For me, it's an intellectual extension to Kurt Hanks' 'Rapid Viz', but with a more systems perspective to...

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	• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures Dan Roam Portfolio Hardcover, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For me, it's an intellectual extension to Kurt Hanks' 'Rapid Viz', but with a more systems perspective to view issues!

I have always been fascinated by visual thinking & visual problem solving.

I attribute this captivation of mine partly to my engineering training - seeing the problem first before getting to the solution.

In the earlier years of my professional career, my field guide to visual thinking & visual problem solving happened to be Henning Nelms' 'Thinking with a Pencil'. I could relate to it very quickly because of my engineering work.

In subsequent years, I had picked up the mind-mapping techniques from Tony Buzan, which led me to explore other visual tools, partly fueled by my curiosity.

One of them was the mind-scaping techniques from Nancy Margulies. Another was the rapid visualisation techniques from Kurt Hanks, especially his wonderful book, 'Rapid Viz', which gave me a more fun & spontaneous approach.

As I moved into the upper echelons of marketing & management, in conjunction with my career progression, I came across Terry Richey's 'Marketer's Visual Toolkit: Using Charts, Graphs, & Models for Strategic Planning & Problem Solving'.

Prior to it, I didn't realise a simple box matrix could do so much wonders to understanding problems. As a matter of fact, today the Nine Block Matrix is one of my most favourite business analytical tools.

This was followed by Larry Raymond's 'Reinventing Communication: A Guide for Using Visual Language for Planning, Problem Solving & Re engineering'.

The journey metaphor was a real eye opener for me, especially in terms of thinking strategically.

Both of them certainly gave me many broad perspectives about using more effective visual approaches to get into the heart of business issues.

In the early nineties, I went to the United States to learn advanced visual tools from the legendary Jim Channon. It was an awesome learning experience for me.

His brilliant work then led me to discover David Sibbet of Grove Consultants, & Jerry McNellis (storyboarding), from both of whom I had learned to develop my own professional expertise in helping small businesses to expedite their problem solving as well as fine-tune their strategic planning techniques.

As part of my strategy consulting & training development work in the ensuing years, with entrepreneurs, professionals, managers as well as students, I also started to explore graphic organisers & other visual organisers as power tools to manage information overload.

In the last couple of years, a handful of experts have further expanded my personal understanding about making systems sense of challenging business situations. They are:

- Alex Lowry & Phil Hood, 'The Power of the 2x2 Matrix: Using 2x2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems & Make Better Decisions';

- John Bryson, 'Visible Thinking: Unlocking Causal Mapping for Practical Business Results';

I have even indulged in what I call 'deliberate doodling', with some great help from the work of Joy Sikorski.

As you can see, I have come a long way as far as exploring & practising visual thinking & visual problem solving are concerned. In many respects, my learning journey has been greatly influenced by the teachings of all the above mentioned experts.

Against this backdrop, I am very glad to meet Dan Roam, through his wonderful book, 'The Back of the Napkin'. I have come across the book at first while browsing through some body's blog. Fortunately, to my great delight, I have managed to get a copy from Kinokuniya Bookstore quickly.

I am still reading the book, & have yet to finish it, but I have already started with real-world prototyping for use in my strategy consulting work.

In a nutshell, the book has four critical sections, from my point of view, with two supporting technical appendices & an extended case study:

- Part I: Looking at the problem;
- Part II: Seeing & Discovering Ideas;
- Part III: Imagining & Developing Ideas;
- Part IV: Showing & Selling Ideas;

My initial adverse response while reading this book is that I have to get used to the hand-drawn stick figures [which I don't like] in the book, & also the need to do flip-flopping between images & text, but after a while, I just get used to them & finally, reading becomes a breeze.

Tactically, it is a do-it-yourself book. So you have to work with it systematically to get what you need.

Actually for me, & in application terms, the book is an intellectual extension of Kurt Hank's rapid visualisation techniques, which are more spontaneous & artful, but Dan Roam has put in a more systems perspective - almost structured & yet still free-form, in a limited sense - to view issues or problems.

What I like about the book from the beginning is the author's "Guide Rope to Visual Thinking", which outlines his comprehensive 4-step process, 3 built-in tools & 6 ways of seeing. They are basically the foundational tools, while the latter forms the six fundamental questions that guide how we see the world.

I am glad that the "6 ways of seeing" has sparked off an interesting idea at my end - I can now synergise - in fact, I like to use the term 'synconvergise' from Michael Gelb - what I had picked up from an earlier book, 'So What? The Definitive Guide to the Only Business Questions that Matter', by Kevin Duncan, which I had reviewed earlier.

All I can say so far is that all the techniques as introduced by the author certainly build on, or rather amplify, my current repertoire of abilities & skills to view, simplify & summarise complicated concepts with simple pictures.

To end this post, let me paraphrase the author: "Welcome to a whole new way of looking at business . . . The heart of business is the art of problem solving . . . Visual thinking means taking advantage of our innate ability to see . . ."

