| This book addresses the question, “What is the best new tool I
could use to significantly improve my business?” The short
answer is images—and their power to communicate. Going Visual is
all about putting that power to use.
We live in a world of images. Images are everywhere, in magazines
and catalogs; on television, billboards, and web sites; on our kitchen
refrigerators, our desks, and the walls of our offices. Humanity has
been using images to communicate since painting on the walls of
caves at the beginning of recorded time.
Consider that when most people embark on a personal event—
attend a birthday party, start a vacation, visit a theme park—they
instinctively take a still or video camera. Through images, we communicate
the most important messages in our personal lives: the
birth of a child, the purchase of a home, a family reunion.
Yet images remain largely unused by individuals in the one part of
their lives where they spend the most time and need the most powerful
tools—interpersonal business communications. Other than in
the fields of advertising, insurance, and sales, the power of the old
saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” has yet to be harnessed
in the world of business. In the main, we still describe people, places,
objects, and processes with text-heavy memos and reports rather
than simply showing images of the same. Most businesspeople have
yet to take advantage of the immense potential inherent in images to
communicate information more completely, more efficiently, in
greater detail, and with greater power of conviction than can words
alone. |
