I wrote a blog a couple weeks ago after reading an article about “visual thinking” by Clive Thompson in the October 2010 Wired Magazine. The article highlighted the work of Dan Roam; and I indicated a desire to get more familiar with his writings (and pictures). I’ve since bought and enjoyed Dan Roam’s book “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures”; so I thought I would do a quick follow-up post on that topic.
Roam asserts that almost any problem can be solved through pictures. To support that idea, he provides frameworks to help people become more adept at addressing business problems through drawing. The one that I found most valuable is what he calls “the 6 W’s.” I also found this model to be applicable to the domain of student recruitment marketing and higher education CRM, and the way we tend to approach it at Intelliworks.
What are The 6 W’s?
The 6 W’s is a construct for grouping a wide range of different problems. Once we can designate problems to a “type” or group, we can then ask incisive questions about them – and ultimately draw meaningful pictures to facilitate problem-solving. Roam describes the 6 W’s as six different problem types:
- Who and What problems: Challenges that relate to things, people, and roles
- How much problems: Challenges that involve measuring and counting
- When problems: Challenges that relate to scheduling and timing
- Where problems: Challenges that relate to direction and how things fit together
- How problems: Challenges that relate to how things influence one another
- Why problems: Challenges that relate to seeing the big picture
So, how does this relate?
Like Dan Roam, we at Intelliworks tend to “group” or “bucket” concepts in an effort to make them more digestible. One example relates to the often very complex set of objectives that academic institutions have when embarking upon a student recruitment marketing initiative. Whereas institutional motivations can be extraordinarily diverse, in the end, they all seem to fall into one of four major categories, as follows:
1. Growth: in inquiries, applicants, enrolled students, returning graduates, etc.
2. Efficiency: in responding to expressions of interest, executing events, resolving questions
3. Quality: in student experience, brand consistency, context of communications
4. Intelligence: in measuring any number of metrics relating to these previous buckets
It occurs to me that we can layer these two frameworks on top of one another to come up with a useful list of questions to clarify objectives and help establish a short-hand student recruitment marketing or higher education CRM strategy. An example would look like this:
Growth: Winsford University is looking to grow its nursing program by 15% in the next year.
- Question Type: How much?
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Examples:
- How many prospective students have expressed interest in our offerings to date?
- How much does it cost on average to secure a registered student?
- Question Type: How?
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Examples:
- How do campus visits translate into applicants?
- How do prospects prefer to communicate with institutional representatives?
Efficiency: Winsford does not plan to increase personnel to support this increased demand.
- Question Type: Who and What?
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Examples:
- Who will be responsible for responding to inbound inquiries and in what timeframe?
- What is the role of marketing (admissions, etc.) in engaging qualified prospects?
- Question Type: Where?
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Examples:
- Where do prospects go to learn about course offerings / registration / financial aid?
- Where do we want to send our most highly qualified potential students?
Quality: Speaks for itself.
- Question Type: When?
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Examples:
- When do we receive the majority of inquiries, and how should we staff for it?
- When should we introduce a cost calculator and financial aid information?
- How long should it take for an applicant to complete the application / registration?
- Question Type: How?
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Examples:
- How do we want to engage students at various stages of their evaluation process?
- How do we want to alert students of their acceptance in order to maximize yield?
Intelligence: Are you moving the needle?
- Question Type: Why?
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Examples:
- Why are we losing prospects and at X phase of the process?
- Why do we need to accomplish this goal and / or are there other ways of achieving objective?
The above is but one example of how Roam’s concepts can be applied. Since reading “Back of the Napkin,” I have definitely found myself communicating more and more via pictures; and I am hoping that the pictures themselves are becoming more meaningful to me and others. If, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, then one that helps to solve a complex problem might just be worth 10,000.
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