Visual-Verbal Language
While a visual language is not new, the re-emergence of how visuals are being used with verbal (textual) language is. Although there are many arguments for one language mode over the other, an integration of visual-verbal language offers a far more powerful unit of communication.
Decoding and Encoding
Adjusting to the visual world will require capabilities that enable leaders to decode meaning. Decoding may be done through interpreting society’s images and media, which permeate our increasingly complex landscape. Additionally, leaders will need to be able to encode through creating visual materials. In this vein, leaders will need to be trained to create visuals to express and explore ideas.
Visual Communications
Influencing, sharing, and selling ideas happen while communicating with visuals. Using visuals to share ideas with others, whether they are rough thoughts or finished presentations, supports the acquisition of knowledge, retention of information, and faster learning. The graphic communication process assists people with visually talking to others because the visual representation brings increased clarity.12
Misha Mercer • Four Mindsets of a Visual Ecology in the Workplace
Mindset Two: Conscious analysis
The concept of consciousness has had renewed interest over the years in order to better understand behavior and beliefs. Historically, this led to the importance of what is considered automatic and unconscious with human behavior.13 Freud introduced the notion of “an unconscious mind motivating our behavior with a combination of innate drives and repressed emotions.”13 Moreover, the conscious mind was prone to rationalization and self-deception. The rise of cognitive science led to the study of the cognitive unconscious, which includes data processing in the brain that happens without being consciously aware.13 Research shows that unconscious processes may activate a level of control without even knowing it is happening. Conscious reasoning, on the other hand, can often be used for the explanation of unconscious and automatic behaviors.13
A reflective ability to think hypothetically about the future and workplace possibilities will require leaders to balance the unconscious, automatic processing (verbal) with the conscious, deliberate processing (visual). Leaders will need to be purposeful with cultivating a visual-verbal language, which may foster new ways of knowing. Three key areas of a conscious analysis mindset related to visual thinking in the workplace include the following: visual mechanics, dual processing, and multiple intelligences.
Visual Mechanics
In visual language, meaning is apparent on a basic level but has a complex code that must be learned for true comprehension. Visuals require a new and different way of reading based on percept-concept integration. A visual language encourages more analysis and synthesis that can make the comprehension process complex, involved, and deeper.1 Learning how words, images, and shapes all distinctively inform meaning will require education and awareness.1
Dual Processing
While our culture has encouraged a strong and enduring left-brain hemisphere, the ability to think in two modes may be as important as it is rare.14 Research shows that the ability to fuse together incompatible frames and dual thoughts has been identified as a leadership quality that drives the success of exceptional businesses.15 Dual state thinking is a hybrid view of how two dichotomous ideas of thinking can be integrated.
Multiple Intelligences
The theoretical framework of multiple intelligences is used for defining, understanding, assessing, and developing people’s different intelligence factors. The eight categories of intelligence include the following: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial/visual, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.16 Disputes from leaders who claim they only have a single central intelligence are not valid according to this theory since there are multiple intelligences that work together.16
Mindset Three: Discontinuous change
Navigating the landscape to build and maintain a competitive advantage requires a new mindset and a new type of organization that includes visual thinking. The technological revolution and increasing globalization has changed the nature of operating and has presented multiple discontinuities that often occur simultaneously and are not easily predicted.17 As organizations are faced with exceedingly complicated landscapes and new strategies, flexible ways of organizing will be necessary to stay competitive in an unpredictable marketplace. Visual thinking is one way the workplace can remain agile and relevant. This hyper competition is creating chaotic environments, disorder, disruption, and a substantial amount of uncertainty.
Misha Mercer • Four Mindsets of a Visual Ecology in the Workplace
The changes are requiring bold re-visioning, as organizations can no longer survive on incremental changes, but rather need disruptive breakthroughs. Strategic approaches for discontinuities will need to be non-linear and involve approaches that are expansive versus contractive. As such, a massive re-ordering of business practices may be critical for organizations to enable flexibility, speed, and innovation. The following four areas from a systems level examine the importance of breaking down boundaries and assessing impact with visual thinking in alternative ways: non-linear thinking, managing complexity, fostering generative and relational conversations, and evaluating differently.
