The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures

Chapter headings are chatty and sometimes intriguing, and the no-nonsense, straight-talking style also comes out in the text, which avoids jargon and uses down-to-earth expressions.

Despite this clear structure, the author doesn't suggest that we read the book in sequence. On the contrary, in fact. Readers are given a little self-assessment test on pages twenty-eight to thirty of the book, to help work out their own visual-thinking inclinations, or preferences.

They're then directed to different parts of the book, depending on their test results. Most people are told to start at Part Four, which we'll hear about later.

So who should read this book? Well, the author says early on that he designed the book to be read in a five-hour flight or journey to a business meeting, so that readers can start applying the tips straightaway. This means it would appeal to anyone who's about to do a presentation and wants to boost its impact, and to people who simply want to improve their problem-solving skills.

But – for all its smiley stick people – this book will probably appeal most to readers who have a scientific or mathematical mind, and have a natural talent for using symbols.

Now, the author himself says, again and again, that people who think they are "not visual" should not be put off by this book. And here at Mind Tools, we agree that having skills in visual thinking has nothing to do with whether or not you can draw a picture. However, we wonder if a print book with static illustrations is the best way to develop non-verbal thinking skills.

To find out, hold on to your pens and napkins because there is much to learn!

So stay tuned if you want to know why the hand is mightier than the mouse; how playing a simple game of poker will show that you already know how to think visually; and why the author thinks we need to draw time.

The first chapter, called "A Whole New Way of Looking at Business," invites us to open our minds to visual thinking, because it makes problem-solving in our companies both more efficient and more fun.

The first anecdote to support this attitude comes from when the author had to make a business presentation in the north of England – without having been given a brief or any presentation materials. On the way to the event, he was able to come up with a spur-of-the-moment, but very successful, approach, by sketching on a napkin in the restaurant car of the train.

The diagram he created that day related to website design. He started with the word "Brand" in a circle. He then added two other circles, containing the words "Content" and "Function." From there, he added more illustrations to help define those three words. These quick sketches are shown in the book. They grab our attention, and make the meaning memorable. They also make the page much more pleasant to look at.

The chapter ends with the author's assertion that whenever he could use a picture in his job, he would do just that. This section of the book gets the reader ready to try that approach.

The second chapter, called Which Problems, Which Pictures, and Who is "We?" confronts an issue many of us will recognize – that we're often faced with situations when the problems are hard to see. When that happens, solutions are "nearly invisible." So the author's important first step is to make questions and challenges visible and understandable, as a way of learning to see what the next steps, or solutions, should be.

This involves using a formula that he calls the "Six Problem Clumps," or the six Ws. First are the Who and What problems, which are challenges related to things or people. This is illustrated with a round face and question mark for "Who" and a square and a question mark for "What."

Next are the "How Much?" problems, all about measuring and counting. These are illustrated by a tiny bar chart and some question marks. Then come "When?" problems, which are about scheduling and timing, and are illustrated by an arrow - question mark - arrow sequence.

"Where" problems are about direction – in the sense of "where are we going?" – and how things fit together. Three circles of different sizes, which could represent lost people milling around, serve as the illustration here.

And lastly, "Why?" problems are about seeing the big picture, illustrated by five arrows pointing inward to a question mark.

For the reader, these pictures are likely to make reasonable sense, but are hardly going to be life-changing at this stage. Eventually, we will be learning a new visual language, but don't be disappointed if you feel anxious to start with.

We're soon back on familiar territory, with the story of Daphne, a Vice President of Communications at a large publishing company. Daphne's task was to raise investor awareness about the company within two years. But, to do this, she had to grapple with a paralyzing information overload, with tables of data, analysis and results.

Our author's company managed to condense one hundred pages of data into a single chart – which is shown in the book, and which helped Daphne take her company in the direction it needed to go. The book promises we can all achieve this level of clarity and simplicity with its novel approach. But buckle your seatbelts, because it isn't an easy ride!

Next, the author helps us to build our confidence and shed some stale ideas and fussy habits. The sub-section "The Hand is Mightier than the Mouse" helps us to let go of any attachment we may have to software presentation tools, and get to grips with the power of drawing pictures by hand.

People like seeing other people's pictures; hand-drawn illustrations look spontaneous and are not threatening. They're also malleable, can be crossed out, and visual trial-and-error is important to keep thinking fluid.

Next comes the self-assessment you heard about earlier, that helps you identify your attitude toward visual working. Your answers will suggest that you're one of three types, which the author calls Black Pen, Yellow Pen, and Red Pen. "Black Pen" people are comfortable with visual metaphors and can't wait to get started with a book like this.

