When Herb Kelleher was brainstorming about how to beat the traditional hub-and- spoke airlines, he grabbed a bar napkin and a pen. Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers.
Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw.
Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools – tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to
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proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
Good if you are new to this thinking, November 19, 2008
By
Neal Lenarcic (Seattle, WA USA)
Being a visual learner, this was preaching to the choir with little new to offer. A few good points. Not enough to purchase an entire book on. Although, if visual expression and explanation style is not your forte, it is a book that could be useful.
Ergo, the rating of 3 falls between. A higher rank if you are new or relatively inexperienced. A lower rank if you are regular utilizers of visual mapping.
The book should have been napkin sized, November 11, 2008
By
Jeffrey J. Kaney (Rockford, IL United States)
OK, I'll admit it. I use the white board a lot. I thought this book would be a quick hit group of hints to make my life/verbiage/ideas more simple and clear. I found the book full of lists, like I'm going to be doing some free flowing idea presenting at a whiteboard and still remember some arcane 12 point list. I'd actually would have given it a 1 star rating, but I know there are some people this would be good for, someone possibly who isn't already jumping out of there chair and fighting for the whiteboard. If this describes you, my suggestion is skip this book.
Inspiración y método de comunicación con dibujos, November 11, 2008
By
Rodrigo Martin Campo (Chile)
Debo reconocer que lo revisé en 3 horas (rápido) pues no quiero atarme a una metodología precisa de cómo transmitir mis ideas con esquemas y dibujos. Prefiero crear la mía para mis necesidades. Sin embargo le diría al autor que no intente dar tantos ánimos a quienes dudan de su capacidad de dibujar. ¡Ellos no comprarán su libro en primer lugar! Le apostaría que quienes compran su libro lo hacen por que sienten que sí pueden. No pierda el tiempo y para una siguiente edición (¡¡por favor siga en esta nueva línea de comunicación!!)incluya más ejemplos que son iluminadores y más motivadores que las palabras.
A mi me será útil en mis clases con universitarios (aunque se ríen de los intentos de dibujo de su profesor, lo que no es malo del todo)y para presentar proyectos a personas más creativas, más sentimentales y menos conservadores que los habituales gerentes de empresa.
Vale la pena. Es novedoso y agradable de revisar, pero puede ser muy mejorado.
Gracias DAN ROAM por atreverse.
Great book for Process Modelers..., November 10, 2008
By
Mitchel MartinBusiness diagrams are too often complex, difficult to understand and even harder to explain. The Back of the Napkin contains instruction and useful examples of how to get your message across simply and effectively.
As a Business Process and Management Reporting Consultant, I have been recommending this book this year to the business modelers that I train. Business people love to "show their stuff" by displaying complicated process models and business diagrams, sometimes spending as long as an hour explaining what it means.
BIG MISTAKE!!! If you can't get people to understand your model or picture in the first glance or two, your point will lose impact and you could miss getting your message across.
Almost every page contains simple diagrams to bring each and every point across to the reader. I would have given this book 5 stars, except the author tried to create a methodology and acronym SQVID that missed the mark by being too complex. Also, the "how to" example could have been better - and given the author an opportunity to really showcase his methodology's effectiveness.
Read this book - and after you finish, read "Make it Stick." These two books together will help you become more effective with business communications.
The Bad of the Napkin, November 9, 2008
By
PG (NY, NY)
The author definitely has some good points, I definitely agree that making things more visual can help a lot of times, but come on, 300 pages for that? it would have been a great book if it only had 100 concrete pages but the fact that it is so long goes directly against what he is preaching... I don't think is worth it's money. Don't buy it.
