There are too many business books, and too little time to read them, yet we all need help and advice. So the number of options needs to be reduced and a recommendation made. The Diagrams Book is a little gem, or rather a collection of them, which deserves to make the cut. Like many of Kevin Duncan’s books, this is largely a collection of other people’s ideas synthesised, summarised, and served up with a lightness of touch in a user-friendly format, which makes the content much more accessible and, therefore, applicable.
This one contains 50 graphics in five sections: Triangles & Pyramids; Squares & Axes; Circles & Pies; Timelines & Year Views; and Flows & Concepts. Multiple ideas for improving current and future presentations are sparked off by leafing through while reading Duncan’s commentary. Most diagrams are good practical additions to a marketer’s PowerPoint toolkit, but some provide really useful new ways of looking at things, such as ‘The Bargaining Arena’ and ‘The Less-Than-Twelve-Month Year’. As Duncan says: 'Having trained thousands of people, it is apparent that many find it hard to express ideas and solve problems purely with words. They find it easier to use diagrams. It’s a form of visual thinking.'
So often we use PowerPoint and start with sentences. Reading The Diagrams Book suggests beginning with graphics and storyboarding the argument with just a few words and titles, adding more detailed bullet points afterwards.
In another of his books, What You Need to Know About Starting a Business, Duncan advocates ‘pitching on a postcard’: 'If you can’t explain in one sentence what the business will do, (the ‘elevator pitch’), then it’s probably too complicated. Keep it simple.' And as he points out, many people are better communicated with by visual rather than written means.
In The Dictionary of Business Bullshit, Duncan proposes his concept of ‘Drawing board, back to’: 1. Return to the original design or blueprint. 2. Begin again, having got nowhere; complete rethink; start from scratch; write off millions in investment money having made the wrong choice; plaintive cry of new
product development managers from Penzance to Preston, as in, ‘Right guys, it’s back to the drawing board’. Maybe starting with a diagram would reduce the prevalence of this cry?
My only complaint? Having to go back to the drawing board in using the lessons learned from The Diagrams Book – I wish Duncan had a way to provide the graphics without undermining his intellectual property.
This review was taken from the March 2014 issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.
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