This afternoon I finished reading Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin, subtitled "Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures." A couple of weeks ago I saw it in the local Barnes & Noble and picked it up to read while I enjoyed a cup of coffee in the cafe. After reading the first few pages, I knew it had to come home with me.
I spent most of my checkered professional life in "corporate America," so I understood the business applications immediately. But what sold me on the book was a corporate management tool--the "elevator speech"--that Dan wrote in the first chapter:
Visual thinking means taking advantage of our innate ability to see--both with our eyes and with our mind's eye--in order to discover ideas that are otherwise invisible, develop those ideas quickly and intuitively, and then share those ideas with other people in a way that they simply "get." (p. 4)While Dan's book can be looked at as primarily a business tool, it's really more about visual thinking and problem solving. Those are skills you can use in many different places. Before I finished the book I found myself sketching something out for a meeting at church. The drawing spoke volumes about one of Lois' recent sermons, so we posted it on the sermon page of our parish website.
Here's a podcast of a VizThink conversation with Dan that covers many of the book's basics. And take a look at Dan's blog.
Actually, PowerPoint can be a valuable tool, but after reading The Back of the Napkin, I'll never use it the same way again.
But, being the left-brain type that I am, it will take some practice. But then, I've been using stick figures for years to draw metaphors for Theological Reflections in Education for Ministry!
Peace,
Jeffri
If you have trouble figuring out why I tagged this post with "Storytelling," you're more left-braned than I am!
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