Make Ideas Visible

Making Ideas Visible is a simple, powerful, endlessly scalable approach that helps individuals and teams collaborate better and solve problems more creatively. At TEDXGateway, Tom Wujec delivered a presentation that shows how to collaborate better with the practice of making ideas visible. As a resource, please explore the free toolkits and sign up for the newsletter. This site will be updated on a regular basis.

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STAGE

A stage is a physical space that creates mental space for thinking. Stages can take many forms - a large sheet of paper, white boards, walls, even entire rooms. We need stages because we can’t keep everything in our minds even though we believe we can.

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POPULATE

Populate means converting intangible ideas into tangible, persistent, movable data objects. Physically writing, drawing, or doodling activates much more of our brain power than talking or typing alone. These data objects create a marketplace of ideas where everyone’s point of view is visible.

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ARRANGE

Arranging is the physical act of structuring data into meaningful patterns. The more accurately you can represent a situation, the clearer your picture of ‘what is’ will be. Find the right pattern to represent ‘what is’ to give you insight into the structure and dynamics of the situation.

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CHOOSE

Choosing is the act of seeing something that is not immediately apparent. It’s the art and science of clearly identifying ‘what could be’. Making choice visible increases a group’s intelligence and integrity by clearly illustrating options, impact and trade-offs.

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EXECUTE

The final step is execute. Make a plan and commit to it. Visually, this involves reducing complexity. Complexity is the enemy of execution. Par down your execution plan to the smallest number of items.