One of the great ironies at XPLANE is that while we are well known for simplifying and clarifying our client’s value proposition, commonly referred to as “the elevator pitch,” our own elevator pitch is surprisingly difficult to succinctly articulate. But as with our clients, we’ve used visuals to help.
And as we’ve evolved our services and value for clients, we’ve needed to evolve our graphical depiction of our core value.
For years, we used this graphic to talk to clients about what we did:
As we’ve evolved however, this graphic has become less accurate in depicting the value we bring to clients today. We used to frame our value as, “the people who are great at pulling relevant stories out of mountains of content in order to produce compelling deliverables like maps, brochures, websites and animations.”
As we’ve continued to evolve from primarily a design studio into a more strategic design consultancy, our clients have come to understand that underlying their desire to communicate with greater clarity is a deeper need to address ambiguous, ever-changing environments in a way that keeps people aligned, focused and inspired.
It was never just about the artifacts – our value was always in the ability to help clients navigate and drive the people side of change.
Our most recent evolution of these additional values is now depicted in our latest visual elevator pitch – the value of co-created solutions, multi-disciplinary teams and people-centered design.
Co-created solutions: When dealing with complexity and ambiguity, solutions cannot be outsourced or created in a vacuum. This is where the principles of co-creation come in. When the solution is co-created it brings with it a pride of ownership and support from the client, and a practicality and usefulness that solutions built from outsiders seldom achieve.
Multi-disciplinary teams: Marrying subject matter experts with experts in different disciplines creates a formula for fresh thinking, innovative ideas and opportunities to come up with something new, inspiring and effective.
People-centered design: People willingly dropping or adopting the right behavior is the critical (and oftentimes missing) ingredient to any change. The newest process or greatest technology won’t really move the needle if people don’t embrace the change required of them. Our approach focuses on insights and empathy gathered from the broader organization and affected stakeholder groups, to ensure that what we bring to people will be well received and acted upon.
This newer graphic places more emphasis on the people side of the equation of complexity, clearly showing the involvement of the client in the solutions created. And our results are now noticeably focused on internal benefits of adoption of the change desired as well as all the typical measures of business success.
You can download our latest one-pager here, which showcases this image in the context of our company overview.
There is no doubt this graphic will continue to evolve, which brings up one of our final value proposition elements — the value of rapid prototyping and iterative design. Sketches like the ones in this post, though they reflect a lot of thinking and synthesis of information, are relatively easy to draw up, share and solicit feedback on. This allows us to learn quickly, and swiftly create the right solution.
Let us know what you think of our latest value proposition sketch and the values it reflects. Are these what you think of when you think of working with XPLANE? Are these the elements you think set us apart from others? Inquiring minds want to know. pdodson@xplane.com.