Visual Business Planning is a way of engaging people in strategic and financial planning of their organisation. The technique uses visualisation and hands-on workshops to simplify complicated ideas and enable organisations, their staff and volunteers to understand and share aspirations. In most cases, the result is not a conventional simplify plan, but a set of presentations and financial tools.
What's wrong with business plans?
The format of conventional business plans has not changed in decades. A bound document, mainly text based with tables, spreadsheets and appendices, often over-long - they were designed to convince bank managers and funders to part with their cash - and once it has done this job, it is confined to office shelves where it gathers dust.
But the information from business plans is there to be used. What they should give us is guidance, confidence and tools.
guidance |
confidence |
tools |
But visual business planning is not about decorating an existing plan. The aim is to simplify, not to complicate. This is a fresh approach - more like a sea voyage than constructing a building. It is an opportunity to think of visual ways to capture information, not just ways to present it.