Yellow Pen people – and that's most of us – are nervous about drawing, but are good at spotting the most important things that someone else has drawn. The Red Pen people are uneasy about using pictures in business, but often have mathematical talents. This mean that, if they can get over their natural skepticism, they're often best able to sketch a clear and definitive picture and solution.

Following on from this test, there's reassurance that we already know how to solve problems with visual thinking, as we do it every day. And we get a summary of the processes, tools, and ways of seeing we're going to learn, as the book unfolds.

The next chapter begins with an excellent analogy of a poker game called "Texas hold 'em". The main lesson here is that we often have to make decisions with less than perfect information, just like in poker. So what can poker players teach us? Well, when playing poker, you first Look at the cards, then See the patterns already in your hand, then Imagine what you want to collect, and lastly Show your winning hand.

Look, See, Imagine, and Show is the basic process of visual thinking, the author tells us, and he follows this up with other examples, in the form of illustrations. We see a stick man crossing the road, and a head looking at and interpreting a business chart.

These pictures work very well, as do the descriptions of what the differences are between Looking and Seeing, and the definition of "Imagining" as "Seeing what isn't there."

Part Two, on Discovering Ideas, starts with a chapter called "No Thanks, Just Looking." The first stage of looking, we're told, is all about gaining co-ordinates and orientation. The author gives the example of what our eyes and minds do when we go into a bowling alley looking for some friends.

He then walks us through the basic steps for coming up with the right picture for our business needs. We're also shown how the time dimension – or before, now and after – can be communicated effectively in diagrams. He calls this "Seeing the WHEN."

All the way through the book, rules, suggestions, and concepts are explored with little diagrams and drawings. The most eye-catching series of pictures comes in a section called "The Many Ways to Slice an Apple" – these simple yet surprising illustrations coax the reader into lateral thinking.

The final conceptual axis we need to know is the S. Q. V. I. D. – an acronym for Simple, Quality (as opposed to Quantity), Vision, Individual, and lastly Change. This is the part that takes longest to get to grips with, not least because "Change" doesn't begin with D, making the acronym confusing.

Part Three is nicknamed "The Visual Thinking MBA" by the author, and it takes us through all the types of graphs, pictures, and concepts we need to develop complex business ideas. It's full of encouragement and nugget phrases – such as "Everything has a geography" and "North is a state of mind". It leads the reader to probe real spheres of interest – for example, when trying to draw a map of a company hierarchy.

Part Four is called "Selling Ideas," and does a very good job of selling the book's point of view and techniques to the reader. In it, the author describes how he coached a team to use pictures for a major sales pitch – supplanting the usual bullet points in their presentation with drawings, and opening up many horizons.

This makes sense for verbal "Yellow Pen" people, because it shows that illustrations alone are not enough. We have to talk about what we see, and need to be able to explain the pictures we use in words.

We're reminded of the old saying that "A picture is worth a thousand words," and are asked if good pictures should always be able to stand on their own. The author's answer is no. Not all pictures have to be self-explanatory. Most business pictures are like pizza, he says – simple and easy to digest. They give what he calls "informational satisfaction," and don't need us to do much explaining.

But there are occasions when we need to pull out the equivalent of a four-course banquet to inspire insight – in other words, we sometimes need complex pictures with maps and timelines and value chains. A complex picture like this is not about saving a thousand words, but about generating a thousand words – as ideas in our audience.

The author's tips remain matter-of-fact as the illustrations and concepts get tougher. You may begin to wonder how you're going to bear reading a book without cheerful diagrams again. The Back of the Napkin approach could well be recommended to other authors of management books.

The book concludes with a visual representation of a Swiss Army knife, a handy way of condensing what we have learned – into a picture, of course!

If you have a well-defined challenge and have already thought about solutions and how to present them to clients, this book could be immediately useful. This is because you've already defined your task, so you just have to visualize the parameters and draw in the "co-ordinates," as the book would say.

There's a helpful website – www.thebackofthenapkin.com – which supports this book, integrating audio commentary with videos of drawings being created, especially for all the Yellow Pen readers out there.

Finally, a word of caution... don't be misled by the drawings. This is a serious book, and while it's useful, it's not frivolous. This is not a book about drawing, it's a book about thinking – learning new ways of seeing and imagining so we can generate a new approach to ideas and also "show," or communicate, those ideas and thought processes effectively.

"The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam is published in hardback by Portfolio Hardcover.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights.