Creating Clarity

I am firmly convinced that the way many of us still work today is no longer up to date. I strongly believe that we need to work more visually and collaboratively in order to identify problems faster and ultimately solve them. Forget all those unproductive meetings where 80 % of the participants just listen anyway. It all just eats up time.

So I was all the more pleased to finally hold the new book by Holger Nils Pohl, Creating Clarity, in my hands. Because that is exactly what the book is about: How can visual aids and methods revolutionize our work? Whether Creating Clarity achieves this goal, you'll find out in this review.

Do you sometimes feel trapped in discussions that somehow never get to the point? Or have you ever taken part in workshops where the word "work" somehow never takes off? Or do you know that tiring feeling that, for many people, working means filling in spreadsheets and documents?

If so, Creating Clarity is exactly the right book for you! With his book, Holger tackles exactly these issues and shows us how to reach our goals better with very simple, visual means. To do so, Holger follows his Clarity Framework:

1. Understand: How do we make sure everyone has the same understanding of a matter, a problem, a task?
2. Create: What is the best way to develop a solution? What are the next steps and how do we implement them?
3. Share: How do we turn it into a well-rounded story in the end? What is the best way to tell others about it and convince them of our idea?

Yet Creating Clarity is much more than just a theoretical treatise on "visual work", as in so many other books. The real strength of Holger Nils Pohl's new book is that it makes the topic tangible with truly concrete suggestions for action, templates and countless methods. I can pick up the book, choose a template for whatever problem I want to solve at work, and get started right away. The tools focus people's thoughts and ideas. They provide a clear visual frame so that we can focus on what matters.

I would actually recommend Creating Clarity to anyone in working life, because the problems it addresses affect all of us: we all waste time in meetings, feel that our ideas don't reach everyone, and talk more instead of working something out collaboratively. We humans can process information visually much faster and more effectively. Yet we make far too little use of this strength at work. Creativity and collaboration need tools that foster this way of working together. Holger shows and explains a fine selection of them.

Whether you lead a team, a project or a company, Creating Clarity will inspire you to approach some of your challenges more visually.

I always thought I already worked visually, but Holger showed me what else is possible. I think it's great that his new book is so practical. You no longer have to think about how to approach something, because all you have to do is pick the right template and you're done.

The book is wonderfully illustrated. Here, too, Holger has tried to convey his ideas to us readers graphically. And he has really succeeded. It's fun to actually work with the book instead of just reading it and looking at it.

With Creating Clarity, we get a practical guide with very concrete action steps and tools to adapt the way we work to the demands of the 21st century.