The Power of Imagery (Part II)

In their research into Enlisting Others, the second commitment of Inspiring a Shared Vision, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner tell us that we need to:

connect to what’s meaningful to others; and
use symbolic language.

I will tell you a quick story about how of my favorite creative souls put these practices to work. Fred Auch, PCL’s district manager in the Minneapolis area, and his … well, let’s call him a business development leader … Dan Ilten, a mechanical engineer and architect, wanted to make a project proposal to Medtronic.

Medtronic was and is a global leader in medical technology, and at the time of this story, had put out a call for contractor services to build a medical building on their Lake Pointe campus. Fred and Dan’s challenge here had nothing to do with their technical competence: they knew how to do what was being asked because they had done it before, very successfully. Their major obstacle was the fact that Medtronic had been sole sourcing their construction work to a favored general contractor … Fred and Dan had to find a way to convince Medtronic it was time for a change.

Here’s how they ‘communicated’ with Medtronic … with images that connected to what was meaningful to them and to use language that was symbolic of the Medtronic world. Of all the project proposals I have seen, this is perhaps the most original.

These 6 drawings (one of Dan’s many talents!) represented the 6 major stages of construction for the building Medtronic had put out to tender, each cleverly showing schedule impact:

foundations, depicted here as the ‘feet’ of the building
steel and concrete, the skeletal structure
mechanical/electrical/HVAC, the ‘brain’ and the major living ‘organs’ of the building
the building systems: heating, cooling plumbing, electrical, fire, data communications, etc, seen here as how and where life flows through the building
the building envelope, the ‘skin’ of the building, which controls air pressure and quality, temperature, etc
the cladding, the ‘clothing’, what people see as the final visual product.

Now, what you can’t see, unless you know Fred, is that the gorgeous man in the hat in image #6 looks exactly like Fred. How I wish I had seen the Medtronic people reacting to this creativity! It did not convince them to leave their favored contractor for this project, but I am very sure Medtronic were now aware of, and positively disposed to, Fred and Dan working for them in the future. Inspiring a Shared Vision indeed!