Any good presentation will be a combination of interesting information and arresting graphics. Graphics aid in concentration, comprehension and retention. The better they are, the more likely the message being communicated will be understood and remembered.

In the many presentations I have made over the years, I seldom counted on delivery alone to ensure that the information I offered up would have the desired impact. I was just not that good. So, I liked to use props, and the best and most readily available props are invariably the graphics by which the information is being conveyed.

There are basic rules for infographics, be they in a PowerPoint presentation, in a printed document or on screen.

1. Each graphic should make one point. Which means that if there is no point, don’t have a graphic. (Actually, if there is no point, don’t do a presentation at all.) The corollary is that if you want to make several points, then use several graphics. Layering can work, if your points are sequential and if the layering is handled delicately and judiciously. It’s a dangerous practice, however, that should be attempted only by the most adept.

2. The graphic itself should be obvious. Obvious doesn’t mean plain. It doesn’t mean boring. It does mean clearly understandable. Whether you are showing market share, population densities, product life cycle stages, elevations or critical paths, the viewers’ or readers’ eyes should know instantly where to focus.

3. If you have devices like legends, eyes are forced to hop from place to place just to have a reference point. Legends are not helpful. They cause clutter. They cause confusion. They should be avoided. Graphics where the legend is built into the concept are most effective.

If you are looking for a really great website on infographics, check out infographicsblog.com. It showcases some of the finest – and, sometimes, the less than finest – infographic work being done, saluting innovation and creativity as well as the ability to educate and impress. For each example, the author explains what works well, what doesn’t, and what essential element is missing that might, if present, have put the illustration over the top.

One of my favourite, if slightly flawed, graphics from this blog shows the evolution of Crayola crayon colours over time (100+ years). The kid in you has got to love it, though the ability to have the colour name pop up as your mouse rolls over each colour strip would have been a wonderful touch.

A particularly troublesome illustration tries to present the 10 best places to buy a house in America. Focusing on small cities, it looks at such factors as median family income, average property tax, the number of universities and museums within 30 miles, the number of librairies and movie theatres within 15 miles, the number of sunny days per year, as well as unemployment levels. It uses a variety of charting tools, several overlapping X and Y axes, and a map where the cities are identified by numbers for which you must refer to a legend. I would challenge anyone to actually identify, at a glance, which city would top the chart. Actually, I would bet that, given 10 minutes to study the graphic closely, most people would still be hard pressed to choose. It is one of those well-intentioned if ill-conceived graphics laden with data but light on useful information.

Spend some time at the site. It is as much fun as it is enlightening.

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” (Irene Peter)

If I have learned anything over the past 30 years, both as an experienced practitioner and keen student of business strategy, it is this: Those who run companies have one basic responsibility. No, it is not to make money. It is to keep their respective companies running. The core of any strategy must, therefore, be sustainability.

Too often, you will hear the same answer, told smugly, when asked about the essence of business enterprise. Business, it will be knowingly explained, is about making money…the more, the merrier. In fact, greed is about making money, the more the merrier. Business is about building an enterprise that is capable of making money over the long haul. Strategies that yield unsustainable profits are short-sighted, short term and doomed to failure. Greed is short-sighted and almost never sustainable.

So, more than just building a profitable organizations, business leaders must be focused on building sustainable ones. A company must be able to withstand economic volatility, a hyper-competitive market, lengthy supply chain disruptions and, yes, catastrophic events. It is easy to make money when your boat, like those around it, is rising with the tide. But can your boat survive a tsunami? Can it survive a protracted industry slump? Can it survive the Chinese? How about new technologies? Sweeping regulatory changes? What would happen to your organization in the event of a major acquisition?

Sustainability in the management context is about ensuring that a company’s product or service offering responds to the needs of its customer base and that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. It is about its operations being as productive and as low cost as its competitors. It is about having a strong and stable customer base and a reliable supply chain. It is about having a stable cash flow and not having bank covenants that could strangle it when things become volatile. And, yes, it is about being prepared for catastrophe.

So, what is the first step in becoming a company from which investors can count on reliable, consistent returns well into the future? How does an organization become sustainable?

The answer is somewhat paradoxical. To be sustainable, a company must change. To change, the company must begin by strengthening the status quo.

