Dan Roam is someone who makes his living by drawing pictures. No, he is not a painter or an artist. But what he does is draw simple pictures for the corporate world, and help them see their problems, and situations in perspective using visual thinking. He narrates an interesting story of how he himself got inducted into the visual thinking technique when forced to go and talk to a client about something that he had no clue about. My overall impression, the book The Back of the Napkin does not talk about anything in specific.
He talks about 5 W and 1 H techniques to draw pictures. Which is a technique that has been beaten to death by all kinds of creative people and obviously is not original. All he is saying is when you try to solve a problem and ask the questions why, what, where, who, when, and how, instead of putting your answers in words, put them down in pictures. And that may bring you more clarity in thinking. Or may help you communicate better. Especially when you have a language barrier.
The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
He introduces one more small technique called SQVID, which is again not really new but is well packaged. In the end, he takes a case study of a software company that is losing sales to the competition. Hence needs to re-work its product design. Again, there is nothing new that I could gather from the case. Now the message that he does manage to send across is that ‘Everyone can draw’. Lots of people tend to think that they can not draw, which is not really true. He gives examples of people who thought so, only to discover otherwise.
The Back of the Napkin is a small fast-read book, with lots and lots of visuals, so you can just swipe past the book. If you enjoy reading all the new fad books that come every year, especially from America, you may like it. But otherwise, you can easily give it a skip.
Buy this book – The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam at Amazon India.
Read more:
- Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath
- The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling by Stephen Denning
- Confucius on Leadership by John Adair
- Mid-Career Crisis by Partha Sarathi Basu
Hi Anuradha, today i am first time on your blog and liked is very much, u hav a nice way of writing, will try u read all u r post next time. keep writing 🙂 Rohit Tripathi
Nice stuff!
Just want to point out that “loosing” should be spelt “losing” – coming from the word lose and not loose. Hope you take that in the right spirit.
Cheers!
Thanks Mooshik for the correction…:-
hi anuradha about u r advice to anita to create a fictious boyfriend. that doesnt help. even a husband doesnt help. if u love someone tell them doesnt matter whether they are married or have a boy friend. cheers