Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft and author of The Art of Explanation – Making Your Ideas, Products and Services Easier to Understand. In 2007 he saw an opportunity to explain technology using short animated videos. Starting with the video RSS in Plain English, he and Common Craft produced a series of videos and created a visual style that has inspired communicators around the world. Today, videos that use paper cut-outs and a whiteboard are known as “Common Craft Style” and are often made by students as classroom projects.

Since 2007 his company has worked with the world’s most respected brands, inspired the explainer video industry and earned over 50 million online views. The video Common Craft produced with Dropbox.com has resided on the company’s home page for over three years and generated 30 million views.

Today his focus is helping others become better explainers through the book and Common Craft Membership, which offers ready-made videos, cut-outs and know-how. He lives in Seattle, WA with his wife and business partner Sachi and their dog Bosco, a fine swimmer.

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Morris: Before discussing The Art of Explanation, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

LeFever: This is very clear to me. It is my wife, Sachi. She is a constant source of motivation and perspective. She has taught me the meaning of excellence and helped me see small ways I can improve every day. We mold and teach each other in every part of our lives.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

LeFever: Yes, I can remember a specific instance when I saw the problem that I would spend years trying to solve. I was at a small conference in Silicon Valley in 2004 and a tech CEO was speaking to a group of 50 people. The CEO mentioned RSS, the technology that makes it easy to subscribe to a website. When a gentleman asked “What is RSS?” the CEO replied with an answer I’ll never forget: “It’s an XML-based content syndication format.” His answer was technically correct and mostly incomprehensible. It was at this point that I saw the explanation problem for the first time. The big thing limiting the adoption of RSS was not necessarily design, price or availability, but explanation. The technologists were doing the explaining and doing it poorly. I thought I could do better.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you when to work full-time for the first time? Why?

LeFever: There’s a quote I’ve heard that I think about sometimes. It goes something like “Don’t spend your time working on someone else’s dreams – go work on your own.”

Morris: The greatest leaders throughout history (with rare exception) were great storytellers. What do you make of that?

LeFever: I accept it as truth, but I have a twist on it. Storytelling is a general term that has broad meaning and value. But stories do not, by default, solve problems or make things easy to understand. I think great leaders are often great explainers who use storytelling as one means of making their communication more interesting and understandable.

Morris: In recent years, there has been criticism, sometimes severe criticism of M.B.A. programs, even those offered by the most prestigious business schools. In your opinion, in which area is there the great need for immediate improvement? Any suggestions?

LeFever: Communication. From my perspective, there is a single thread that runs through nearly every part of professional life – the ability to communicate clearly. Without it, one can accomplish very little.

Morris: Now please shift your attention to The Art of Explanation. When and why did you decide to write it?

LeFever: I’m surprised that this book was not written 50 or 100 years ago. Explanation is a skill we use every day, yet we rarely consider the potential of improving it. I wrote the book because explanation is a fundamental part of our lives that has been neglected for too long.

Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while writing it? Please explain.

LeFever: When I was researching the book I came across the work of Tania Lombrozo, a UC Berkeley Psychologist who focuses on explanation. One of her papers highlighted research that found explainers often learn more in the act of explanation than explainees. This matched my own experience. The act of writing scripts for Common Craft explainer videos helped me see the subjects from new perspectives. I learned through explaining and I think this side effect is something others will notice too.

Morris: To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ significantly from what you originally envisioned?

LeFever: This is an interesting question. People who know Common Craft’s video work often consider us visual thinkers. They envisioned a book that was a very visual experience, like The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. But once I started putting the book together, I realized something important. Visual thinking media is usually static and does not have a narrative. It stands alone. Videos, on the other hand, often have voice-overs. In our work, the voice-over matters much more than the visuals – it’s where the explanation really occurs. This reminded me that we are writers more than visual thinkers and my book should reflect explanation as something that’s written first.

Morris: Why do you believe that it is best to determine the “why” before the “how” of whatever is to be learned?

