Why is it so hard to learn systems and processes from a manual? A large part of the answer is due to the difficulty of "visualizing" or "picturing in the mind’s eye" a particular process!

Wade Roush wrote about IBM’s "Many Eyes visualization tool" and that "With the wrong visualization tools, data can be deathly boring—just think of all the dry, meaningless Power Point presentations and Excel spreadsheets you’ve endured in darkened lecture halls and conference rooms. But with the right tools and context, data can come alive, as Yale information designer Edward Tufte has famously argued"

Visualization is a powerful tool often used in professional sport and in the personal and business success field’s among many others. Tennis and golf professionals use visualization to picture in rich detail their intended shot or play. Successful business professionals often visualize a negotiation or meeting, carefully visualizing the successful outcomes that they want from the interaction.

That which can be visualized clearly can be created far quicker than without a visual "picture". Without "visual" imagination, replication and communication of new systems, new combinations and ways of doing things would be slowed-down immensely.

But just "visualization" in and of itself will not create a systematized business capable of successful replication. Learners will create wildly varying and frequently inaccurate pictures and visualizations in their mind in the absence of rich visual information. What is required is a clear, visual picture of a defined, systematic structure that can then be re-created in the "mind" of the worker/learner. The richer and more "real" the information presented to a worker/learner, the more easily and successfully the worker/learner can picture the exact system or process and actually do it! 

When learners or workers feel confidence when learning a particular system or process, mastery becomes almost guaranteed. Video presentation of information invokes the "law of attraction" powerfully in that a detailed and structured picture is presented which the mind can readily absorb and re-create. The mind then confidently expects mastery of the new process.

Jason

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