visual thinking - Small Business Marketing Consultant

The Back of The Napkin is Dan Roam’s follow up to his popular The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.

The main idea behind Dan’s books is that we can solve business problems by applying the principles of visual thinking and drawing simple pictures.

Rather than being just a sequel, this book is a “self contained four day workshop” where you work hands-on to learn Dan's method of visual thinking and problem solving. Each day covers one of the steps of Dan's visual thinking process. The days are organized as follows:

On Day 1, you learn how to Look, or visually collect information.
Day 2 covers Seeing or recognizing patterns.
On Day 3, you use Imagining to discover new outcomes and on
Once you have new ideas, you want to share them with others. Day 4 covers creating pictures to share you ideas with others.

I find Dan’s 6 x 6 rule very effective in analyzing problems. According to this rule, there are only 6 different kinds of problems, and each type of problem share the same 6 elements.

The last section of the book is a wonderful case study demonstrating how to take a particular solution and use the problem solving framework to present the solution to all of the stakeholders involved in a way that delivers information in a way that is important to them.

I just finished a book that I wish I had read 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.

Archive for visual thinking

Unfolding The Napkin – Book Review

The Back Of The Napkin – Solving Problems & Selling Ideas with Pictures

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