I’ve always been favouring the view that Strategy and Strategic Thinking mainly starts with identifying patterns on a general scale. Such patterns can be observed anywhere and they range from behaviour, opinions, speech, words. etc.
The ‘Strategist’s’ part (yet the most tricky and difficult) is to give these patterns a meaning and place them in a larger context. From my view there is no doubt that visualisation skills are clearly of help here. The good news is that this at first place does not necessarily require ‘drawing skills’, but rather a curious mind and some training.
Today I’ve been pointed via UX Magazine to Paul Armstrong’s project site ‘Web.Without.Words’ aiming to reconstruct popular and known sites, by removing all text and images and simply leaving the blocks that are so typical for the early concept design phase in the design process. A great site with excellent technical execution!
In my workshops on ‘Designing Strategy’ I embed such and similar tools at the early strategy conceptualisation phase as well. Drop me a note if you’re interested in hosting such a workshop!
