Strategy visualisation: knowing, understanding, and formulating

The key to executing strategy is to have people in the organisation understand it. As the complexity of the business environment increases, good communication and shared understanding among managers are vital. Managers need to present increasing amounts of information to one another clearly and effectively. A good diagram can convey instantly, and memorably, a relationship that would otherwise require a laborious and easily forgotten explanation. However, a review of the literature shows that little is available to guide managers in applying visualisation techniques to assist them in a strategy formulation process. This paper briefly reviews visualisation, and explores how visualisation can be used to support strategic decision making. The different visualisation requirements of a strategy formulation process are discussed. Then, a range of strategy tools developed by the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, is introduced and their applications are described. Finally, a strategy visualisation framework, which might help practising managers identify useable visualisation tools for strategy formulation; and help researchers identify where future research in visualisation would be industrially relevant, is introduced.