The Conversation Factory Draw to Win with Dan Roam
“Stop thinking about drawing as an artistic process. Drawing is a thinking process. If you want to think more clearly about an idea, draw it.”
This is the simple essence of Dan Roam’s message. Dan has written five best-selling books about visual thinking and storytelling. Back of the Napkin was one of my seminal texts, Show and Tell is a blockbuster if you want to learn how to tell better stories...and who doesn’t? And you have to love the title of Dan’s book “Draw to Win”...maybe the most direct distillation of Dan’s perspective. Drawing is thinking...and thinking helps you do better work.
Who should be drawing when many brains are involved in a complex project?
What Dan helped me wrestle with in this conversation is how drawing helps groups think, together and how he, as a model-making expert, can help push the thinking of a group.
We talk through the yin-and-yang of a top-down approach of model making (with someone like Dan pushing the edge of excellence *for* a group he’s working with, vs a group hammering out a new model, bottom-up, doing visual synthesis together.
Both are powerful ways to lead a conversation.
Making a framework for a group can shape their conversation profoundly - the right visual tool can frame a conversation and ease the progress of a team’s thinking: Drawing a classic 2 X 2 creates a frame, a container for a conversation. I’ve always found that, even if someone finds a case that falls outside of the framework offered, they speak about their ideas in relation to the framework - the conversation has been anchored - which is one way to think about what I am calling Conversational Leadership.
There is power and danger in shaping conversations. Leading the conversation can mean that we’ve prevented something else from emerging - something organic, co-created and co-owned by the whole group. This is the IKEA effect...even if something that Dan makes might be technically better than what a group can make on it’s own, they may value what they’ve put their hands on more.
As with all polarities, the middle path, approaching both ends flexibly, is the most powerful. I know from experience how transformative it can be when your client picks up the pen and adds their ideas alongside yours. Who picks up the pen first can shift the direction of the conversation profoundly. Stepping back and offering the pen to the group is a choice we can all take to shift a conversation.
Drawing is how to win in the broadest sense. If you’re the only person drawing in the conversation, you will anchor the conversation and lead the conversation. If you get everyone to draw, the conversation will be a win-win and led by anyone willing to take up the pen.
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Links, Notes and ResourcesDan on the Web (learn about his award-winning books and his work and more…)
Dan’s Online Learning space: Napkin Academy
Dan’s favorite, most fundamental drawing:
Some of my favorite visuals from Dan that you can find on the web...
The Power of Visual Sensemaking as an organic process:
How to think systematically about being visual:
The simple shapes of Stories:
Other books to learn more about visual thinking:
One of my favorite quotes from this interview:
Data doesn’t tell a story
As I always like to say, data doesn't tell a story, people do. And Dan breaks down how to do that, in detail. As he says:
"A good report brings data to life. When we do a report right, we deliver more than just facts, we deliver them in a way that gives insight. It makes data memorable and makes our audience care."