Sustainability strategies require leaders to take a long-term view of their business. Getting the future right, however, first requires getting the present right. You cannot attract good people unless you take proper care of your current people. You cannot attract new customers unless you are adept at keeping the ones you have. You cannot usefully leverage a weak product portfolio. You cannot successfully expand a weak geographic base. Jim Collins writes Good to Great because you cannot go from Bad to Great. Without a strong foundation, you cannot get to there from here.

Sustainability, therefore, begins with understanding what you are doing right and then doing it better. Build from the foundation up, not the roof down. In other words, do not change. Evolve.

In a fast changing world, where most advisors would say that to succeed you must learn to change, it’s a paradox, to be sure.

Fellow business blogger Dave Jung at B2Blog alerted me to this tell-tale tempest at American Airlines.

To summarize, blogger Dustin Curtis took American Airlines to task for a terrible website (cluttered front page, poor user interface, etc.). Remember, customer experiences take place at points of contact. Every interface, every encounter, online, in-store or in person, is critical. Curtis received a detailed, if anonymous, e-mail from an AA designer explaining why it is understandably difficult to get good design at large companies. The big issue, he explained, is the sheer number of interventions by competing interests within the company.

My own experience in a large company says this is not necessarily true. Successful design is predicated on a consistent brand message being presented with clarity and creativity. The size of the company and the need to accommodate a range of interests are not predictors of design excellence. But let’s put that aside for the moment.

Mr. X, as he dubbed himself, did say that there were updates on the way that would address some of the problems. So far, so good, though I question the need for anonymity.

In telling the story, Techdirt shows an unfortunate bias. Our intrepid reporter very much appreciated the response given by Mr. X. “It’s human. It explains the situation without PR/marketing speak that a recipient would know was bogus. It is the type of response that makes someone feel good about American Airlines (mostly). So, how did AA respond? It fired the guy.”

Let us begin by looking at the actual response given by the supposedly well-intentioned Mr. X:

“I like to think I’m decent at what I do, and I know the others I work with here are all pretty good. The problem with the design of AA.com, however, lies less in our competency (or lack thereof, as you pointed out in your post) and more with the culture and processes employed here at American Airlines.

“…doing the design isn’t the hard part, and I think that’s what a lot of outsiders don’t really get, probably because many of them actually do belong to small, just-get-it-done organizations. But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome…. They know what it’s like.”

So, this is how I interpret what Mr. X said:

- I am a good designer. Any problems with the AA.com design are not my fault, nor the fault of my colleagues. The fault lies with my company which is large and unwieldy (“the group running AA.com consists of at least 200 people spread out amongst many different groups”) and the cumbersome process we are required to work with. Let’s face it: AA is not a “get-it-done” organization.

- Left to my own devices, I could make a really cool site. I could make changes I deem appropriate on a dime. I would not bother with review and approvals with all the revisions such reviews would likely engender. I would say no to new feature requests if they prove difficult to accommodate.

Am I being unfairly selective? Am I being a corporate apologist? Just read Mr. X’s e-mail and judge for yourself.

So, I see things differently from Techdirt:

- Mr. X is certainly human with a number of very human foibles…one of which is an inability to take responsibility. He and his colleagues are clearly unable to neatly marry up the different needs of a complex organization.

- His response does not show loyalty to his employer. He dissed his company publicly. And, in cowardly fashion, did it behind the cloak of anonymity. I wonder if he ever bothered to show Mr. Curtis’ e-mail to his superiors so as to allow the company to come up with an appropriate response. Forget for a moment the highly prejudicial comment about PR/Marketing Speak. The fact is that any company with its head screwed on straight, given a well-intentioned criticism, could easily respond without being bogus. (Whether or not American Airlines is a company with its head screwed on straight is another question and probably a very good one.)

- The response would NOT make someone feel good about American Airlines. On the contrary, it says: if you think the website sucks, you should see what it’s like working here!

Would I have fired Mr. X? No. At least not unless this was one of a series of offenses. But I certainly would have had a chat with him about the appropriate way to approach outside criticism of the company.

This is a case of dumb and dumber. It is not completely obvious which is which.