We are primarily focused on helping clients to answer their tricky questions — calculating a better future.
Then equipping them to sustain the results over time.
More On That Workshop/Session Thing
We use rigorous structures — proven and logical architectures throughout the course of every assignment. We develop contexts, identify clues and gaps in thinking and bring forward fresh thinking at each stage of the process.
At key stages we will get teams together and help to co-create parts of the framework — we happen to do that visually too.
7. Outcomes AND Value
Our clients want fast AND meaningful outcomes. For us that means the team needs to own the outcomes not us.
We are there to help shape the thinking and support them to create the plan — not to replace them. They are already involved in delivering it.
We Want To Change The Way People Think AND Work
8. But — It’s Way Beyond Pictures
We use visual techniques because they work.
It’s much easier to understand what’s going on. It’s quicker to communicate visually to other people — beyond those directly involved. Being visual means being more engaging. Visualisation overcomes semantic differences in definition. It empowers everyone. And a lot more besides.
We Want To Inspire Our Clients And Their Audiences To Think Very Differently. Because The World Does.
9. We Only Focus On What Matters
Frameworks get everyone to the point very quickly. They have the power to get everyone aligned, removing what isn’t valuable and surfacing everything that is.
We Want To Transfer The Power AND Applicability of Framework Science™ To Our Clients
10. From The Very First Contact
Our approach is entirely collaborative.
It starts immediately because that’s when we start learning what’s required and what needs to be considered. What’s the exam question — really? We are learning, testing, thinking and revisiting everything based on the input we get to the questions we ask.
We Want To Work On The Right Terms — Terms That Will Actually Work.
11. The Answering Machine
Because all our work is designed to answer the critical questions/challenges posed every assignment is focused on delivering value.
This means tools, techniques, frameworks and architectures designed to help our clients to sustain the result of our involvement.
Framework Science™
12. The Story Of Strategy
It’s almost always vital that the outcome of critical thinking can be communicated. That’s a by product of how we work.
As we work with our clients we are creating powerful narratives and meaningful structures as we progress. These are compelling artefacts designed to help our clients create attention and engagement — a kind of ‘wildfire’ for the new ideas that emerge.
13. If This Whet’s The Appetite
Structured Visual Thinking™ is a big field — we’ve only covered a fraction of it here.
If you are interested take a deeper tour of our work at the following links. They are an attempt to give you a sense of the work from a number of different perspectives.
1. The Art Of Strategy
A dozen visual albums explaining what we do:
2. The A-Z Of Group Partners
A growing series of long form articles on our work
For further detail contact me at john@grouppartners.net or on Twitter @johncaswell
