Mitul was coasting in his career until he needed to explain his big ideas to more people in more different contexts. He struggles with this challenge for many years, climbing higher and higher on the organisation chart.
The higher he goes, the more communication matters. In his line of work, it’s not just talk, it’s diagrams and designs that get big ideas across, and he’s struggling.
How does he get these ideas out of his head and onto paper? Watch the interview below and find out.
Watch the full interview below:
The Four-Forces Debrief
So – what did we learn from the interview with Mitul? Take a look at the initial debrief I created below (shared in the video from 1 hour 4 mins and 32 seconds):
Mitul S - Four Forces Analysis
Mitul is a technology leader who has been working in his role for 13 years, initially as a Software Engineer, but with the past 7 of these being as an Architect. Moving to an architecture design role meant that he needed to create different diagrams of software/systems that could communicate to three different audiences:
- Customers of their company, who need to understand the architecture he is proposing
- Developers in his company, who need to translate the design into a working product
- Management/Stakeholders in the company, who need to understand the diagrams to see where the value/component costs are
Historically he has struggled - he says "he finds it easy to come up with the story in his head" - however what he puts down in the diagram does not communicate this effectively to others. Specifically he has an issue with re-use of different diagram components and visual representations and felt like he lacks the framework to do this properly.
Management has provided him critical feedback on his diagrams in the past - they are "not good/all over the place", put too much into the space, and are not suitable to put in front of clients.
Over the years the need for this work has grown - from 10% originally to 60-70% of his role now (and this is on top of his existing work). He feels he is more technical than artistic, but this is an important skill that he lacks.
The need for this increases over the past 1.5-2 years. Initially the drive was AI adoption - meaning he needed to document more value flows for management. However this escalated in May this year when the firm was about to win a "once in a lifetime client" and Mitul had to draft the architecture diagrams for his firm's contracts.
Mitul first went to the tools he uses for documentation: Lucid Charts and Notion - and leveraged their AI bolt ons to see if they could help him represent his ideas. These shared the same problem he faced - the idea in his head would not pop out properly when represented visually by the tools.
Eventually he stumbled across a search that had 5-6 courses to teach these skills - looking for help to visually represent technical diagrams - and Ink Factory's website had the best info:
- it described his exact problem (inability to get ideas out of his head on paper)
- it described a solution (learn/follow their techniques to visualise different components)
- It showed him there would give him a "how to" - by learning different methods that he could then use to visualise any idea he has
The other 5-6 courses were all "marketing material" - he felt these were lacking in detail on how they would solve the problem and more promises about making the best visual for any use. He discarded these and went back to Inkfactory:
- the price was $14 a month, via SkillsShare - which was about the cost of a cup of coffee
- he could cancel any time (he had previously been a SkillsShare customer and had cancelled 1-2 years ago)
- he could take the course in his own time, at his leisure
He liked the course and is has helped him to understand the use of Contrast, Highlights, Shapes and Scale in his diagrams - even though the course content was not focused on technical diagrams. He joined in May but has kept paying as they release more material monthly, and there is a "social media for visual ideas" section of the course that he browses to learn from other students and get inspiration for ways to visualise new ideas from others when he is sat with a blank page trying to create his own visual representation for work.
The "Social media for visual ideas" is not something he is an active participant in - he's a lurker in there looking for ideas, and he did not sign up to the course for that benefit (but he stays a member partially because of it).
This is a story about struggling to communicate the ideas in his head with others in a way they understand - specifically when I have to communicate with multiple different audiences, and when this work will be put in front of customers and represent me and my organisation.
Ink Factory also publish a list of icons etc that they sell on the course - he found this after joining - however he has NOT bought it, because this is more about learning the skill and getting the confidence that he can do this quickly and easily, and less about having it done for him.
He didn't complete this all in one go - instead taking it in chunks. He also dips in and out of the social media section - driven by when he has to use the skills and create new images.
This interview was on August 27th – and we published this on September 6th. Since then we have completed 7 interviews in total, and I’ll be publishing all of them over the next week.
If you want to keep tabs on this project, sign up in the email box below. We will keep posting new interviews and the analysis as-it-happens.