Non-linear thinking
Non-linear methods can offer real wisdom and unexpected solutions. Leaders need to make a paradigm shift from mechanistic/linear approaches to recognize this. Believing that problems can be isolated, broken down into parts, repaired, and then restored to wholeness is part of the limiting approach.18 Rational arguments can bring about the massive suppression of meaning, and when absorbed, we do not know more, but less.19 The linear mental model that currently exists within organizations represents a form of knowledge, yet it is not sufficient to influence the growth and innovations necessary.20
Managing complexity
There are two aspects of managing complexity for organizations and leaders to consider. The first examines organizational complexity and how a pluralist perspective offers leaders a more diverse way of pushing beyond traditional boundaries. The second area, information complexity, addresses how to assist leaders with processing visual-verbal language and offsetting cognitive overload.
Fostering generative and relational conversations
A socially constructed perspective offers a profound way of illuminating the interconnected environment and social processing. Incompatible frames and opposing thoughts are perhaps where leaders can discover new insight. Conversations, connections, and a new matrix of meaning can be constructed. The cultural bias with leaders who immediately problem-solve will need tempering to explore deeper solutions through divergent thinking and opposing ideas.
Evaluating differently
As organizations and leaders face discontinuous change and increasing complexity, there is reason to re-evaluate how we measure what is impactful. Organizations that aspire to drive new growth will want to examine how things get done and place learning value on failures/challenges in order to foster innovations.
Mindset Four: Social construction
Changing our thinking means uncovering assumptions. Unstated societal assumptions constitute a deep set of beliefs about how the world works.21 Our propositions about the world are embedded within paradigms—networks of interrelated commitments to a particular view, concept, and language.19 New paradigms are generated by anomalies where insights that fall outside the range are capable of generating new solutions to a given problem.19 It will thus be a major challenge for workplace leaders to shift their mindset toward visual thinking if they cling to the long-standing traditional beliefs in existing paradigms. Yet, we are always able to change the construction of our reality and disrupt what we assume to know.
The recent
surge of interest in social constructivism has offered a radically new way of understanding, talking, and changing the conversation.22 In a pluralistic paradigm, dialogical exchanges that embody visual images can bring forth meaning-making and surface contradictory views. Four aspects of social construction that may influence innovation and the adoption of visual thinking in the workplace are the following: social identity, social learning, socio-visual innovation, and finally, unboxed: beyond the boundary.
Misha Mercer • Four Mindsets of a Visual Ecology in the Workplace
Social identity
Social identity not only has affective consequences with in-group cohesion, but also has a distinct impact on intergroup communication. Communication is a means of creating and reinforcing group boundaries through the use of language and social identity, which can affect how information is transmitted and received. Unconscious bias and tensions can arise in complex ways with group membership.
Social learning
Individuals are social beings and construct their understanding while learning from social interactions within specific socio-cultural settings.23 The shift in learning that has taken place is in a social collective rather than in traditional and individual forms of cognitive structures. Context and analysis therefore cannot take place in isolation and without the engagement of social relationships.23 Key tenets of social learning include identificatory learning, observational learning, reinforcement effects, and attentional processes.
Socio-visual innovation
As organizations experience discontinuous change and crisis, innovation is at a premium. Yet many social systems focus on the minimization of behavioral variance and strive for sources of consistency, predictability, and control.24 Innovative behaviors have a degree of difference and variation, which are often based on a strong motivation toward a vision and independent thinking. Organizations will need to foster unconventional ways of working and seeking originality, which pushes against common norms, but may be necessary to advance.