LeFever: Here’s one way to look at it. A recipe is all about “how.” You combine specific amounts of this-and-that and you get the desired outcome. It works. But there is another factor that takes cooking to the next level and that’s “why?” By learning the “why” of cooking – why you need baking soda, why a recipe calls for egg whites, you can make it your own. Cooking can become less tactical and more experimental and personal. This extends to a lot of examples – an initial focus on “why” gives the audience a way to see an idea from a broader, more applicable perspective.

Morris: How do you define the term “explanation”?

LeFever: Explanation is communication that is designed to make ideas and/or facts easier to understand.

Morris: What are the defining characteristics of an explanation problem”?

LeFever: An explanation problem occurs when communication is the main factor preventing an idea, product or service from being adopted. I see this most in technology where the most well-engineered, beautifully-designed product has limited success because no one is able to explain it in a way that makes people see the value or care about it.

Morris: Why do explanations require empathy ?

LeFever: The biggest reason explanations fail is that we have a hard time imagining what our words sound like to others. This phenomenon is related to the idea of the Curse of Knowledge, which was made famous by Chip and Dan Heath in the book Made to Stick. The basic idea is that the more we know about something, the harder it is to imagine what it’s like not to know. The curse causes us to use language and examples that we assume are well-known, but sound foreign to our audience.

Empathy, the ability to imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes, is key to explanation because it reduces the Curse of Knowledge and helps our message sound more natural to the audience.

Morris: I commend you for including the “look at your fish” admonition by David McCullough. For those unfamiliar with the context, please explain its relevance and significance.

LeFever: The story focuses on a student with a dead fish in front of him who is told by his biology professor, for days on end, to “look at your fish.” Soon enough he starts to see the fish from a new perspective and notice important traits that had been there all along.

I love this story because it highlights the value of seeing a simple idea from a new perspective. As McCullough put it “Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than discovering something new.” And so it is with explanation. Great explanations can take something in front of us every day and transform it into communication that helps people see it from a new perspective.

Morris: Why do so many (most?) explanations fail?

LeFever: Explanations often fail when we make poor or incorrect assumptions about the existing knowledge or the interests of our audience. We’re prone to diving into a subject without offering the audience a few ideas that put the explanation in context. This causes their confidence to erode and once that’s gone, it’s difficult to explain anything effectively.

LeFever: Building context is the one big idea I share with everyone who is interested in becoming a better explainer. One way to look at it is the forest vs. the trees. You can talk about the trees all you want and people may get something from it, but the forest matters. If you start with the big picture, the forest, the trees become even more interesting.

Another quote I love is “Content is king, but context is the kingdom.”

Morris: Why do you focus on Emma and Carlos in the Epilogue? What valuable lessons can be learned from them?

LeFever: I used the Emma and Carlos example to highlight how explanation could be used in the real world. It tells the story of a team trying to solve an explanation problem. I want readers to empathize with the characters and imagine themselves in their shoes so they may be motivated to accomplish similar goals.

Morris: Let’s say that a CEO has read and then (hopefully) re-read The Art of Explanation and is now determined to improve decision-making and problem-solving capabilities at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise, using the principles you advocate in the book. Where to begin?

LeFever: I might suggest identifying a few great communicators in the company and consider the potential to create an explanation team. This team would have a couple of roles:

1) Identify the biggest explanation problems, internally or externally. An example could be the company health plans or why a new policy makes sense. Every company has confused employees.

2) Work to create explanations to address these problems. Write scripts, create media, do something remarkable.

With a little momentum, this team could become a resource that can help teams across the company start to solve their own explanation problems.

Morris: For more than 25 years, it has been my great pleasure as well as privilege to work closely with the owner/CEOs of hundreds of small companies, those with $20-million or less in annual sales. In your opinion, of all the material you provide in The Art of Explanation, which do you think will be of greatest value to leaders in small companies? Please explain.

LeFever: The idea that explanation is becoming the new marketing. People are tired of commercials and advertising. They want something authentic and real — not a sales pitch. They want to learn, to be informed and to feel confident. Companies in the future will work to out-explain each other because without understanding, few other things will be possible.

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Lee cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Watch Common Craft videos here.

Find The Art of Explanation at its Amazon page here.

Lee’s personal website is here.