Digital Roam

Boeing vs Bloomberg: Visuals are the key to situational awareness

I recently had the career highlight of giving a talk about my book to the Boeing Managers' Association up in Tukwila, WA. As a lifelong airplane fanatic and nearly lifelong pilot, having the undivided attention of one hundred people who build the big airplanes is as good as it gets.

I don't normally show family photos in a business presentation, but this time I had no choice: what better way to illustrate how I got my start in visual thinking and 3D "situational awareness"?

Having thus established my bona fides, I shared an example of how good visual information displays help people make good decisions -- especially when too much information is coming in. (This was an example I'd been waiting for years to share, and with Boeing I knew I had the right audience.)

The example is this. Seventy years ago, it took a crew of five looking at 200 instruments to guide an aircraft across an ocean.

Today, it takes a crew of one looking at two screens to do the same thing. (Not that anyone flies with a crew of one, but they could.)

The most interesting thing here is that the crew today requires exactly the same information as sixty years ago: speed, altitude, orientation, direction, distance, and fuel remaining. What's changed is our technological ability to collect, synthesize, and display that data.

Why not apply the same concepts to other tasks that require the quick analysis and synthesis of vast amounts of data? Financial analysis comes to my mind. With all the computing horsepower we have available today, why do most spreadsheets look exactly the way they did 200 years ago?

Why do we have to pay thousands of dollars a month for a Bloomberg terminal? And where's the financial services equivalent of the pilot's PFD (Primary Flight Display)?

I'm convinced anyone trying to come up with a better spreadsheet should take flying lessons. Nothing forces you to think about better data displays than trying to land in the rain.

Who knows: if the gang at Bear Stearns (not to mention everyone who touched our latest 'special financial instruments') had a better display of where they were going, we could have avoided this latest crash.

After all, there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US in three years. Wouldn't it be nice to say the same thing about the mortgage industry?

Southwest Airlines keeps up the napkin spirit

The founding of Southwest Airlines on the back of a cocktail napkin is my favorite "solving a problem with a picture" story. It goes like this:

Way back in 1967, Texas businessman Rollin King's WILD GOOSE AIRLINES (a small charter flying operation that shuttled sportsmen around the Lone Star state) failed financially, so he hired ex-NY lawyer Herb Kelleher to close the books. Afterward they retired to San Antonio's swankiest bar, The St. Anthony's Club, for a commemorative drink.

What they drank remains a mystery, but what is known is that at some point King picked up a napkin and said, "Herb, I have an idea for another airline; one that connects just the main metro areas of Texas..." He drew three dots on that napkin to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, then connected them with three lines to form a simple triangle.

Presto: Southwest Airlines was born. From that humble napkin emerged the most profitable airline in history.

(It's evident why the Southwest model was so innovative when you compare it to the route maps of the existing airlines of the day: the traditional hub-and-spoke models meant that a simple connection between these three Texas cities wasn't possible.)

Nice story. But what's even better is that I flew Southwest recently for the first time and guess what I saw on the cocktail napkins the flight attendants handed out?

That's right: the new Southwest route map. Southwest is the only airline that prints their map on their napkins. I've got to believe that's an homage to their heritage.

YES! CBS goes whiteboard!

It's about time that network TV got what everybody else has known since Kindergarten: simple pictures make complex concepts easy to understand. Thank you Katie Couric and CBS news for bringing the whiteboard into the news room, and bringing Josh Landis and Mitch Butler along with it.

In CBS News new "Fast Draw" segment (which appears to be in test flight mode for now) Landis and Butler (who met at ABC news) share the whiteboard as they explain concepts everybody "knows" about, but that nobody REALLY gets. Like superdelegates, for example.

In their first 3-minute clip with Katie, they seemed to impress even her with their quick visual explanation about how sometimes a democracy isn't very democratic. Like Katie said, "That was fun".
Good for you, CBS!

(Enjoy the praise, because next time I'm going to critique what's *not* perfect about the session.)

Can I have that College Ruled?

There's been a flurry of submissions from friends on this one, but I wanted to wait until the subject of the activity was available for purchase -- which it now is.

A clever cast of characters at Euro RSCG* have created the ultimate "back of the napkin"  napkin. The Napkin Notebook is a bound collection of blank... well, napkins -- all ready to be sketched on and kept organized.

What a nice, simple idea. And as I said before, now available at the MOMA store.

Fool me twice, can't be fooled again

In my weekly scour of the web for all things "back of the napkin", I came across an amazing article. It turns out that way back in 1999 (yes, that would be "Web 1.0" for anyone who remembers the world before social networking), Chief Executive Magazine published a fantastic story on the exhibit at the American Corporate Hall of Fame in Toledo, Ohio showcasing the 1,215 most important cocktail napkins of all time.

"How could I have missed this for eight years?" I said to myself. "This is truly the motherload -- exactly what I've been looking for in order to spice up my workshops and keynotes! Imagine being able to show not just six or seven breakthrough business napkins, but HUNDREDS!!"

I immediately searched for online references to the American Corporate Hall of Fame in Toledo... but found nothing.