Unboxed: Beyond the boundary
Moving beyond the traditional ways of knowing will require that leaders demonstrate a new way of relating and expressing. Making space for creative expression opens up opportunities to explore phenomena holistically and naturally, and thus deepen understanding of the self and the world. Our ability to exchange beyond words and through images easily allows leaders to transcend cultural boundaries.
Visual ecology in the workplace
Current trends demonstrate that the future will be more digital, social, and visual. Marketplace shifts are creating a blur of functional boundaries, where changes are impacting how work gets done and calling into question traditional paradigms of thinking. Learning in the marketplace is shifting from being a recipient of information to being a creator and provider of new experiences, knowledge and services. The intersection of change is encompassing a shift where spectatorship is replaced by authorship and singular perspectives are being challenged by a plea of more holistic approaches.
A visual ecology
Misha Mercer • Four Mindsets of a Visual Ecology in the Workplace
Re-visioning the future in a rapidly changing world will require disruption. Shifting our thinking must honor the peripheral visions towards a multiplicity of insights that bridge disconnected fragments, beliefs, cultures, and behaviors. The four mindsets illustrate the interdependent nature and broad perspective of gaining visual intelligence to address contemporary complexity in the workplace. Visual thinking is overlapping across and within all the mindsets; therefore, a successful transformation will require a fully integrated and whole approach. This includes whole language, whole brain, whole systems, and whole self. An emerging visual ecology is the convergence of visual learning, which is inclusive of cognitive analysis, social processes, and flexible systems.
Discussion
To thrive in a new, future reality, organizations need to develop a workplace culture that prepares leaders with knowledge and competence to address complex business challenges. This includes fostering a visual ecology and shifting thought patterns: from parts to whole, from adapting to disrupting, from perfect to messy, and from prescriptive to exploratory. All four of these changes require a significant deviation from the norm, which means inner courage and vision will be necessary.
From parts to whole
As John Muir famously shared, when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. An ecosystem is a set of interrelated elements that makes a unified whole, and wholeness encourages us to seek beyond only what is in front of us or next to us. Individual parts cannot be fully understood when separated from the larger ecosystem in which they exist.
From adapting to disrupting
Adapting suggests that only slight coordinate shifts or adjustments are necessary, when in fact, leaders may need to take a more assertive stance.
Disruption is a way to interrupt the normal progress or activity and uproot how we think, behave, and learn.
From perfect to messy
Our society values perfection. From results, to our brand, and with images, a high value is placed on things being right, perfect, and appealing. Traditionally, we are taught that the endeavour to create an image has worth only related to its visual appeal. The process of seeing new ideas starts with being messy, which may be a paradigm shift for leaders to enact.
From prescriptive to exploratory
The blueprint of dominant Western culture has traditions and habits of a formulaic society. Immediate action, a measurable plan, and outlined steps with results are highly valued. The prescriptive nature of execution only leaves little space for imagination, independent thinking, and being strategic. To wander, to probe, to diverge and to create may be the critical capabilities of our future.
This multi-decade journey of re-visioning language through visual thinking in the workplace needs to be unleashed. If leaders could begin to integrate visual thinking, like Frank has done, they can completely transform the way ideas are communicated and understood.
MISHA MERCER has spent over 15 years working with senior executives and teams in top Fortune 500 companies as Nike, Microsoft, Starbucks, Schwab, and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. She leads talent management, organization development, team performance, cultural shifts and senior leadership coaching to drive increased business performance. Misha uses visual methods to foster learning that leverages social groups and collective intelligence to enable breakthrough solutions.
The future will rely on imagining that anything is conceivable, where pre-defined boundaries are replaced with wider edges, allowing infinite variations to be valued.
The emergence of creative consciousness begins with a single idea, a pursuit, and a way of being.
Misha Mercer • Four Mindsets of a Visual Ecology in the Workplace
Misha holds a PhD in Organizational & Transformative Studies, an M.S. in Organization Development, an M.A. in Psychology and is a certified integral coach. Misha resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. [email protected]
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