The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures | Dan Roam

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures | Dan Roam | An excellent investment in yourself!

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The Back of the Na...

	The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures Dan Roam Portfolio Hardcover, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The simple cover and concept shields a deeply powerful tool

I saw the book on the shelf at Borders and the cover caught my attention. I read the first few pages and knew I had to read the rest.

I am a technical trainer and writer and have been teaching classes for more than 10 years now. For the last 7 years I've been using a pen tablet in my classes to draw diagrams on-the-fly while lecturing about different technology concepts. The attendees have given phenomenally positive feedback about this learning method.

Now, I find this book that not only validates the process I've been using but helps me take it to the next level. The author reveals the four steps to visual thinking and the six problem categories that we all face. He shows you how to do it with case studies and examples that are practical.

One thing that I think many will find helpful is the way the author quickly removes any fear of drawing you may have. He gives the testimony of many attendees that he has helped overcome this fear of drawing in front of others. Personally, my family plays Pictionary very regularly because I want my children to be comfortable with this process.

My favorite part was the Appendix: The Science of Visual Thinking. I found it very interesting as it presents scientific research as it relates to this simple process.

If you want a great new way to solve problems and a great way to communicate ideas, I think you'll find this book very useful.

Excellent!

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An excellent investment in yourself!

So much of our problem solving effort (personal and professional) is spent finding perfectly reasonable answers...to the wrong questions. After nearly 20 years in both corporate management and strategy consulting, I firmly believe the most powerful tool in any room isn't the computer, the projector or the telephone; it's the white board! A small amount of time visualizing a problem (on a whiteboard or on the back of a napkin) always pays dividends in making sure you're asking the right questions before diving into the solution.

Whether you adopt the author's exact methods or not, this book gives you CONFIDENCE to more consistently use a powerful tool that your brain already understands. Equally important, it invites USEFUL collaboration (even among the most jaded collaborators) since everybody else in the room intuitively knows how to do this too.

Regardless of the types of problems you have to tackle, getting better at simple visualization is a great investment in your own skills.

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Don't be fooled -- this is a serious book!

Don't be fooled by the cartoon-like cover, Mr. Roam presents a well thought out system for "visual thinking" that doesn't exist elsewhere, or is at least hard to find.

This is one of those books that should be a standard part of every business travel's carry-on luggage because like any new language it takes work to master, but I believe that it will not only lead to more effective communications, it will also lead to clearer thinking by anyone dealing with complex problems involving managing and coordinating people to accomplish important goals.

Be a hero - buy several, keep one for yourself and give the others to friends and colleagues. They'll not only thank you, but you'll be able to improve your own visual thinking and communications skills because you'll be developing your new skills with colleagues on real problems. That's what my firm is doing - we're expecting over 100 copies to present to clients and business partners!

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Very Worthwhile

Roam does a solid job of walking you through the visual learning using "the back of the napkin" as a useful metaphor. Many of us have used "the back of a napkin" to make a point. Roam examines the efficiency of communication using diagrams, drawings, illustrations and other visual aids. Worth reading and even more - worth practicing!

Simplicity.

Simplicity. This is Dan Roam's message in The Back Of The Napkin. Just as René Descartes summarized the entire philosophy of existence in five words (just three in the Latin translation) and Stephen Hawking summarized the history of time in a book with a single mathematical formula, Roam gives business communicators a lesson in simplicity.
We all dread business meetings with their mountains of documents that few people ever read, and the endless bulleted power points that serve only to dull the mind into nervous slumber. Roam cuts through all that to demonstrate how the use of simple, but well chosen, drawings, executed while the audience watches, can communicate infinitely better that the complex presentations that incite loathing and yield only distraction.
Is a picture truly worth a thousand words? Having told us how to communicate with pictures, Roam rounds out his message by explaining that "We don't show an insight-inspiring picture because it saves a thousand words; we show it because it elicits the thousand words that make the greatest difference." And that is communication that works.

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