Blah Blah Blah: A book review by Bob Morris

Blah Blah Blah: What to Do When Words Won’t Work
Dan Roam
Portfolio/The Penguin Group (2011)

Visual and verbal literacy “on the other side of complexity”

Those who have already read one or both of Dan Roam’s previous books, The Back of the Napkin and Unfolding the Napkin, will be pleased to know that in his latest book, he develops some of his most valuable insights in much greater depth but also expands the scope of his analysis to include new issues and new challenges as well as new opportunities to communicate more effectively. Of even greater significance, at least to me, he explains with exceptional precision and clarity the interdependence of verbal and visual literacy.

In the first “Napkin” book, Roam suggests to his reader that one of the best ways to answer a question, solve a problem, persuade others, or to achieve another goal is to express its essence. What the French characterize as a precís. For example, formulate it as a simple drawing. You may claim that you have no skills for drawing. That’s good news. Why? Roam asserts that less-sophisticated drawings have greater impact because those who see them can more easily identify with stick figures, for example, and focus more readily on the relationships suggested, such as between and among options to be considered, implications and consequences, and cause-and-effect relationships. Simple drawings accelerate both inductive and deductive reasoning.

Then in the second “Napkin” book, he reiterates three key points:

1. There is no more powerful way to discover a new idea than to draw a simple picture.
2. There is no faster way to develop and test an idea than to draw a simple picture.
3. There is no more effective way to share an idea with other people than to draw a simple picture.

In both “Napkin” books, Roam explains how to achieve these objectives by (you guessed it) drawing a series of simple pictures. “To complete the workshop, you’ll need three things…This book is your primary tool; please expect to draw in it and generally muck it up – that’s what it’s for. [Also,] please bring your own magic wand with you to class. My own favorites are a plain no. 2 pencil, a Sharpie, or a Pilot pen.” Although Roam encourages his reader to use the book as a workbook and add annotations throughout, he also suggests using something to draw on, everything from several pages of blank scratch paper provided at the back of the book to a small personal whiteboard (i.e. small “lap board”). My own preference is the “Original Marble Cover 50-Sheets” composition book that costs less than $2 each.

Whereas The Back of the Napkin introduces the core concepts of the visual problem-solving process, Unfolding the Napkin develops and extends the same concepts to wider, deeper, and more valuable applications. Yes, Roam really does take a “hands-on” approach…and the hands belong to his reader.

What we have in Blah Blah Blah is a shift in focus from using simple drawings to express complicated concepts to a rigorous explanation of how to avoid or eliminate boredom in communication. More specifically, how to think more effectively about complexities, how to increase one’s understanding of them, how to increase others’ understanding of them when we explain them, and how to make learning about them more engaging. To a much greater extent than in the previous two books, Roam includes a full complement of tools and techniques by which the reader can (a) select information, insights, and suggestions that are most relevant to her or his specific needs and interests, then (b) apply them most effectively where they will have the greatest impact.

They include:

o A map of the Land of Blah-Blah-Blah
o The Blah-Blahmeter
o The Three Rules of Vivid Thinking
o The Six Elemental Pictures of Vivid Grammar (and Their Relationship to Verbal Grammar)
o The Seven Essentials of a Vivid Idea

These and tools and techniques can help anyone to think clearly and explain convincingly in ways and to an extent most of us do not realize.

With regard to the subtitle of this book and its reference to words that “don’t work,” it important to keep in mind that in order to understand visual literacy and verbal literacy, it is necessary to understand the vocabulary of each as well as the “grammar” of both whenever they interact. Drawings on cave walls thousands of years ago did not have captions but were presumably recognizable to those who saw them as were tone of voice and gestures (i.e. body language). We need to recapture once again, Roam suggests, the ability to grasp the essence of a thought, to overcome the complexity of “clutter,” then select words and images that express an idea so clearly and so compellingly that when sharing it with others, they care as much about it as we do.

Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Germany…California! – Michael Lewis weaves a story in Boomerang

I presented my synopsis of Boomerang:  Travels in the New Third World, for a group of investors last night.  Michael Lewis is a great! story teller.  Here are some of his highlights, some of the most enlightening parts, of the story he weaves:

Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. All these different societies were touched by the same event, but each responded to it in its own peculiar way. No response was as peculiar as the Greeks’, however…

Here’s a look at the deep hole in Greece:

The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses.  (and) …more than six hundred Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on.

And here’s the deep corruption in Greece.  He described, with great detail, that the corruption in Greece ran deeply through every sector of the society, from the priests and the monks, to the public officials, to the doctors…to everyone.

It’s simply assumed, for instance, that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed. People who go to public health clinics assume they will need to bribe doctors to actually take care of them. Government ministers who have spent their lives in public service emerge from office able to afford multi-million-dollar mansions and two or three country homes.

And in California:

“What all the polls show is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” 

So – what is the solution?  Here’s a hint, from Iceland – put more women in charge of the money, and keep men away from the purse strings…

What they found, in a nutshell, is that men not only trade more often than women but do so from a false faith in their own financial judgment. Single men traded less sensibly than married men, and married men traded less sensibly than single women: the less the female presence, the less rational the approach to trading in the markets.  One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risk-taking jobs. Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

Boomerang – it’s really worth the time to read this book.  Take a look.

 

The Innovator’s Manifesto: A book review by Bob Morris

The Innovator’s Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth
Michael Raynor
Crown Business (2011)

How and why disruption “provides an explanation of creative creation

Frankly, I was unable to fully understand (much less appreciate) the significance of what Joseph A. Schumpeter shares in his masterwork, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, when I first read it in 1975. Only much later, after several re-readings, have I begun to “get it” in terms of what “creative destruction” is and isn’t. I mention all this by way of introducing my gratitude to Michael E. Raynor for what I have learned from him in The Innovator’s Manifesto as well as from books written or co-authored by Clayton Christensen, who wrote the Foreword to this book. For me, one of the most valuable “lessons” is that “creative destruction” is the means and “creative creation” is the ultimate objective. Whereas Charles Darwin explains evolution as a process of natural adaptation and elimination, what Raynor examines in this book are deliberate efforts to survive and then thrive. He asserts, and I agree, that “deliberate disruption” is the key to “transformational growth” by both individuals and organizations.

As he explains, “The first objective of this book is to demonstrate that Disruption has true predictive power…Second, I will make the case for Disruption’s unique and superior explanatory power…Finally, I will offer some thoughts on how one can go about applying these concepts to greatest effect at the least expense.” Raynor carefully organizes and then presents his material as follows:

In Part I: Prediction (Chapters 1-2), Raynor describes the design and results of carefully controlled experiments testing “the predictive power of Disruption’s central claims” while explaining why, for a theory that seeks our allegiance, “there must be evidence that it improves our ability to predict future outcomes.”

In Part II: Explanation (In Chapters 3-5), he makes the case for “generalizing beyond the experimental sample and suggests that Disruption can be used to do more than merely `pick a winner,’” although that is obviously a substantial benefit.

And in Part III: Application (Chapters 6-8), he discusses how and why non-Disruptive innovations can succeed and some revolutionize an industry; then in the final chapter, takes a process perspective on the application of Disruption. By now, Raynor has made a compelling case for the unique power of deliberate Disruption, explaining how it fully utilizes creative destruction to achieve creative creation, “the how, if, when, and how long of the kinds of innovations that have repeatedly remade the economic landscape in the service of the general weal.”