Visual Leaders is part of the book series including, Visual Meetings, and Visual Teams. This guide helps leaders understand visioning, management and organizational change by providing tools for developing understanding, articlating problems, identifying solutions, translating and communicating ideas to gain alignment, and developing execution strategies with impact. |
Unlike many leadership tactic books, Vision Leaders is written for all levels ranging from managers to "C" level executives. The text walks the reader through communication fundamentals that include styles, learning and articulation of ideas, and then visually illustrates how the various tools can be applied to real-life organizational challenges. Specifically, Visual Leaders breaks down and descibes seven essential tools for visual leaders to be successful in reaching objectives - mental models, visual meetings, graphic templates, decision theaters, roadmaps, storymaps and virtual visuals. Although the book uses organizational and top down examples and applications, it's important to note that these tools are all also very applicable to presentations, daily work interactions and tasks. It's likely you're already using these and are not aware. | Simply being aware you're already using these tools can transform the way you approach a problem, and how you translate and actualize your ideas. |
Ever since I trained in product and design thinking, I've been extremely interested in how the practice is applied in different fields and how it's been used to solve problems, develop and manage product. Visual Leaders strongly appealed to me. As a visual learner and a lateral thinker (I revel in making connections with unrelated ideas and developing various combinations of possibilities!) the book was very intuitive in layout, language and illustration. In fact, there were some pages that resembled my jotter pad! If you're new to visual articulation and are more linear in your thought processes, Visual Leaders may be difficult to grasp initially, but as you progress through the book, your mind will become more open and critical thinking evolves. For us lateral thinkers, the book provides us with frameworks to organize our thoughts so we can be better understood.
The tools I found most useful for product design and development are the Cover Story Vision and Graphic Gameplan. The first, forces the user and team to prioritize and think of the broader context - allowing the group to see the big picture and the parts to breakdown. The later, is great for summarizing key findings and developing actionable plans. These two tools can be easily applied to a group and individual setting. Much like planning an essay, these templates make tackling large problems/projects/product development easier and tangible, and really force big picture thinking. Additionally, they can easily be adapted for projects (design, strategic and everything in between) and personal/career development, and used and iterated at any stage of the design cycle.Si
Most of all what I love about this book are the visual tools and layout which makes it easy to cross reference. Reading from cover to cover, it's very easy. The only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have a spiral bound spine which would be handy because I use this as a desk reference when I am planning meetings, ideation sessions and designing products.
Visual Leaders will help elevate your management style. The various tools are geared towards aligning your team to a common goal and visually break down how to achieve objectives with solid deliverables. The insights into critical thinking also help garner understanding of various points of views and how to masticulate them into something actionable.