Let’s face it. It’s not easy being manager. It is a challenge to stay on top of both your tasks and also keep your team organized and productive. If you are like me and have several projects going, your brain is cluttered with reminders and TO DO lists. It is easy to get overwhelmed. There have been days when I look at my desk and it is overwhelmed with post-it notes to remind myself of project goals and action items. Take it from me: this is not the most effective strategy!

1. Being a Visual Manager
The First Steps

2. Management Woes

3. This doesn’t work!
When you are managing a team,
writing a list or even drawing out your
own personal diagram isn’t enough.
I may be biased, but I love mind maps.
It is so easy to organize my thoughts,
easily change them around as my
thinking evolves, and then share them
with upper management or my team.

4. New Project? New Mind Map!
Making a mind map for your next project will help you stay on
task and help you stay focused. For new projects, I usually start
with a mind map that is something like this:
Start disorganized! Map out your ideas first.
Make sense of the mess later!
I started with a mind map of all the possible topics I could write
for a post, narrowed it down to “Be a Better Manager,” wrote
all the possible points to include in a post, and then realized I
could easily break up the content into a series of posts. After
this process, I could then organize my ideas accordingly.

5. Be a Better Manager!
Define all the tasks, then sort them into related tasks
and categories!

6. Be a Better Manager!
It is so much easier to show the outline of the project with
team members, and it is far easier to navigate a large mind
map than a long word document without an easy to identify
structure.
Try organizing your next project or task responsibilities using
a mind map and let me know how it goes!

7. Implement a Project Plan
Does this look like a common scenario for your project
management?
For a successful project, it is important to track the progress
of the tasks, set deadlines, and dates for deliverables, as
well as regular check-ins.
Start with a mind map!
When you have a separate mind map for the action items,
it becomes easier to focus on your TO-DO list and action
items.

8. Mind Maps to Gantt Charts
On the left side of the SmartDraw window, the SmartPanel has a
“View as” option. When I choose to view my mind map as a Gantt
Chart, I can then determine how long tasks will take and set
deadlines for myself.
My example for how I might go about managing my blog post
schedule is very simplistic, but it is easy to scale up my own process
for larger projects. SmartDraw has features such as adding
dependencies, assigning team members to tasks, and more
advanced Gantt chart capabilities.

9. Tracking your workflows
What if that particular person did not come into work or was unexpectedly sick? What if you
needed to take over their tasks? When you are part of a busy company, it is difficult to
remember all the tasks for which various members of the company are responsible. This is
where something we like to call Visual Process Management (VPM) comes into play.
With VPM, each process is linked to the person responsible as well as the person responsible
for managing the process. In a large company, these linked visuals can become an extremely
complex interlinked set of processes tied to a large number of employees.

10. One-Step Workflow Capture
By creating flowcharts or process diagrams, you will have an easy to follow step by step
workflow to understand what different team members are doing. Additionally, if someone
doesn’t show up, you would know the steps needed to complete that person’s tasks.
Documenting your processes in real time will limit the number of follow up meetings and
wasted time. Compare the traditional capture method versus this one-step capture method
below.
Traditional Capture Method
One-Step Capture Method

11. Visual Communication leads to
Visual Collaboration
For many of our meetings at SmartDraw, we utilize SmartDraw’s integration with SharePoint.
We have document libraries with folders for specific projects. We then post all of our visuals
related to that project in the appropriate folder. This way, you eliminate the excuse of losing
an email in your inbox.

12. For More Information on
becoming a Visual Manager…
This presentation was based on the following
series of blog posts:
Being a Visual Manager: The First Steps
Being a Visual Manager: Implement a Project
Plan
Being a Visual Manager: Tracking Your
Workflows
Being a Visual Manager: Visual
Communication Leads to Visual Collaboration
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