Business Life & Skills, Business - General & Miscellaneous

Blah Blah Blah: What to Do When Words Don't Work

Name: Blah Blah Blah: What to Do When Words Don't Work
Author: Dan Roam
ISBN: 9781591844594

by Dan Roam

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Overview

Ever been to so many meetings that you couldn't get your work done? Ever fallen asleep during a bulletpoint presentation? Ever watched the news and ended up knowing less? Welcome to the land of Blah Blah Blah.

The Problem: We talk so much that we don't think very well. Powerful as words are, we fool ourselves when we think our words alone can detect, describe, and defuse the multifaceted problems of today. They can't-and that's bad, because words have become our default thinking tool.

The Solution: This book offers a way out of blah-blah-blah. It's called "Vivid Thinking."

In Dan Roam's first acclaimed book, The Back of the Napkin, he taught readers how to solve problems and sell ideas by drawing simple pictures. Now he proves that Vivid Thinking is even more powerful. This technique combines our verbal and visual minds so that we can think and learn more quickly, teach and inspire our colleagues, and enjoy and share ideas in a whole new way.

The Destination: No more blah-blah-blah. Through Vivid Thinking, we can make the most complicated subjects suddenly crystal clear. Whether trying to understand a Harvard Business School class, or what went down in the Conan versus Leno battle for late-night TV, or what Einstein thought about relativity, Vivid Thinking provides a way to clarify anything.

Through dozens of guided examples, Roam proves that anyone can apply this systematic approach, from leftbrain types who hate to draw to right-brainers who hate to write. This isn't just a book about improving communications, presentations, and ideation; it's about removing the blah-blah- blah from your life for good.

About the Author, Dan Roam

Dan Roam is the author of The Back of the Napkin, which was Fast Company's Best Business Book of the Year and BusinessWeek's Innovation and Design Book of the Year. His consulting clients have included Microsoft, Google, Wal-Mart, Boeing, Lucasfilm, The Gap, the U.S. Navy, and the White House Office of Communications. His health-care analysis was named BusinessWeek's Best Presentation of 2009. He lives in San Francisco.

Visit www.danroam.com

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

If you have ever felt your eyes glazing over during an "important" meeting or perfected your doodling style during a PowerPoint presentation, this is the book for you. With its call to Vivid Thinking, Dan Roam's Blah Blah Blah follows up on the success of his The Back of the Napkin. In that entertaining primer, he showed readers how we can solve problems by drawing pictures. In this book, he demonstrates that simplifying problems or selling solutions can be achieved through simple word and/or picture devices. One of those rare business books that cuts through the muck.

Publishers Weekly

We all hate corporate-speak and impenetrable, needlessly complex language—but Roam’s (Back of the Napkin) ire is at an altogether different level. He rails against the iniquities of “blah-blah-blah”—the hopped-up pompous language that leads to complexity (which kills our ability to think), misunderstanding (which kills our ability to lead), and boredom (which kills our ability to care). The solution, he proposes, is learning with images rather than words, which we do as children—and are then dissuaded from ever doing again, with the exception of standouts such as the Periodic Table of the Elements, the world’s greatest organization chart. Through a series of charming line drawings starring a fox representing the linear, verbal mind and a hummingbird representing the synthesizing, visual mind, Roam presents his theories on how to present ideas and arguments such that they can be readily understood—which unfortunately, boils down to the rule to “use images instead of words” and not much else. It’s tough to miss the irony of a book decrying the unnecessary complication of language spinning out a single idea through dozens of unnecessary illustrative examples. (Nov.)