Ever struggled to see or explain a complex problem clearly? In this book, Dan Roam shares a powerful process to see complex issues clearly, solve problems, and sell ideas using simple pictures. In this free version of The Back of The Napkin summary, we’ll walk you through the practical 4-step method to harness the power of visual thinking.
How to Solve Problems with Visual Thinking (using the Back of the Napkin)
We face all kinds of complex, hard-to-explain problems in business—from strategy and design to communication and selling. Visual thinking is a structured approach to make ideas visible, so they’re easier to understand, share, and discuss with others—whether it’s for public speaking or discussing ideas on a white board.
It builds on our natural ability to notice, organize, and work with images, and it’s often faster and more persuasive than words alone. It doesn’t require any artistic skill, and can work for anyone.
Roam discovered the power of visual thinking when he had to deliver a last-minute presentation. By sketching a simple framework on a napkin, he was able to clarify his thoughts and present his ideas clearly. This sparked his journey into using pictures to solve business problems. Over time, he found that any problem can be made clearer with a picture.
This book serves as a step-by-step guide to help you think creatively, spot patterns, clarify ideas, and explain solutions in a way that can be understood immediately.
Whether you’re clarifying strategy, pitching a business idea, or aligning a team, you can use pictures to think better and communicate more powerfully.
In this version of The Back of the Napkin summary, we’ll give an overview of visual thinking, before explaining the process in detail and how to apply it.
WHAT IS VISUAL THINKING AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
This book equips you with a powerful toolkit to solve problems anywhere, anytime. Think of it like a toolbox with 3-4-5-6 components. We’ll explain how each one helps you with visual planning, with additional steps and tips in our complete 17-page book summary.
You don’t need special talents or sophisticated tools. You already possess the 3 essential visual thinking tools:
- Your Eyes (to look);
- Your Mind’s Eye (to imagine); and
- Your Hand-Eye Coordination (to draw and show).
Visual thinking involves 4 repeatable steps:
You already use these daily, and the 4 steps apply to any problem or situation. The goal is to learn to use them more deliberately:
- Look: Gather available information to build a mental picture.
- See: Filter out meaningful patterns/details and analyze what matters.
- Imagine: Explore different ways to present and refine your idea to get the best outcome for your target audience
- Show: Draw the picture clearly, in a way others can see and understand.
These steps aren’t always linear. In real problem-solving, you often loop between looking and seeing, or revise what you show based on new insights.
Roam presents 6 ways of seeing (6 Ws) tied to 6 visual frameworks, along with 5 SQVID filters to help you refine and present your idea. We will touch upon these in the next section but for a more comprehensive idea, do check out our full 17-page summary.
Breaking Down the 4 Steps of Visual Thinking
LOOK: Gather all available visual information
Visual thinking starts with looking intentionally.
We already have a sophisticated visioning system. Our eyes automatically gather millions of signals and convert them into electrical impulses. These allow the brain to build mental pictures without conscious effort.
There are 4 main tasks involved in looking:
- Orientation: Understand the overall layout—what’s being shown and from what perspective.
- Position: Locate where things are in relation to each other.
- Identify: Recognize key objects, patterns, or variables.
- Direction: Notice where elements are headed, i.e. how they’re changing over time or space.
Active looking means making this process conscious and deliberate. Check out our complete The Back of the Napkin summary to learn how we can use the 4 rules to look well.
SEE: Spot patterns and analyze what matters
Before you can show your ideas, you have to see them clearly in your mind. Looking is about gathering raw data, while seeing is about narrowing your focus, identifying patterns and defining problems.
We naturally see the world by answering 6 questions mentally. Try this simple visualization exercise. Imagine a few characters in detail—someone you know, a couple pushing a stroller, a dog, and a bird. Now, imagine them interacting in a park: Do the people notice each other? Does the dog chase the bird?
The 6 Ws (Who/What, How Much, Where, When, How, Why) can greatly help you improve your visual thinking skills by using them deliberately to see gaps/insights, clarify the core question you’re trying to answer and start shaping a solution. For a detailed breakdown of the 6 Ws at work, check out our full, 17-page The Back of The Napkin summary.
IMAGINE: Explore ways to show the idea
Once you see the problem clearly using the 6Ws, the next step is to imagine various ways to show it effectively. Use the SQVID framework—a structured yet flexible framework—to explore/refine your ideas, and choose the best visual representation for your audience.
The SQVID approach guides you through 5 pairs of contrasting modes of thinking to stretch your imagination and ensure your final message is clear, robust, and tailored to your audience.
- S = Simple vs Elaborate. How much detail to include.
- Q = Quality vs Quantity. How to express the idea.
- V = Vision vs Execution. At what level to present the idea.
- I = Individual vs Comparison. How to position the idea.
- D = Delta (Change) vs Status Quo. Whether to emphasize.
Our complete book summary offers additional insights on how you can refine your visual model by tapping both sides of your brain.
SHOW: Draw and present your ideas clearly
After you’ve looked, seen, and imagined your idea, you’re ready to show it visually, i.e. turn your mental picture into something that others can understand and act upon.
You don’t need artistic talent or drawing skills—just 3 structured steps:
- Step 1: Choose the right framework.
- Step 2: Develop the idea.
