The Back of the Napkin

Our office has been abuzz recently with talk of a book called 'The Back of the Napkin' by Dan Roam. It's subtitle,'Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures' describes something we do as part of working with clients.

How often have you been in a meeting where everyone is tossing around great and inspiring ideas? The answer is probably 'all the time'. Think about what happens at the end though. In our experience, despite the good discussion and even the agreement of everyone at the meeting, people still leave with different ideas about what was agreed and how it is to be achieved. This isn't usually caused by a lack of notes.

In his book Dan recommends instead of writing words, we draw pictures. Why?

There's a lot of science behind his reasoning, but it basically comes down to this: pictures are a tangible representation of an idea. It is much easier to see, discuss and agree on an idea if it you can see and touch it. Also, if you need to take the idea and sell it to someone else (like your boss) then a picture is far more effective than rattling off a list of bullet points.

A secondary benefit of drawing pictures of ideas is that it encourages others, even the non-artistic (Dan says 'anyone can draw these kinds of business pictures') to suggest or even make changes to the picture if it doesn't match what they are thinking. Basically it engages the meeting participants in the process of shaping ideas.

Drawing pictures to represent ideas is called, 'visual thinking'. So what kinds of pictures are we talking about? Dan suggests six types:

1. Who/what?
2. How many/much?
3. Where?
4. When?
5. How?
6. Why?

Sound familiar? The six Ws (well five plus one H) you probably learnt in school when writing a good story or giving a speech.

Dan has come up with some basic visual thinking tools including the six Ws. You can learn more about them at his book's Web site (click the 'Tools' link at the bottom).

He walks the reader through an example of tackling a real life, multi-million dollar business problem using pictures in what he calls the 'visual thinking MBA'. This really shows the value of solving problems and selling ideas with pictures.

So if you want to get clarity and increase participation at your next meeting, read Dan's book and get drawing!

How have you used visual thinking to solve problems and sell ideas?