Visualization and Miracles
This story is inspired by something that happened back in the day, and while I might sound too on the “way-back-in-the-day” side lately… this reminiscent streak is a telltale sign that I’m about to come up with more “brand new” kind of stories!
As it goes, we were doing an internal conference, and one of the speakers had no time to do a visual wrap-up for his presentation. So, he went with the slides that only had the portraits of the authors to whose work he was referring. The presentation was about the basics of lean, and the authors were Deming and Taylor. While everyone seemed to get bored with the listening, as there was no nice visual stuff such as the one we’d all become used to, I suddenly caught myself visualizing the talk of the boss and the worker in my head (it was in the presentation: the boss was intent on having his workers transport 47 tons of cast iron in one shift instead of 12 tons, or something of that nature).
This got me thinking that sometimes visualizations are doing a lip service to us. As we sit back comfortably, watching videos or live presentations with cute data and/or concept visuals, we are actually stifling our ability to create visualizations by ourselves! The picture is served to us, like a plate dish at a restaurant, so we make no use of the imagination “muscles”, and they get weak.
I’m not saying that everyone who watches animated drawings such as these ones is doomed to a life of zero creativity. My point is: we want to be watchful about keeping this balance — yes, again, it’s about a balance — between perceiving someone else’s visualizations — as well as visions — and creating our own. The power of our inner creator should not be shy about itself. As we watch others speak, and write, and sketch their stories , we might get all humble and subdued about what we are capable of bringing to the table. No influencer, no matter how many times “liked” they are, will draw a vision of our business, or of our product, or of some function of the app/software we’re working on. There’s always a time to look at someone’s visions/visualizations, and time to create our own. Each and every “how-to” about creativity includes this magic word called “vision”. Have you ever thought why any business starts with a vision? It’s exactly for this reason.
There’s a paradox: on one hand, the visual media is everywhere. Lots of visual channels deliver the dish to any, even to the laziest of the recipients. The problem is that the legions of those watching produces too few creators.
We’ve got 1 more month left in the year 2019. And one more week left before Thanksgiving. It’s this time of the year that we collectively allocate to miracles. So, I suggest that we devote this window to our creativity and to cleaning the debris of anything we don’t want or need any more, as we visualize:
Related:
Visualization: Understated or Overrated?
My Favourite Ways to Visualize Ideas
This article is loosely based on an earlier story.
