How I manifest ideas
Realizing a vision starts with your story
How do you communicate an idea that tells a story? That conceptualizes a solution in a way to draws interest or gets your voice heard at the decision table.
A common pattern is that visual maps creates space for discussions and connects cross functional teams and I’ll walk you through a few examples to get you started. If you don’t think you’re creative enough, my hope is that this article will change your mind.
Opportunity Landscapes
Frame the scope of a problem by highlighting the “things” and how the things connect in order to visualize what’s important in the big picture. Show how your idea fits within the big picture. Summarize a slide deck into a one pager story when you’re pressed for time to get complex ideas across. How do you deliver transformational change in a healthcare ecosystem and in a way that translates ideas into a narrative of what’s possible? Fall in love with the problem.
The narrative of what’s possible starts with framing the problem before deciding on the feasibility to implement or deciding between alternative solutions.
What I found is that when designing and developing new solutions, cross functional teams aligned much quicker when concepts were captured in real-time on whiteboards. Teams organically created a common language much quicker. When space is made for ideation and co-creation that is made to be inclusive and diverse, they internalized the problem they were trying to solve much quicker and were more motivated to find the best solution collaboratively.
How to fall in love with the problem and not the solution
Ask open ended questions that dig beyond symptoms into the crux of the problem. Visualize what’s so, beliefs and truths without the marketing. If you are able to listen deeply, read what isn’t said, you will be able to extract the kind of insights that inspires transformative solutions.
Create on a whiteboard and available to all in full transparency, I’ve seen people huddle around it to have more clarifying discussions, add their own notes and continue to add their perspectives like a living document. This level of transparency creates a culture of sharing and empathy that de-risks innovative ideas.
Here’s why it matters so. An opportunity map is one way to activate diversity and inclusion into strategic decisions, in a way that amplifies everyone’s voices. It captures the organic nature of complexity, the nuance and gaps in the system so that leaders have richer information to make strategic decisions.
New Initiative BluePrint
When you need to pitch new initiatives, whether it’s to suggest a new tool to purchase or proposing a new department, you need a compelling story to put in front of decision makers. Stories are what sells, not stats.
Today, the wicked problems are ecosystem in nature. As an entrepreneur, visualizing opportunities as a landscape is one of the most effective ways to identify value drivers, highlight key differentiators, prioritize features and optimize resources.
Inspired by the lean canvas, the Initiative Blueprint is an effective way to gather feedback on how the systems could work, who is involved and what resources would be involved. It frames new programs by identifying operational efficiencies, it highlights the depth of the proposal for decision makers in a way to quickly validates if goals are aligned.
The design innovation lab proposal is to make space for creative problem solving by doing to deliver quality experiences from emerging technologies. This is just one application of what’s possible. Take it and customize it for your needs.
Journey Mapping
This form of visual communication really stems from my deep love for patterns in nature. How do you capture the nuance and complexity of organic interactions over time in a way that is empowering and feels natural?
Try applying the progression of human experiences over time by referencing biomimicry, e.g. imagine pollen (raw data) being collected by bees in a meadow (data exchange), that is transformed into honey (insights), that then get harvested (data driven decisions) to be collected for consumption by people (user experiences).
If you can take an abstract concept like data and represent it as natural pattern, you’ll find it easier to explain the value of an abstract idea. Visual journeys models your idea across time. If people look at a model, it should feel familiar and intuitive. They should be able to identify where they are in the journey.
Do you see yourself in this patient journey?
Your visual should prompt beautiful questions, that captures different perspectives generously and connects teams with shared language.
Everyone’s journey is different, our stories are all rich and diverse but they should fit within a model that feels familiar.
If we can imagine our own journey within the context of a model or pattern, like a patient journey, then we’ve uncovered a systemic truth that’s worth evaluating or transforming. This exercise is especially important at a time when current systems fail to protect citizens or democratize access to care.
Recognizing Value
Resumes are such a boring way to represent the value and impact of talents and capabilities. We are not a bulleted timeline. Sorry, Linkedin. What if we could visualize the value and impact beyond job descriptions and letters and titles after someone’s name?
Try mapping out your impact visually to stand out and spotlight something you were proud of, something you’re passionate about and how you transformed either yourself or a thing, in a visual way.
How-to Instructions
Today when there’s an overwhelming amount of information we need to consume to be able to make decisions, we need more efficient ways to consume instructions that motivates adherence.
Visuals are universal and breaks language barriers. It’s especially important to communicate emotions together with health and scientific information. Visualizations that capture emotions tends to be a more effective way break the language barrier. It crosses cultural boundaries in a way that feels familiar and inclusive.
Power of visualization
I’ve always been fascinated by how things are connected through seeming separate and have come to the realization that humans are more valuable as a connected communities than as separate entities. We need to improve our models of collaboration because everyone matters!
As such, today it’s important to present solutions that highlight empathy, that describe solutions holistically within an ecosystem and represent how behaviors change throughout a continuum to cultivate altruism.
These days, accessible and affordable preventive health is my focus. With my co-founder, Nisha at Healthero, we’re delivering personalized wellbeing experiences that reframe integrative health and creative problem solving to fit within our modern lives, because life should have meaning and is too short to not live to it’s fullest.
We’re starting from the assumption that people know what they need to be healthy, to be authentic but our “No Pause” culture leaves no space for creativity or self-awareness. At a macro level, our economic models don’t promote co-creation or collaboration and if there is a path, it’s a hard journey for the resilient few. This is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed now if we want a healthy, thriving future generation.
I’ve incubated solutions, led research and design of digital products across healthcare, life sciences, emerging technologies and finance for over 15 years. If you’d like to learn more about Healthero’s Innovation model, H.O.P.E, or anything here, you can reach me at rachael@healthero.io or follow Healthero.io on Instagram
