BNET videos the napkin
Thanks to the amazing editors, producers, and animators at BNET, here's a video showing many ideas from my book.
(Can't see the video? Click here.)
April 21, 2008
April 19, 2008
Boeing vs Bloomberg: Visuals are the key to situational awareness
I recently had the career highlight of giving a talk about my book to the Boeing Managers' Association up in Tukwila, WA. As a lifelong airplane fanatic and nearly lifelong pilot, having the undivided attention of one hundred people who build the big airplanes is as good as it gets.
I don't normally show family photos in a business presentation, but this time I had no choice: what better way to illustrate how I got my start in visual thinking and 3D "situational awareness"?
Having thus established my bona fides, I shared an example of how good visual information displays help people make good decisions -- especially when too much information is coming in. (This was an example I'd been waiting for years to share, and with Boeing I knew I had the right audience.)
The example is this. Seventy years ago, it took a crew of five looking at 200 instruments to guide an aircraft across an ocean.
Today, it takes a crew of one looking at two screens to do the same thing. (Not that anyone flies with a crew of one, but they could.)
The most interesting thing here is that the crew today requires exactly the same information as sixty years ago: speed, altitude, orientation, direction, distance, and fuel remaining. What's changed is our technological ability to collect, synthesize, and display that data.
Why not apply the same concepts to other tasks that require the quick analysis and synthesis of vast amounts of data? Financial analysis comes to my mind. With all the computing horsepower we have available today, why do most spreadsheets look exactly the way they did 200 years ago?
Why do we have to pay thousands of dollars a month for a Bloomberg terminal? And where's the financial services equivalent of the pilot's PFD (Primary Flight Display)?
I'm convinced anyone trying to come up with a better spreadsheet should take flying lessons. Nothing forces you to think about better data displays than trying to land in the rain.
Who knows: if the gang at Bear Stearns (not to mention everyone who touched our latest 'special financial instruments') had a better display of where they were going, we could have avoided this latest crash.
After all, there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US in three years. Wouldn't it be nice to say the same thing about the mortgage industry?
Southwest Airlines keeps up the napkin spirit
The founding of Southwest Airlines on the back of a cocktail napkin is my favorite "solving a problem with a picture" story. It goes like this:
Way back in 1967, Texas businessman Rollin King's WILD GOOSE AIRLINES (a small charter flying operation that shuttled sportsmen around the Lone Star state) failed financially, so he hired ex-NY lawyer Herb Kelleher to close the books. Afterward they retired to San Antonio's swankiest bar, The St. Anthony's Club, for a commemorative drink.
What they drank remains a mystery, but what is known is that at some point King picked up a napkin and said, "Herb, I have an idea for another airline; one that connects just the main metro areas of Texas..." He drew three dots on that napkin to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, then connected them with three lines to form a simple triangle.
Presto: Southwest Airlines was born. From that humble napkin emerged the most profitable airline in history.
(It's evident why the Southwest model was so innovative when you compare it to the route maps of the existing airlines of the day: the traditional hub-and-spoke models meant that a simple connection between these three Texas cities wasn't possible.)
Nice story. But what's even better is that I flew Southwest recently for the first time and guess what I saw on the cocktail napkins the flight attendants handed out?
That's right: the new Southwest route map. Southwest is the only airline that prints their map on their napkins. I've got to believe that's an homage to their heritage.
March 31, 2008
No wonder I feel so bad
Sadly, a good friend of mine suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. Luckily, it hasn't hampered his sense of humor. At his last visit to the clinic, he told me how excited he'd been when the doctor pulled out a chart that "would make it all clear".
No wonder our health care system is the envy of the world.
Miami Herald follow-up: "Potent and Effective" :-)
Richard Pachter of the Miami Herald offered his readers an early chance to read and review The Back of the Napkin. 
Back in mid February, he put my book on his reader's list, and his review just went live. I'm happy to say that Richard "got it":
That's where Dan Roam comes in.
His book does three big things really well. First, it presents a persuasive argument for employing simple iconography as a means of communicating and persuading. Next, he provides some important and powerful examples. Finally, he tells and shows how to do it.
March 18, 2008
One hour soapbox
Tom Crawford is a classy guy. Not only is he the CEO of VizThink, he also asked me to do a podcast with him about my book. But on top of all that, he then gave me *all the time I needed* to go into real detail on many of the big ideas in my book.
Thanks to Tom (and VizThink CTO Chris) you can now watch an animated version of an hour's worth of live "solving problems with pictures" as a podcast on the VizThink Blog.
Thanks Tom!
March 17, 2008
Post2Post Virtual Book Tour
Paul Williams is an interesting guy. After leading marketing efforts at Starbucks and Disney, he headed to Amsterdam to found his own innovation lab, and Idea Sandbox was born. Among other ideas, every month Paul sponsors a virtual book tour where bloggers and authors meet.
This month, I'm honored that Paul selected The Back of the Napkin as the book in the spotlight.
Jeff De Cagna kicks off the tour on his Principled Innovation blog with a podcast we recorded yesterday.
Talking with Jeff was great. Among other things, he let me really go into detail on several of the aspects of visual thinking that I find most compelling. I appreciate all the time Jeff spent, and I hope you find the interview interesting.
March 15, 2008
When Tom Peters calls...
I'm honored to be featured this week as Tom Peters' newest "cool friend". Several days ago, I had a wonderful interview with Erik Hansen of the Tom Peters company. It was supposed to last 30 minutes but instead we ended up talking for an hour and a half.
(On that note, thanks especially to Shelley Dolley and Cathy Mosca for an amazing editing job!)
It was such a pleasure to be included in Tom's list of "good idea people". Tom's book "Re-Imagine" was a huge inspiration for me a couple years ago when I embarked on the task of writing my own book. To now appear on Tom's site brings things nicely full circle.
February 25, 2008
Doodling for Dollars
Businessweek.com this week features "The Back of the Napkin" as the basis for their slide show on the rise of quick sketching as a business tool.
Online editor Douglas MacMillan interviewed me in NY last week where we had a great time swapping napkin stories. I may be biased, but I think his article makes a great case for why my own clients (Wal-Mart, Infosys Consulting, Microsoft) and others (UPS) are turning to simple drawings as effective problem-solving tools.
February 19, 2008
YES! CBS goes whiteboard!
It's about time that network TV got what everybody else has known since Kindergarten: simple pictures make complex concepts easy to understand. Thank you Katie Couric and CBS news for bringing the whiteboard into the news room, and bringing Josh Landis and Mitch Butler along with it.
In CBS News new "Fast Draw" segment (which appears to be in test flight mode for now) Landis and Butler (who met at ABC news) share the whiteboard as they explain concepts everybody "knows" about, but that nobody REALLY gets. Like superdelegates, for example.
In their first 3-minute clip with Katie, they seemed to impress even her with their quick visual explanation about how sometimes a democracy isn't very democratic. Like Katie said, "That was fun".
Good for you, CBS!
(Enjoy the praise, because next time I'm going to critique what's *not* perfect about the session.)
