Venn diagrams are very important to appear smart
Of many good tricks in the brilliant blog by Sarah Cooper, 10 Tricks to Appear Smart During Meetings, my favorite is the first trick: Draw a Venn diagram. After I read this a while ago I started to see Venn diagrams everywhere; in every blog, talk or article I read. (I was planning to collect a lot more but then I saw someone took this many steps further than I could ever take it so I barely started collecting).
Getting up and drawing a Venn diagram is a great way to appear smart. It doesn’t matter if your Venn diagram is wildly inaccurate, in fact, the more inaccurate the better. Even before you’ve put that marker down, your colleagues will begin fighting about what exactly the labels should be and how big the circles should be, etc. At this point, you can slink back to your chair and go back to playing Candy Crush on your phone.
-from Sarah Cooper’s blog
Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn
Professor Kevin Lane Keller
Alex Osterwalder of “Business Model Canvas”
