Make it Clear

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 101: An MIT professor with 40 years of teaching experience explains how to speak and write to get your ideas across. Starting with the basics—finding your voice, organizing your ideas, making sure what you say is remembered, and receiving critiques (“do not ask for brutal honesty”)—this essential resource is packed with advice on how to write to be understood, how to inspire, how to defeat writer’s block, and much more. You’ll also learn about: • Why you should start with an empowerment promise and conclude by noting you delivered on that promise • How the combination of a well-crafted, explicitly identified slogan, symbol, salient idea, surprise, and story make you and your work memorable • The VSN-C (Vision, Steps, News–Contributions) framework as an organizing structure and how to create and organize your ideas with a “broken–glass” outline • How to prepare slides, writing and rewriting, and even choosing a type family Learning how to speak and write well will empower you and make you smarter. Effective communication can be life-changing—making use of just one principle in this book can get you the job, make the sale, convince your boss, inspire a student, or even start a revolution.