Einstein said we should simplify everything, as far as possible, and no further. This demands grasp of content, contextual judgment and facility with tools of expression. Here are eight basic, but helpful tools:
1. To simplify complex fractions in mathematical equations, we look for common denominators. This principle of finding a common or base level, works with any information. Ask ’What’s a given?’ Establish the level of agreement or understanding, fromwhich everyone can safely operate and move on.
2. Break your topic into smaller, simpler parts:
a. List the main questions your audience needs answered, one at a time. Use the five Ws+H (what? why? where? when? who? how?).
b. Trim your list. Keep current and reasonable priorities. Extraneous questions confuse, by diverting attention from key issues. (You only need to ask, ’Why?’ three or four times in a row on any topic and you’re at, or beyond, the frontiers of human knowledge.)
c. Draft key words to address possible answers.
d. Group the questions and possible answers into a digestible number of themes, subjects, topics or parts. Let the time you have to communicate, the nature of your parts, and the knowledge of your audience, determine what and how many parts.
e. Name the parts. If numbering suits, use it. Saying ’There are three (or however many) aspects,’ to something, alerts your audience to what’s ahead. Counting out where you’re up to as you go along (’The second part is…’) orients listeners, readers and viewers – and you – in the middle of your words. If you get lost or distracted,someone’s likely to ask you, ’What is point number….?’ If enumerating creates the wrong tone, assign other simple names or headlines to your parts.
f. Review your parts for logical sense and flow. Are any two parts the same as each other? Collapse them. Do your parts encompass the whole in-question? If not, add what’s missing.
3. Use a visual, geometric or other model. Models can encapsulate and explain at the same time. Is your process linear? Does your content belong in a circle, a triangle, a square or some other shape? Do you need three or even four dimensions, as in a journey using steps or road-maps? If you can, involve a design expert.
4. Apply a metaphor. Winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics, Richard P. Feynman, described angstroms (atom dimensions) by comparing the size of the Earth to an apple.Harvard teaches cell biology by combining model and metaphor: the cell is a city populated by machines performing tasks. Aristotle equated effective use of metaphors with genius, though in truth, effective use doesn’t require an IQ of 180. Take George Orwell’s advice, and don’t use any metaphor you’re used to seeing in print. It will be too familiar to evoke an image. Make up your own metaphors (or simile). Aim for simple, sensible, vivid.
5. Cull jargon and use everyday words. Jargon is efficient with insiders, but it discriminates against everyone else. Jargon can perpetuate ignorance, weak thinking among communicators and cynicism in an audience. Mystery can be exciting and creative, or destructive and elitist. Keep mystery intentional and interesting, not arrogant.
6. Tell a story. Some of what we hear about story-telling and narrative is silly; you don’t need to sit in a yurt, sniffing incense. Yet expert communicators know there’s no better way to impart a volume of information to persuasive effect, than to tell a story. Stories are necessary for nations, corporations, families and individuals. At their simplest, stories are easy: introduce a person or group, forced to act, to attain or resist something. Put an obstacle in their way and make a clear point. Supposedly sophisticated narratives are not much different. People listen to and remember stories, and that means they can pass them on. It doesn’t get better than that. Stories can be short. Hemingway wrote one in six words: Baby shoes for sale. Never worn. Margaret Atwood, in seven: I desperately wanted him. Got him. #@*%! Stories tie ideas to reality. They work grammatically and psycho-cognitively to capture attention, using machinery in the brain to create theatre in the mind.
7. Emphasise. Use physical animation and gesture, pauses, colour, bolding, white space, underlining, a new paragraph or page to offset what’s important.
8. Extract the relevant information, and no more. If the job’s done, stop.
Sometimes we blame the content for its irreducibility. Sometimes, the audience for not getting it. Richard P. Feynman once said he couldn’t teach first-year university students why half-spin particles obeyed Fermi-Dirac statistics. He later concluded, ’I really didn’t understand the topic’. We can test our grasp of our own content and its portability in our hands, by explaining it to one insider and one outsider.
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