The Art of Explanation

Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand

By: Lee LeFever

Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon

Your guide to becoming an explanation specialist. You've done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don't see the big idea - and it's keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem. The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators, and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems. Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium. You will learn to:

• Plan: Learn explanation basics, what causes them to fail and how to diagnose explanation problems.
• Package: Using simple elements, create an explanation strategy that builds confidence and motivates your audience.
• Present: Produce remarkable explanations with visuals and media.

The Art of Explanation is your invitation to become an explanation specialist and see why explanation is now a fundamental skill for professionals.

©2012 Lee LeFever (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC

Great but longer than it needed to be

This was a great book, but it was really much longer than it needed to be.

Some Good Examples

The key elements for effective explanations are:
Purpose: Why should the audience care?
Package: How will it be presented?
Principles: Using simple language, visuals, and metaphors.

There were some good before and after examples to show how a presentation of facts can be turned into a story that the audience could relate to. However, there were some moments where the explanation was more complicated than necessary. For example, to gauge the audience's knowledge of the topic, the author uses the scale from A to Z. Why?? Using the scale from 1 (know nothing) to 10 (expert) would have made more sense.

useful but very technical

Struggled to finish it. There are some really valuable concepts on explanation but Learning about it via the book was long and painful. The scenarios and examples were helpful.

narrator reads like slightly less human HAL3000

Book itself seems alright, but the reader makes it a struggle to listen. Wouldn't recommend.

Wonderful, easily applicable.

Clear concise information that will allow anyone to improve their basic communication methods and give framework for how, what, and why you need to get your message across.