- Step 3: Draw and share the picture.
By combining the 6Ws and SQVID process into a reference grid, you have a “visual thinking codex” to tackle virtually any problem. Check out our full The Back of The Napkin summary for more tips on how you can improve your visual communication skills.
Putting It Together: A Detailed Case Study
Now that you know how to look, see, imagine, and show, the next challenge is to put it all together to solve a real business problem.
In the book, Dan Roam walks through a detailed case study of visual thinking in business. It focuses on SAX Inc., an accounting software company whose sales is stagnating while competitors gain ground. He shows how to use visual thinking to understand customers, clarify the competitive landscape, chart a way forward, and present a compelling case.
Check out our full book summary bundle for a detailed walkthrough of this case study, including:
• The detailed insights and rules of thumbs when applying the 6Ws and other visual tools, e.g. how to solve a “Who/What” problem using portraits, solve a “How Much” problem using charts, solve a “Where” problem using maps, solve a “When” problem using timelines, solve a “How” problem using flowcharts, and sovle a “Why” problem using multivariable plots to synthesize insights across variables.
• Tips for selling your ideas using show-and-tell, and guiding the audience through the 4 steps of the visual thinking process (Look → See → Imagine → Show).
Getting the Most from The Back of The Napkin
Using the steps, tips, and 3-4-5-6 components of the toolbox summarized above, you can apply visual thinking to solve problems, discuss solutions, and sell ideas more effectively. If you’d like to zoom in on the ideas above and get more detailed insights, examples and actionable tips, do check out our full book summary bundle that includes an infographic, 17-page text summary, and a 31-minute audio summary.
The book includes many detailed illustrations, practical drawing tips, real-world presentation insights, people you encounter (e.g. Black pen, Yellow pen vs Red pen people), as well as templates and visual solutions you can apply in any business setting. You can purchase the book here or for more tools, examples, and resources, visit thebackofthenapkin.
Looking for more resources to learn how you can make daily choices that lead to greater happiness, success, and peace of mind? Check out these powerful summaries:
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- Storytelling with Data: Add data visualization skills as one of your communication tools – to present clearly and persuasively with data!
- Bulletproof Problem Solving: Learn a proven framework to tackle any problem categories.
- Think Like Da Vinci: Learn the strategies, tools and thinking techniques behind one of the world’s best innovators.
Who Should Read This Book:
- Business professionals (consultants, leaders, managers, marketers, startup founders) who want to solve complex problems more effectively and pitch ideas more persuasively.
- Visual learners, creative professionals, and personal development enthusiasts who want to expand their creative thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities.
The Back of The Napkin Chapters
Our summaries are reworded and reorganized for clarity and conciseness. Here’s the full chapter listing from The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam, to give an overview of the original content structure in the book.
See All Chapters (Click to expand)
Part I: Introductions
Anytime, Anyone, Anywhere: Solving Problems with Pictures
1. A Whole New Way of Looking at Business
2. Which Problems, Which Pictures, and Who is “We”?
3. A Gamble We Can’t Lose: The Four Steps of Visual Thinking
Part II: Discovering Ideas
Looking Better, Seeing Sharper, Imagining Further: Tools and Rules for Good Visual Thinking
4. No Thanks, Just Looking
5. The Six Ways of Seeing
6. The SQVID: A Practical Lesson in Applied Imagination
7. Frameworks for Showing
Part III: Developing Ideas
The Visual Thinking MBA: Putting Visual Thinking to Work
8. Showing and the Visual Thinking MBA
9. Who Are Our Customers? Pictures That Solve a Who/What Problem
10. How Many Are Buying? Pictures That Solve a How Much Problem
11. Where is Our Business? Pictures That Solve a Where Problem
12. When Can We Fix Things? Pictures That Solve a When Problem
13. How Can We Improve Our Business? Pictures That Solve a How Problem
14. Why Should We Even Bother? Pictures That Solve a Why Problem
Part IV: Selling Ideas
It’s Showtime
15. Everything I Know About Business I Learned in Show-and-Tell
16. Drawing Conclusions
About the Author of The Back of the Napkin
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures was written by Dan Roam, who was the founder and president of Digital Roam Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in solving complex problems through visual thinking techniques. He is an experienced keynote speaker and public presenter.
Roam has consulted with companies such as Google, eBay, General Electric, the United States Navy, HBO, News Corp., Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, and Wells Fargo Bank, among many others.
The Back of the Napkin Quotes
“The heart of business is the art of problem solving.”
“Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be created using the same set of tools and rules.”
“Everything looks different when we can see it all at once.”
“The real goal of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible—not by making it simple.”
“The opposite of ‘simple’ is not ‘complex,’ but rather ‘elaborate.’”
“That’s the real beauty of visual thinking. It doesn’t take many pictures to see how just a few frameworks and rules make any problem easy to picture.”
“Insightful data is never boring. If what we’re showing resonates with our audience… they won’t fall asleep.”
“Although we know how to look, to see, to imagine, and to show, nobody since kindergarten has told us how to talk about what we see.”
“All good pictures do not need to be self-explanatory, but they do need to be explainable.”
“What we all really need is a reliable problem-solving toolkit that we can take with us anywhere.”
Click here to download The Back of the Napkin infographic & summary
