The future is visual management

This chapter describes the development of the use of visualisation techniques within management planning and decision-making processes towards the realisation of visual management. By drawing on exemplars and vignettes of visualisations that have been used in business and government as well as in academic literature the discussion charts the increasing maturity with all forms of visualisation techniques and technologies. This is a specific business maturity that enables visualisation to be used with value and purpose outside the largest multination corporation. Exploring the trajectory of this development there is the implicit recognition that visualisations can now become the primary artefact for planning and decision-making rather than a secondary aesthetically pleasing representation of a concept or some available evidence. This provocation – that the future is visual management - is carried throughout the chapter. Consideration is given to the extent to which all the necessary tools for the task have only coalesced – at best – in the past decade. The trajectory of this discussion then looks at the rise and advocacy for data-driven, data-informed and evidence-based management. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion on the relationship between strategic management practices and the visual artefacts used to guide them