Drawing Out Ideas -- Even If You Can’t Really Draw

The Conference Board Review^® Article

By Paul B. Brown

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures

By Dan Roam

Portfolio, $24.95

Paul B. Brown, who writes the "What's Offline" column every Saturday in The New York Times, is the author or co-author of more than a dozen business books, including the forthcoming Liberating Passion. He was the only one in his kindergarten class excused from art due to "innate lack of ability." He reviewed Strategy and the Fat Smoker in the Jan/Feb issue.

If you ask them — and even if you don't — my friends are more than happy to catalog my faults. They will point to my unswerving devotion to Ella, Sinatra, and the songs I grew up listening to, saying such things as, "Brown believes popular music ended in 1975." (Guilty as charged.) They dismiss my political positions as misguided and naïve. And they don't understand how I can be a Yankees fan, since I live on Cape Cod Bay, where more people worship at the cathedral known as Fenway Park than at any church, temple, or mosque.

But what truly baffles them is my almost pathological need to sketch out almost every idea I have on whatever piece of paper is at hand.

It drives them nuts for two reasons. First, I can't draw. Stick figures are about as complicated as I get. I literally have had 5-year-olds ridicule my work. (If I remember the critique correctly, it was, "You draw like a doodie head.") And second, my friends find it patronizing. They believe the message I am sending when I start to sketch is that I don't believe they are smart enough to understand my point unless I literally draw them a picture.

I may have to hand out copies of The Back of the Napkin the next time they make fun of my renderings, because as consultant Dan Roam points out: Sketching your idea — even if you draw as poorly as I do — is a remarkably effective way to get your idea across and solve problems. If you can draw someone a picture of what you are trying to say, five things happen, all of them good:

It clarifies your thinking. If you can reduce your idea to stick- figure form, you have the concept nailed.
You can show the idea almost instantly. There is no need to go draft a document or prepare a PowerPoint slide.
The image invites comments. Drawings, by definition, are friendly; they invite suggestions and feedback, which can help make a good idea even better. No one has ever described a memo or a slide as "warm" or "welcoming."
You don't need any supporting material — speeches, bullet points, notes. All you need is the picture.
And, of course, most important, people "get it." They have a clear image — your image — in their minds of what you are trying to accomplish.

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