How To Knock It Out Of The Park

Ready to hit a home run with your business strategy? If you're truly ready to score big, you'll get busy using Business Strategy Storyboards.

Just What Are Business Storyboards?

Storyboards are a series of frames showing the repeating architecture of a topic. It is also called “sequential thinking,” “displayed thinking” or “visual sequencing.”

Storyboarding refers to the thought structure that follows a distinct series of steps, each bounded by a frame. Just like the horizontal frames of a cartoon, a series of steps leads to the destination.

The value occurs not only in each frame but also more importantly— between the frames.

The real “AHA” occurs in seeing sequence and observing relationships. In a visual sequence, new questions emerge. “What happens in each frame?” and “What happens between the frames?” and “What is the surprise factor between these two frames?”
cess. You do still need to do the heavy lifting and get thinking. But it's just so much easier, faster and more powerful when you use Strategic Storyboards to streamline your process.
These questions stimulate thinking and conversation to:

Make comparisons
Identify cause-effect
Analyze information
Tell the story of data

But, let's face it. Unless you know how storyboarding will help you 'knock it out of the park'…you might hold back and continue doing things the 'same-old-same old' way.

Consider all the benefits you'll get from using this proven method.

5 Top Benefits of Storyboarding

Manage Data

Storyboarding helps groups manage data gathered from diagnostics, interviews, and surveys. The process helps people speak about patterns, insights and metaphors. Using a repetitive architecture users understand and expose the storyline told by data and survey results.

Process data into information

The storyboarding process helps the user make sense out of data. The visual depiction helps drive data into meaningful information, knowledge and action.

Illustrate context

Each frame of the storyboard shows detailed content. Links between frames externalize the invisible environment or contextual field. This displayed context makes it easy to spot connection, options and flow—stimulating greater understanding and systems thinking.

Manage Information

The storyboard provides architecture for a multi-sensory overview. Participants in the Command Central have a role in seeing, hearing, creating, documenting and explaining the elements.

The boards provide the structural blueprint for telling the story and recording participants’ comments and visitor input. The process and tools make it quick and easy to organize information immediately into manageable chunks.

Storytelling Engages People

The process makes a storyline visible, tangible and easily understandable. It ignites all senses with visuals, storytelling, dialogue and live interactive capturing.

The storyboards are frames to fill with information gathered from a wide array of people. In this engaging process, directors, clients, team members, product super-users and random visitors express their perception, insights and highlights.

The boards invite input and involvement. At the same time, the boards create a record and ongoing documentation of conversation.

Now, these five benefits are huge.

But you don't have to just think about the impact. It's easy to just consult the research. This research is based on Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century by Robert Horn, a visiting professor at Stanford University. It relies on major studies from Wharton School of Business.

Here's what happens when people use storyboards and visuals as part of their presentations and meetings.

Make Faster Decisions

A map helps people quickly organize and process a lot of information. In a group shown visual language, 64% decided immediately after the presentation, while control groups lagged.

Shorten Meeting Time

Visual language shortens meetings by 24%. Won’t your team be delighted with shorter meetings and higher quality results?

Promote Group Consensus

Groups using visual language had a 21% increase in reaching consensus over groups that did not use visuals.

Can you imagine how much you'll get done when everyone is on the same page, heading the same direction and fully engaged?

You see it's that storyboards help to manage data, translate data into information, illustrate context, manage input and engage people. As if that weren't enough!

It's also that in using storyboards you're moving up what's called the information pyramid. This pyramid is how people create meaning, get engaged and take ownership of any project or strategy.

It's a fast movement from data to information, from information to knowledge; from knowledge to wisdom. It's so fast that it happens instantly. At a glance. That's the power of a business graphic. The instant connection of a visual process. And the AHA of a storyboard.

People GET the big picture. They no longer struggle with the moves, the initiatives and the plays.

In fact, it's just like a home run. Everyone from the infield to the outfield; from the pitcher to the batter to the guy in the stands gets it. You know when it's working. Because everyone is on their feet cheering.

If you aren't getting these kinds of results in your business, it could be because you just aren't using a proven process to engage your team. Of course, I have to give a little disclaimer here too.

It's not just the process. You do still need to do the heavy lifting and get thinking. But it's just so much easier, faster and more powerful when you use Strategic Storyboards to streamline your process.

Strategic Storyboarding

Just What Are Business Storyboards?

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