What Do Your People Do All Day?

by Mark Sutherland

I try as hard as I can to spend time reading with my children, both of whom are under five, and every night, particularly with my oldest who is four and a half, I dread the “read me a Richard Scarry book Daddy”. For those of you not familiar with Richard Scarry, he was an American author and illustrator who published over 300 books, and according to Wikipedia sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. His books are full of 'anthropomorphic' animals', basically animals that have been given human characteristics and generally inhabit 'Busytown'. Within the pages of these books children are introduced to many complex processes such as how roads are built, how fossil fuels are converted into electricity and many, many more. My children are seriously transfixed by them. The dread that I mentioned is simply because I have had to read them on such a frequent and constant basis for almost five years, I’m Scarried out! 

Within these books many complex processes are clearly and easily depicted in one or more pages in a way that people, not just children, can clearly understand and relate too. They see the end-to-end process in a way that they can immediately understand and in a big picture kind of way. 

In our work, and particularly in the enterprise IT environment, we seldom see clarity and understanding communicated in a way that people can easily and quickly understand nor indeed relate too. People don’t get the story, they are like a cog without understanding what the machine is doing. They go round and round all day not really knowing why they do it, what the business does and their part in the value chain. Mountains of flowcharts and visio documents abound, which are often difficult to understand and navigate and they certainly don’t communicate in an easily accessible way.

Start thinking like Scarry and maybe your people will start to understand why they do what they do and how they make a difference to your business. Infographics therefore have a very real value to bring to todays business especially the enterprise IT environment. 

We are constantly thinking of new and varied ways to tell the story and paint the picture and in January we are heading out to San Francisco to attend the Viz Think Conference 08 where some of the best and brightest will be hopefully giving us more bright ideas. 

What do your people do all day?