HTA-0623: Dan Roam — Visual Thinking and Communication

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Summary

Henry interviews Dan Roam about the power of visual thinking and why words don't always work for communication.

Full Transcript

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Words don't always work. In fact, oftentimes words don't work at all. There

00:05
are many ideas that need something else. Well, we have something else here with us.

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Dan Rome is the author of "Blah, blah, blah, what to do when words don't work" his

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previous book, which is called "Back of the Napkin," sold hundreds of thousands

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of copies all over the world. So, Dan, thank you very much for joining us. Just

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for starters, what does "blah, blah, blah" mean? Well, "blah, blah, blah" is

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miscommunication it's how we misuse and abuse this wonderful technology of

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language and we're getting behind the ball you know Henry I really think there

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are two things out there the first one is we're starting to talk so much that

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we're kind of forgetting how to really think but the good news the second part

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the second part the good news is I really do believe that we can clarify

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our problems and solve our problems with pictures and if you put the two together

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you get something I call vivid thinking which I'd love to tell you about okay

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just for starters you've got a great example of how vivid thinking created a

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whole airline oh absolutely this this is from actually from back then okay so it

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is true story so two guys are sitting in a bar one night in San Antonio Texas I

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know this where else would they be 1967 Herb and Rollin and they're thinking

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you know we don't know what they were drinking but we know what they were

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drawing because on their napkin Herb says look Texas a big state we've got

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Dallas up here Houston down here San Antonio and he said what would happen

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Herb, what would happen if we made an airline that connected those three cities?

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And which airline was that? Southwest Airlines started on the back of the

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napkin, most profitable airline in history. Entirely of course because it

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was drawn in such a simple picture. Right. Now let's go to blah blah blah. Okay. The

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three components of blah blah blah are? Well okay I came up with a tool called

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the Blablometer which measures all the blah blah blah coming in and identified

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three different kinds. You're right. You're forbidden to do that to any of my

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segments. I won't run them through the blah blah meter. The first one is when

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we're just boring. You know we don't mean anything bad we just use too many words.

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The second one is when we start to obfuscate. We start to fog things up

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because we really don't know what we're talking about. And the third one where

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things get really bad, blah cubed, blah blah blah, is when we're actually

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misleading someone with our words. So in other words you're describing a

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politician? I'm describing people in Washington more often than not. So show

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us the vivid way to communicate. Okay so here's what I recommend we do because

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we've already talked about the fact that words aren't helping so what we want to

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do is talk a little bit less and draw a little bit more because what vivid stands

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for it's a nice little mnemonic it stands for visual verbal interdependent

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thinking what does that mean we talk and we draw at the same time and we can

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make any idea I can't draw doesn't matter terrible at drawing can you draw a

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little circle perhaps yeah could you draw maybe a square I think I can manage

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can draw everything you need to that's all we're talking about we're not talking

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Henry about drawings like Leonardo would have made we're talking about drawings

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that show what is in our mind simple little shapes we can do it okay we're

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about to show you a well it's not a drawing but it is a graphic this is a

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visual aid here it's about where you can meet Dan he's got so much to tell you

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January 31st 6 p.m. at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco danrome.com the

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latest book is called blah blah blah the predecessor of it is is called back of

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the napkin and really these are eye-opening in a literal sense of the

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thank you very much