Communication experts agree on one crucial point: you can’t explain anything effectively without first understanding who you’re speaking to. The Art of Explanation author Ros Atkins advocates for deep, systematic research into who your listeners are, what they know, and how they prefer to learn. In The Bezos Blueprint, Carmine Gallo suggests you imagine explaining your topic to an intelligent high school student. Keep reading to explore these expert methods of reaching people with complex ideas.
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Understanding Your Audience
The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins and The Bezos Blueprint by Carmine Gallo treat audience understanding as the foundation of effective explanation. You can’t craft a successful explanation without first knowing who you’re addressing. This understanding should drive every decision about how to structure and present your message. Atkins and Gallo share the core principle of simplification based on audience needs and argue against the temptation to include everything you know about a topic, instead advocating for ruthless selection of only what your audience needs to hear.
Let’s examine what each author’s method looks like up close.
3 Things You Should Know About Your Audience
Atkins contends that every aspect of your explanation should be specifically designed for the people receiving it. This means crafting each element of your explanation—from vocabulary and examples to structure and format—to match the needs, knowledge, and preferences of your audience. So, before you write a single sentence, Atkins insists you have to thoroughly understand who you’re speaking to. This increases the likelihood that your audience will understand, remember, and act upon your message.
What does it mean to know your audience? According to Atkins, you need to understand three essential aspects of the people you’re addressing:
1) Who your audience members are as individuals or as a group. Consider their backgrounds, experiences, roles, and relationship to you. A technical explanation delivered to industry peers requires a different approach than one given to the general public or to senior executives who need quick insights for decision-making.
2) What your audience already knows about your topic. Assessing what your audience already knows helps you avoid overwhelming them with unfamiliar concepts or boring them with information they’re already familiar with. Understanding their current knowledge also helps you identify and address misconceptions that might interfere with comprehension. Atkins notes that sometimes what people think they know is more problematic than what they don’t.
(Shortform note: Addressing your audience’s incorrect knowledge is often more challenging than filling their knowledge gaps. Rejecting misinformation requires more mental effort than accepting it because our brains are reluctant to discard existing explanations. Plus, misconceptions often form coherent stories that connect to other beliefs we hold, creating a web that’s difficult to untangle. You can dismantle misconceptions by acknowledging them and showing why they’re inadequate—creating cognitive conflict that motivates your listeners’ brains to reconstruct their understanding of a topic.)
3) How your audience prefers to receive information. Some respond best to visual representations, while others prefer narrative examples or straightforward data. Some have the time and interest for detailed explanations, while others need concise summaries. Gathering this audience information requires deliberate effort. When possible, research your audience beforehand by recalling previous interactions, through organizational information, or by talking to others who know them well. If you’ll be explaining something to a group regularly, consider asking them directly about their preferences and knowledge level.
| Balance Certainty and Complexity in Explanations Different audiences seek different types of explanations. Some prefer clear, authoritative answers—even in situations where scientists or statisticians say certainty isn’t warranted—while others value transparency about uncertainty even at the cost of clear-cut conclusions. Malcolm Gladwell’s popularity demonstrates the widespread appetite for explanations that offer certainty: In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces concepts like “The Law of the Few,” which suggests social trends spread primarily through a small number of influential people he calls “connectors” and “mavens.” Gladwell’s explanation is compelling precisely because it transforms complex, probabilistic phenomena into straightforward principles that feel actionable. Yet as network scientist Duncan Watts discovered through rigorous research, Gladwell’s simplified explanation of social trends doesn’t quite hold up to scientific scrutiny because the truth is a little more complex. Watts’s experiments showed that highly connected people aren’t necessarily crucial social hubs, and that ordinary individuals are just as likely to start major trends. This tension between satisfying explanations and accurate ones creates a dilemma for explainers. Gladwell himself acknowledges this trade-off, noting that he prioritizes storytelling over scientific precision. He believes that certain aspects of an explanation that writers and critics tend to value—“coherence, consistency, neatness of argument”—aren’t priorities for many readers. Therefore, when crafting your own explanations, consider what your audience needs. Some situations call for certainty and simplicity to enable action, while others require embracing complexity and acknowledging limitations. |
2 Questions You Should Ask About Your Audience
Gallo contends that understanding your audience is the primary way to make your message as simple as possible. Picture someone who’s smart but not as informed or interested in your topic as you are. What do they need to know, and what’s the easiest way to explain it to them? Gallo says that asking these questions will keep you from including a lot of detail and complexity that will ultimately dilute your point and confuse your audience. Remember that your reader or listener doesn’t need to know everything you know.
(Shortform note: When considering your audience, it’s also helpful to think about your purpose: What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this communication? In Thank You for Arguing, rhetoric professor Jay Heinrichs explains that knowing your purpose will help you craft the kind of appeal most likely to persuade your audience. If you need to win your audience over to your side, show them that you’re trustworthy and knowledgeable. If you need to change their minds, use logic and evidence to appeal to their rationality. If you need to spur them into doing something, use emotional appeals to convince them of the need for action.)
How simple should your message be? Gallo suggests that you express your ideas simply enough that the average high school student could understand them. Gallo notes that Bezos’s communications are remarkably simple, even when discussing complex technology, services, and financial data. He explains that, when he analyzed Bezos’s shareholder letters with a formula that determines a recommended reading grade level, the letters scored as appropriate for grades 8 to 10. Note that “readability” in this context has nothing to do with the content of a written piece—it’s a measure of elements like word length and sentence complexity that determine how hard the piece is to read.
(Shortform note: Gallo’s advice to write simply about complex topics is corroborated by the fact that most news publications write at a high school level—including sources like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC.com. This is true even though these outlets address complicated issues in their content, proving that expert writers who make their living conveying information to adults typically follow this recommendation.)
Learn More About Knowing Your Audience
To get a better grasp on understanding your audience in the broader context of communication, check out our guides to The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins and The Bezos Blueprint by Carmine Gallo.
