Dan Roam - Draw to Win: A Crash Course on How to Lead, Sell, and Innovate With Your Visual Mind

From the dawning of the day, the air is filled with countless images for which the eye acts as magnet.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Theres always room out there for the hand-drawn image.

MATT GROENING

O n June 29, 2007, after a year of writing, I finished The Back of the Napkin. I remember the date because I had to stop halfway through the last page so I could watch Steve Jobs launch the iPhone. It was a big day.

In the years since, I have been blessed with the opportunity to share my visual-thinking approach with hundreds of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to inner-city schools. As I scan my computer, I see 723 different presentations Ive delivered, containing 9,246 hand-drawn images. Thats a lot of pictures.

Along the way, Ive learned a few things:

• Pictures help people learn, and the best pictures are the simplest.
• Simple can be hard, but having a process makes hard things easier.
• Hand-drawn pictures make people smile, and smiling people think better.
• Everyone can draw, even people who know they cant.

In this book, I will share with you the top ten lessons Ive learned. The first two explain why you should draw. The next three show you how to draw. And the last five show you what to draw when you need to lead, sell, innovate, train, or just figure things out on your road to success.

If youve read my previous books, youll see one or two familiar tools here, now refined through years of testing, along with a bunch of new tools. If youre new to my approach, welcome! Youre about to see a whole new way of thinking.

Dan Roam
San Francisco, 2016

Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure.

MICHELANGELO

90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

IBM, WHAT IS BIG DATA?

W hile researching a project recently, I was struck by three surprising data points. The first was from IBM, saying that 90 percent of all data collected in history has been generated in the last two years. The second was from Cisco, saying that 90 percent of all data transmitted online today is visual. The third came from my own work in corporate training, where I see that 90 percent of businesspeople have no idea how to effectively use visuals in their business.

90%-90%-90%. Were generating more data than ever, that data is overwhelmingly visual, and most of us dont know how to use images. No matter what business youre in, the future of your business is visual. To keep your business growing, youre going to have to get better at using pictures.

Then I came across one more data point, this time in Entertainment Weekly: Seven out of the top twenty bestselling books on Amazon in recent months were coloring books for adults. According to the Boston Globe, this sudden, unexpected, and generally curious development has become the thing, as far as millions of rapt Americans are concerned.

I dont think its sudden, unexpected, or curious at all. Weve always been visual. Most businesspeople just forget that.

Thirty-two thousand years ago, your many-times-great-grandparents Oog and Aag drew pictures on the wall of a cave. They drew bison, a herd of horses, and many beautiful bulls. These drawings predate weapons, pots, jewelry, and most clothes.

Your ancient ancestors had things to tell each other, and the technology they used to record it was drawing. That desire to share was so compelling that Oog and Aags children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren kept going back to that