– By Jakub Szarmach.
Why Words Fail ?
We’ve all seen it. A 30-page policy report that makes your eyes glaze over by paragraph three. It’s packed with facts, dense with citations, and totally unreadable.
The problem? Public policy keeps pretending it’s a textbook.
In a 2023 study by Pearson, L., & Dare, P. (2016). Visuals in Policy Making: “See What I’m Saying”, demonstrated a simple graph debunking the myth that rent control improves affordability beat a well-written text explanation. The graph group updated their beliefs more effectively—and held onto those changes longer. Why? Because visuals offload cognitive effort. They give people a structure. A shape. A story. That’s not fluff. That’s neuroscience.
Where Visuals Win
There are two powerful reasons to use visuals in public-facing materials or strategic decision documents:
1. Explainers that actually explain
Let’s be honest: half of what gets called “communication” in policy is just documentation in disguise. It’s there to prove something exists, not to help anyone understand it.
Think about the last time you really got something complicated. It probably wasn’t thanks to a six-paragraph definition or a multi-stakeholder compliance statement. It was because someone sketched a process map, drew a box-and-arrow diagram on a whiteboard, or handed you a one-pager that showed the whole thing at a glance.
A well-built process map shows relationships, dependencies, timing, and accountability. A good lifecycle graphic helps people understand when things happen, what changes over time, and who’s supposed to act. And a tight flowchart can answer the most important operational question of all: “What do I do when this breaks?”
These aren’t just nice-to-have additions. They’re comprehension machines. They strip away ambiguity. They give your reader a structure to hang everything else on. And they’re far more efficient than even the best-written paragraph, because they match how the brain likes to learn: visually, spatially, and all at once.
In short: if you want your policy to be understood, start drawing. If you can’t draw it, don’t write it yet.
2. Emotion in pixels
According to a 2017 review published in Frontiers in Psychology by Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M. N. M., & Malik, A. S. demonstrated emotion plays a huge role in learning and memory. It boosts attention, speeds up encoding, and strengthens recall. When people feel something—surprise, relevance, even mild irritation—they remember better. This happens because your brain literally recruits more firepower: the amygdala gets involved in memory consolidation, the prefrontal cortex helps encode it, and the hippocampus stores it long-term.
What does this mean for policy? It means if you want someone to understand a new rule, procedure, or risk model, your best bet isn’t a wall of text. It’s a visual that makes the stakes feel real. Good visuals grab attention and direct it where it matters. They help brains do what brains do best: notice, learn, and remember.
So next time you’re choosing between a long paragraph and a smart diagram, remember:
If it doesn’t move them, it won’t stay with them. And if it won’t stay with them, it won’t change anything.
How to Talk to the C-Suite (Without Boring Them to Death)
Want your executives to actually understand the policy briefing?
Don’t bury them in acronyms. Don’t hand them a deck that needs its own glossary. Give them a diagram they can absorb in one glance.
According to Deloitte’s 2025 (Deloitte. (2025). Governance of AI: A Critical Imperative for Today’s Boards. Deloitte Insights) survey:
- 66% of boards say they have “limited or no” knowledge of emerging tech.
- Only 5% feel “very ready” to oversee related initiatives.
- And 72% mainly engage on these topics with CIOs and CTOs—not with CFOs, CISOs, or risk officers.
This isn’t a tech knowledge gap. It’s a communication gap.
Visuals can bridge that. A diagram showing risk ownership, control flow, and incident response is more effective than 40 slides and a donut chart.
A Shining Example: The AI Governance Controls Mega-map
Sometimes, someone gets it exactly right. Enter James Kavanagh’s AI Governance Controls Mega-map.
This isn’t your average compliance flowchart. It’s a 44-control, 12-domain visual architecture mapped across six major frameworks—ISO 27001, SOC 2, ISO 27701, ISO 42001, NIST RMF, and the EU AI Act.
What makes it shine?
- Everything is grouped by real-world ownership, not just abstract themes.
- Each “Master Control” aligns overlapping requirements across standards—so instead of six audits, you get one coherent structure.
- And it’s not just visual. It’s tactile. Kavanagh literally sorted control statements with paper and pen.
Think ISO meets LEGO. It’s usable, not theoretical. It helps you do governance, not just talk about it.
It’s the best kind of visual: one that saves time, reduces risk, and actually gets used.
Less Telling. More Showing.
Visuals aren’t decoration. They’re not the cherry on top of a policy sundae. They’re the plate the whole thing sits on. Without that plate, you’re just flinging scoops of information onto the floor and hoping someone catches them.
When done right, visuals don’t just make your ideas prettier—they make them possible. They clarify who does what and when. They spotlight risks that would otherwise stay buried in the fine print. They connect the dots across silos, teams, and time zones. They don’t just help people follow the story—they help people act on it.
So next time you write a strategy, draft a law, or prep a board update, don’t ask, “How can I explain this better?”
Ask: “What can I show instead?”
Then show it. Badly, if necessary. Just start.