Solving Systems Engineering problems on the Back of a Napkin

Paul Martin's artifact from a Dan Roam seminar,
a napkin depicting the "visual thinking codex"

The other day I was able to go to a lecture by Dan Roam, the author of the wildly popular book, "The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures."  His topic was, "What to do when words don't work" and his seemingly outrageous claim the, "You can solve our problem with pictures." What problems? Any problem. And what pictures? Well you need just a few.