The Art of Explanation

Become 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 businesspeople, educators, and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems. These tools, tactics, and techniques will help you consistently inspire audiences to 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.

• Part 1: Plan
1. Learning to Run
2. What Is an Explanation?
• What Is Not an Explanation
• Defining Explanation
• Explanations Require Empathy
• Act and Art
• Look at Your Fish
• Explanation Lowers the Cost of Understanding
• An Explanation Is a Way to Package Ideas
• Explanations Answer the Question "Why?"
• Explanations Make People Care
  
3. Why Explanations Fail
• All About Confidence
• Assumptions Cause Failure
• Words Can Hurt
• We Lack Understanding
• We Want to Appear Smart
• The Direct Approach — No Context
• Summary
4. Planning Your Explanations
• Identifying Explanation Problems
• Part 2: Package
5. Packaging Ideas
• Stepping Outside the Bubble
• What Goes into the Packaging?
6. Context
• Forest then Trees
• Solving the Context Problem
• Context in Explanations — We Can All Agree
• Context and Pain
• Example: Google Docs
• On the Explanation Scale
  
• Summary
7. Story
• Stories Versus Facts
• But I'm Not a Storytellert
• Common Craft and Stories
• The Simple Ingredient: People
• Using Stories in Explanations
• Basic Story Format
• When Does Storytelling Not Work?
• Personification and Story
• On the Explanation Scale
• Summary
8. Connections
• Connecting Your Long Lost Uncle — Old Versus New
• Building-on Versus Establishing
• Analogy
• Common Craft Videos
• On the Explanation Scale
• Summary
9. Description
• Explaining Web Browsers
• Explanations Is Not a Recipe
• In the Explanation Scale
• Summary
10. Simplication
11. Contraints
• Common Craft and Constraints
• Constraints and Your Explanations
• Summary
12. Preparing for and Writing an Explanation
• The Common Craft Writing Process
• Big Ideas
• Research and Discovery
• Script Writing
• The Real Thing
13. Bringing an Explanation Together
• Part 3: Present
14. Common Craft's Lessons Learned
• Common Craft Gets Started
• Ten Lessons Learned from Common Craft Explanations
15. Right Medium for the Message
• A Transformation
• Media Options
• Presentation Modes
• Recording and Distribution Options
• Constraints Come to the Rescue
• Summary
16. Visuals
• You Can Use Visuals
• Dan Roam's 6 × 6 Rule
• Common Craft Visual Metaphors
• Noise and Simplicity in Visuals
• Infographics
• Creating Digital Visuals
• Summary
17. Emma and Carlos
• Epilogue
18. Explanation Culture and Your Life as an Explainer
• Your Life as An Explainer

Extreme self-promotion, that makes Tom Peters look like a modest person. And the author manages to produce a book that fails what the book is to tell you about: The Art of Explanation…

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