Then I searched for Len Cavuto, chairman of the Great Lakes Cocktail Napkins Manufacturers Association, who was quoted in the article with the best napkin comment of all time:

"The cocktail napkin industry is proud of the role it has played in shaping the industrial landscape of America. By making available a tasteful literary appurtenance to the entrepreneurial community, we feel that we have contributed in no small measure to making the American dream come true. Remember that the next time you sop up a spilled Bud with our napkins. Yes, our products are absorbent. But they are so much more."

Alas, I couldn't find any links to either Len or the Great Lakes Cocktail Napkins Manufacturers Association.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "It looks like I really missed the boat on this one. Where *was* I back in 1999, and *what* was I thinking?"

Then I read the byline. Joe Queenan. That would be the Joe Queenan of the "Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon," fame, a self-proclaimed "full time son of a bitch" who has "never deviated from [his] chosen career as a sneering churl." I had to admit it: my love for breakthrough napkins aside, I'd been had.

Too bad. I was really looking forward to seeing that "Buy Two, Get One Free" circular whose reverse side carries the business plan for General Motors. I wonder what Queenan would think about a book dedicated to drawing business napkins...

The conference sweet spot

On the plane home from the business writers' conference in Chicago, I tried to write an appropriate thank-you note to the folks at 800-CEO-READ who had put it all together.

Words failed me. Pictures didn't.

Here's what I thought of the small (40 people) short (1.5 days) conference:

What fantastic group of people attended:

Erika Andersen
Greg Alexander
Jose Castillo
Kevin Eikenberry
Phil Gerbyshak
Joanne Gordon
Jackie Huba
Joe Heuer
Alexander Kjerulf
Steve Little
Ben McConnell
Robert Mintz
Jack Mitchell
Susan Quandt
David Meerman Scott
Michael Stallard
Dan Roam
John Rosen
Rajesh Setty
AnnaMaria Turano
Bill Welter
Steve Yastrow
Mike Kanazawa

Ray Bard  - Bard Press
Mark Bloomfield - Harvard Business School Press
Shelley Dolley - Leap7
Barbara Cave Henricks - Cave Henricks Communications
Mark Fortier - Fortier Public Relations
Nick Morgan - Public Words
Gerry Sindell - ThoughtLeaders INTL
Les Tuerk - BrightSight Group
Dennis Welch - Cave Henricks Communications
Susan Williams - Jossey-Bass

And the folks at 800 CEO Read:

Jack Covert
Melinda Cross - Concepts Content Copy
Sally Haldorson
Jon Mueller
Kate Mytty
Joy Panos Stauber - Stauber Design Studio
Todd Sattersten
Aaron Schleicher
Dylan Schleicher
Rebecca Schlei

Square Ocean Strategy

I'm in Chicago attending the second annual 800-CEO-READ business writer's Pow-Wow, an event that brings together authors (established and emerging), publishers (big and small), book PR leaders (Barbara and Mark, to be precise),  and the book sales professionals from 8CR. It's a small group and the event is just two days long, which means I'm learning a lot from an amazing group of people in a perfectly short period of time.

A highlight for me yesterday was Ray Bard from Bard Press. Known as the company that publishes just one book per year, Bard has scored 14 bestsellers out of just 27 books published. When Ray talks, people listen.

Happily, when Ray talks, people also LOOK. Uniquely for a "word-book" publisher, Ray likes charts... which means I liked Ray's presentation (everybody else did too -- and I'm convinced that's because he was the only presenter to hand out a piece of paper to each audience member to look at while he talked).

Here is what he handed out: the wonderful "Size and depth of your book's market" chart.

Ray uses this chart to help plot where he thinks the market potential is for any given book proposal, and to help determine whether or not he wants to publish it.

If a book falls into the "puddle" category (small market, small need) or the "bayou" category (big market, small need), he'll give it a pass. If it falls into the "well" category (small market, big need) he'll take a second look. If it falls into the "ocean" category (big market, big need), he'll take it on right then and there.

Nice chart, nice concept, nice model. Everybody got it.

Then I asked Ray if I could take a shot at adding a couple things that I thought might make it even more powerful. He happily agreed, and here's my modified version:

I flopped the axes for "depth" and "width" so that they would be more intuitively visual ("depth" being a vertical idea, and "width" being horizontal). Then I shifted the size of the boxes to more accurately reflect their actual dimensions (a puddle being small, and ocean being big).

It's the same chart, but contains a bit more visceral information. Better than the previous? Maybe. Ray liked the modifications and will test it out.

I'm anxious to see how it goes.

Make mine bigger

Not exactly visual thinking, but the funniest, most insightful, and best guaranteed way to: drive traffic, collect eyeballs, maximize touchpoints, and leverage synergies... ever. Yes, Make My Logo Bigger Cream is now available.

Okay, it's *just* an ad for another Agency... but what an ad it is!

Who needs a whiteboard...

... when you can sketch across an entire room.

Thanks Field Music -- beautiful.

Sputnik, exploded

Gotta thank my eagle-eyed mom for pointing me towards the latest wonderful NYT graphic. Not only is this visual deconstruction of the world's most famous 50-year-old steel ball eye-opening, it also happens to match my *other* favorite topic: the history of spaceflight.

Thanks Jonathan and team for another example of your stellar work.