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Wonderful concepts & flow

Very succinct in making its (strong) points. The pull-out chart near the end is great & so if the final "cheat sheet". Strongly recommended!

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Immediately changed the way I think about sharing information...

Most business presentations rely on fancy graphs, professional graphics, and slick tools to get their point across. But sometimes, the most effective way to make your case is to whip out a napkin and start drawing. Dan Roam covers that subject in the book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. This opened my eyes to many different concepts that I somewhat took for granted, as well as giving me a framework for getting better at the whiteboard...

Contents:
Part 1 - Introductions - Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere - Solving Problems with Pictures: A Whole New Way of Looking at Business; Which Problems, Which Pictures, and Who is "We"?; A Gamble We Can't Lose - The Four Steps of Visual Speaking
Part 2 - Discovering Ideas - Looking Better, Seeing Sharper, Imagining Further - Tools and Rules for Good Visual Thinking: No Thanks, Just Looking; The Six Ways of Seeing; The SQVID - A Practical Lesson in Applied Imagination; Frameworks for Showing
Part 3 - Developing Ideas - The Visual Thinking MBA - Putting Visual Thinking to Work: Showing and The Visual Thinking MBA; Who Are Our Customers? - Pictures That Solve a Who/What Problem; How Many Are Buying? - Pictures That Solve a How Much Problem; Where Is Our Business? - Pictures That Solve a Where Problem; When Can We Fix Things? - Pictures That Solve a When Problem; How Can We Improve Our Business? - Pictures That Solve a How Problem; Why Should We Even Bother? - Pictures That Solve a Why Problem
Part 4 - Selling Ideas - It's Showtime; Everything I Know About Business I Learned In Show-And-Tell; Drawing Conclusions
Acknowledgments; Appendix A - The Science of Visual Thinking; Appendix B - Resources for Visual Thinkers

Probably the most famous example of this type of learning is the Southwest Airlines story. Herb Kelleher and Rollin King were discussing a failed airline of King's. King took a napkin, drew a triangle on it, and labeled each corner Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. This flight plan for a small regional airline broke a number of "rules", and the result of this simple drawing became Southwest Airlines four years later. It would have been "normal" to present an idea like this with PowerPoint slides, full color documents, and endless spreadsheets showing the numbers. But the most effective way of illustrating the concept was a simple napkin and pen. Roam has studied the science behind this deceptively simple idea and shows how nearly any idea can not only be communicated in this fashion, but most often can be communicated more succinctly than any other method. The act of drawing and simplifying concepts draws people in and puts life behind your message in a way that sterile professional graphics can't do.

Rather than just say "draw more", Roam creates a framework that allows you to figure out what type of picture applies. The problem is one of the following: who/what (portrait), how much (chart), where (map), when (timeline), how (flowchart), and why (plot). Within each of those frameworks, you have five options of what to show (the SQVID method): S (simple > elaborate), Q (quality > quantity), V (vision > execution), I (individual > comparison), and D (change > as-is). Once you understand these different conditions, the type of picture becomes clear, and then it's a matter of drawing the information. Keep in mind we're not talking about elaborate illustrations... stick figures and simple shapes will do. And that's a good thing, as "art" is not my forte... :)

This is another one of those books that will forever change the way you think about sharing information with others in a business or professional setting. This doesn't replace high-end, quality proposals or presentations... Instead, it simplifies and clarifies the message you have, and allows you to share it in a fraction of the time you might need for a formal, text/picture/word-laden meeting. This ranks right up with Presentation Zen in terms of books that change the way I work, and did so immediately.

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I wish I had this book 10 years ago

Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, is a wonderful instructional manual that teaches you the power of visual thinking in four lessons - introduction to visual thinking, discovering ideas, developing ideas, and selling ideas.

Dan explains how you don't have to be a "visual person" to take advantage of the power of visual thinking. He lays out a specific four step process of visual thinking that anyone can follow. I can't draw to save my life, but I'm already benefiting from following the process and using my crude sketches to capture and work through ideas.

This is a practical book that provides you with a set of frameworks for solving the different types of problems you will run into in business. Roam also provides simple to follow rules to help you decide which framework to use to solve your particular type of problem and communicate your ideas to your particular audience.

The last section of the book presents an MBA school style lesson. The author presents a walk-through of a complete case study. He demonstrates all the tools outlined in the book and you get to see how one progresses from one tool to the next to first help define the problem, then explore solutions, and then present those solutions to the key decision makers.

In the last chapter, the author walks his talk by demonstrating how to create a picture to describe your new visual thinking toolkit to your colleagues. Using a simple sketch of a Swiss Army knife, he summarizes the 3 basic visual thinking tools, the 4 steps of the visual thinking process, the 5 questions that help us open our mind's eye, and the 6 ways that we see.

Be sure to check out his creative acknowledgements section in the back of the book. This was the longest I've ever spent looking at an author's acknowledgements.

I highly recommend this book. It won't take you long to read, and your problem solving skills will increase so dramatically, you'll wish you read it 10 years ago.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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