OPENERS, PART 1: "You know..."

OPENERS, PART 1: 

"You know…"

You know how it feels when you explain something perfectly clear in your head, and all you get are blank stares looking back at you? Don't get rattled. Get visual. Your next step might be to suggest "Hold on, let's sketch this out so we can get on the same page." That's a prime opportunity to build partnership.

You know a picture is worth a thousand words. Turns out the research backs you up.

In 1982, researchers Levie and Lentz reviewed 55 separate studies comparing plain text to text paired with illustrations. The result: illustrations improved learning outcomes in 98% of the experiments. Not "sometimes helped." Ninety-eight percent. That's about as close to a sure thing as behavioral research gets.

Why? Psychologist Allan Paivio's dual coding theory offers one answer: when we take in a picture, our brains store it two ways — as an image and as a concept we can put words to. Two storage paths mean two retrieval paths. Text alone only gets you one. Facts matter. Make yours heard AND seen.

Being prepared with facts to support what you want to do/teach/change is great, but don’t assume a good fact will carry itself. It won't. A fact sitting alone in a paragraph is easy to skim past, easy to forget, easy to argue with. A fact paired with a visual has backup. It taps into more senses than auditory. It's memorable and sharable. Visuals show the shape of the idea while the words explain the substance.

Homework

Take one fact you want to share this week — imagine sharing it in an upcoming meeting, an email, a conversation — and sketch one simple visual that could clarify the concept a bit further. It doesn't need to be polished, just done. All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on.

Not sure which visual to reach for? Try one of the images in Dan Roam's 6 x 6 framework as your matchmaker. Roam's framework pairs six ways of seeing a fact with six ways of showing it — figure out which question your fact is really answering, and the right partner follows:

• Who / What → a portrait. Fact: "Our top customer segment is small-business owners." Partner: a simple sketch or photo-style portrait of that customer — a face makes an abstract segment feel like a person.
• How much → a chart. Fact: "Support tickets dropped 30% after the redesign." Partner: a bar, line or pie chart. Numbers describing change want a chart, not a sentence.
• Where → a map. Fact: "60% of churn comes from our West Coast accounts." Partner: a simple map with the hot spot marked. Anything geographic wants a map, even a rough one.
• When → a timeline. Fact: "Onboarding used to take 3 weeks; now it takes 4 days." Partner: a before/after timeline. Anything about sequence or duration wants a timeline.
• How → a flowchart. Fact: "A refund request touches five different approvers." Partner: a simple flowchart with five boxes and arrows. Anything about process or steps wants a flowchart.
• Why → a before/after sketch.  Fact: "Customer satisfaction tracks closely with a simplified ordering process." This one is likely to be more complex than one simple image can convey. You can try a before and after sketch like the example shown. Need something more complex? Check out our Customer Journey Mapping course to dive deeper into using visuals to explain "Why."