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Accelerating positive change for
organizations, their people, and the world.

An illustration of the globe with five icons directly jutting out from it in orbit as follows: a bullseye, a heart, a pie chart, a gear, and a target.

XPLANE exists to help you lead and realize your most important change by activating your people. Whether launching a new vision and strategy or embedding new ways of working, we help you to accelerate understanding and adoption by engaging your teams with communications, learning programs, and tools that will accelerate adoption and results.

 

Decades of firsthand experience with global organizations inform our point of view that organizations are organisms, not machines. People are the cells that make up organizations and work in concert with systems, processes, norms and behaviors, and guiding strategies.

 

We view your organization as a system and approach challenges from multiple dimensions to diagnose and improve the system as a whole, never losing sight of the importance of the people who make it run.

 

Our dynamic team combines the strategic expertise of a consulting firm with the creative power of a design studio. Our unique approach combines hands-on visual thinking, co-creation, and people-centered design to help you envision the future of your organization, design the path to get there, and bring your vision to life.

A Rich History of Innovation

Five figures stand behind XPLANE's change lever. They think of the outcome of the change lever collectively in a pink thought bubble.

2022: Leading Change Through People

Combining all of our experience in human-centered design, visual thinking, and strategy activation, we joined the family of TiER1 Impact to focus and scale our efforts to accelerate positive change and transformation through the people inside of organizations.

The before: a never ending slide deck, versus the after: many solutions including a webpage, app, visualized map

2012: Better Business, Designed

Combining visual thinking, design thinking, and the rigor of management consulting, we were among the first design consultancies to focus efforts on using design to transform organizations from the inside.

A man sits cross legged, meditating. He holds a pen in one hand. Behind him are several visual thinking maps.

2004: The Visual Thinking Company

We trademarked “The Visual Thinking Company” and launched the Visual Thinking Movement with our work and creation of the VizThink conferences and community. As a community, visual thinkers have accelerated clarity and understanding around the world.

A folded newspaper with an arrowing pointing to three books, the top reading "Business 2.0". Behind this is a variety of visual maps.

1993: The XPLANATION Company

Founder and journalist Dave Gray was a pioneer in information graphics, advocating to move information graphics from the Weather page to the Business Section. He started XPLANE to help clients visually explain complex information, such as processes, value propositions, and new business models.

Let's Design the Future