Few days ago, was the birthday of my daughter. My wife and I decided to celebrate a party so we could spend some good time with friends after 2 years of pandemic restrictions.
We rent a kid`s playground, made the food and decorated the place for the occasion, a nice “Little Mermaid” theme. We invited around 50 people including children and parents, but we have made food and beverages for almost hundred.
There were different types of snacks, sweets and beverages. We have prepared the different party appetizers: mini pizzas, chicken fingers, cheese sticks, hummus & guacamole to dip with nachos, sandwiches. Also, we have prepared two big Lasagna, a home-made bread, cookies and of course, a big cake.
A lot of food and beverages and the case was that only few persons ate part of the food. The party was at lunch hour, it was the only slot available in the playground, so I was expected to have a hungry crowd. However, I returned home with almost all the food.
When the party was over, I did a review of how the party had gone. Kids had a lot of fun, decoration and place were great. The food was delicious and mostly all was prepared by my wife, this means: good-quality ingredients and healthy dishes.
The big question for me was, why people didn´t eat so much? Flavor? Variety? Ingredients? No. My conclusion was that it was because the visibility. It was all about visibility, in this case the poor visibility. One thing that I didn´t plan so much for the party was the way to display all the delicious dished. The big table with the food was not placed in the better spot and it wasn´t decorated so good for the occasion. Beverages were in the refrigerator, so nobody knows what to drink and what the options were. Plates, spoons fork and knifes where in the small kitchen.
As in the party, a good visibility is part of the success of the any process. Specially for a selling process. If you don´t have the right visibility, if you don´t show how good your product is, then you won’t get picked from the shelf.
The visibility concept is everywhere and in ever field, in Sales and Marketing, professional careers or even in data analytics. If you are launching a new brand you need to have good visibility (online & offline) so you could reach new customers. If you would like to boost your professional career you need to show your expertise to the world (inside your organization or customers), and if you would like to improve your data analytics potential you need to have good visuals that help you to understand the numbers in an easy way.
When I´m working with data I like to frame the figures in graphs so I could see from other point of view what really the numbers are meaning. The “Anscombe’s quartet” is a good example how important are the graph on data analysis, where four data sets show a nearly identical descriptive statistics, but the graphs of each data set were totally different. Totally recommended this nice video of “Guy in a Cube” YouTube channel in a conversation with Buck Woody (@BuckWoodyMSFT).
In any visibility project planning is crucial to don´t fail on your execution. What works for me is to have a clear understanding of my goals, others needs and resources:
- Defining the objective (what is my goal)
- Having clear understanding of stakeholders needs (why it´s important to others)
- Assigning resources (how)
Working with reports, these steps help me to understand where I need to focus and concentrate my efforts to obtain a successful report. First, I define what kind of data I need to analyze and the possible outcome that I could have. It´s important to understand what kind of problem I would like to identify. Second, in case of a reports that it´s shared with others, I try to identify their needs (for example timing spend on the report or accessibility. All the visuals used in the reports (charts, graphs or tables) need to be easy to understand at first glance. Finally (before the development phase) is to check the resources that I have, most of the time the resource is the time to deliver the information.
I didn´t followed these steps during the party (at least for the food displaying) and that´s why I didn´t got any good result as I didn´t have the goal clear, neither the needs of the guests. So, if you don´t want to fail on your visibility, take the time to think on your goal and needs that for sure will save you some resources.