Boil your strategy down to just one clear visualization

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the July-August 2025 issue of the Harvard Business Review, on pages 98 to 107, I found a useful ten-page article by Joao Cotter Salvado and Freek Vermeulen titled You Should Be Able to Boil Your Strategy Down to a Single Clear Visualization. It is referenced here, and an excellent graphic from it is shown here. The description for that graphic says that:

 

“Our research into the best way to communicate strategies reveals five key design principles, which can be seen in this visualization about the bank Capitec. It clearly illustrates the bank’s plan to build a network of accessible, user-friendly branches to deliver a value proposition of banking services that are simple, unintimidating, and affordable for low-income customers opening their first bank accounts.

 

1]  Group your ideas into three or four main concepts that form the base of your model.

 

2]  Within those concepts, add layers of detail that describe their concrete implications and how to implement the strategy.

 

3]  Use color and shading, but judiciously – only to distinguish layers.

 

4]  Indicate clear relationships among the elements – for instance, with connecting lines and arrows that delineate flows.  

 

5]  Make your framework easier for viewers to process by organizing it horizontally.

 

To read the full article you can look at the Business Source Premier database in EBSCOhost over at your friendly local public library. But you can also find a slightly different version in another article with the same title from June 24, 2025 by Joao Cotter Salvado.

 

Vital Speeches of the Day

The back cover of the February issue of Toastmaster magazine has an ad for this monthly newsletter which has been around for 75 years. It is very interesting reading for anyone involved with public speaking. If you are brave, you even can submit a speech to it.

Each issue of Vital Speeches of the Day features a speech of the month. Beverly K. Eakman wrote the speech of the month for the December 2008 issue, on the topic of Education’s Role. The August 2007 issue had a speech on the difference between managing and leading by Tami Longaberger called A Precise Talent. The March 2005 issue had a speech by Jeff Davidson about going From Golden Cage to Golden Age for Your Career. It also had a speech by Larry Tracy about Taming Hostile Audiences.

At their special Toastmasters rate it costs $50 a year for an electronic subscription and $60 a year for the print version (which has a regular price of $75). If I was doing speaking as a full time career then I might consider subscribing. However, that would also depend on whether I could already access the publication via a database in my public library.

Some states have a library system that does the bulk purchasing of databases for their city and county libraries. Here in Idaho that system is called Libraries Linking Idaho, and down the road in Utah it is called Public Pioneer. Libraries Linking Idaho (LiLI) has purchased the ProQuest Central database, which has full text for most of Vital Speeches of the Day from June 1995 to June 2007. ProQuest Central also indexes up to the current issue of that newsletter. Clicking on the Publications tab and typing in the title lets you search the contents of individual issues, and also click on an article to read an abstract.

In Utah, Public Pioneer has the Academic Search Premier database which has full text (Acrobat .pdf files) for all 75 years of Vital Speeches of the Day. Thus Utah residents can easily access it from their home or office.

Here in Boise the library over at Boise State University (BSU) also has the Academic Search Premier database. For a visitor like me to access databases at BSU he has to stop at the checkout desk of the Albertson Library, show them identification (driver’s license), and then get a guest logon good for just 30 minutes. Then I can use one of four public access PC terminals on the ground floor to view the databases and save results to my little USB thumb drive. This rationing of terminal use resulted from gamers monopolizing the public terminals.

However, any citizen of Idaho also qualifies as a “Special Borrower” at the BSU library. I have a free citizen card that entitles me to check out up to ten books at a time (but not periodicals or reserve books).
The BSU library is a just pleasant walk down the Boise River Greenbelt trail from my Toastmasters club meeting. It’s a monthly treat for me to visit that library.

OVER 700 COMPLETELY FREE MAGAZINE ARTCLES! ACT NOW!! ALL ABOUT PUBLIC SPEAKING!!! SPECIAL OFFER!!!! FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!!!!!

Where can you get all that good stuff in one place? Not out on the open web! If you put the phrase "public speaking" into Google you will get an ocean of 9 million hits. If you also add filetype:pdf, then you will still get a vast sea of 170,000 Acrobat file hits.

You can find the 700 articles on the web site for your friendly local public library, in their magazine databases. They are neatly subject-indexed and even divided into two categories: magazines (560) and academic journals (140). Your lifetime is the limited time for this special offer.

Your library card is the key that unlocks them. Most of them at the Boise Public Library are in a database called Gale General OneFile. It was bulk purchased with state tax dollars under a program called Libraries Linking Idaho (acronym LiLI).

For example, Carmine Gallo wrote an article in the March 4, 2008 issue of Business Week Online titled "How to inspire people like Obama does". Does that sound interesting? (Gallo also wrote the book 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators that I mentioned in my last post).

Also, Michael Anthony Holliday wrote an article in the September 2007 issue of the Training Journal titled "Friends, Romans, Countrymen…" The article is a 4-page color Acrobat file and includes a complicated concept map to illustrate the topic of using concept maps to organize presentations.

Under Academic Journals Tory DeFoe wrote a very blunt article in the December 21, 2007 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The truth is, you gave a lousy talk".

Now, if you are lucky you might find a few dozen articles posted on a single web site. Your library has a treasure trove with hundreds of them. They actually index even more: about 1350 articles, but they only have full text for 700. I usually begin by limiting the search to full text. However, I could always go back and see what else I missed. Perhaps the local university library (Boise State University) has some of the others.