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Supercommunicator: Explaining the Complicated So Anyone Can Understand
This book recognizes that explaining what you do and why it's important drives funding, policy decisions, media exposure, public awareness, and customer adoption. In our increasingly complicated and data-driven world, it takes a true genius to create, develop, and manage the complex technological systems and resources driving the marketplace. The good news is our schools are producing increasing amounts of these incredible brainiacs. The bad news is, they are often the only ones who can comprehend their accomplishment and why the world is better for it. Therefore, the ability to communicate technical content to nontechnical listeners is a skill no techy can afford to not master. In Supercommunicator , learn how Your latest technical development deserves more funding, media exposure, and public awareness--but nobody understands what it means! Supercommunicator reveals how to make the complex comprehensible, and the dry deeply compelling.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
27 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
About the author
Frank J. Pietrucha
1 book17 followersFRANK J. PIETRUCHA, president of Definitive Communications, has over 25 years of experience helping start-ups, established companies, and government agencies make challenging topics more accessible.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 7, 2015
Pretty basic and high level. I found the writing style engaging, but the content didn't really stand out compared to the mass of books dealing with the same subject. If you haven't read books on how to communicate that focused on making things simple, this is a fine one to start with. If you have read other books on the topic, this doesn't add much. The examples here really weren't memorable, at least to me.
January 30, 2023
What are your favorite quotes from the book?
"Effective communications promote reflective reasoning by helping people open their minds to dig past the superficial and find deeper meaning."
"The abundance of data - both hurtling through cyberspace and in our everyday, pen-and-paper lives can easily push us into infomageddon - a chasm where content is plentiful, but meaningless."
"Words printed on paper have always facilitated concentrated and sustained attention and thought."
"Like hungry predators, we charge forward into our devices demanding an instantaneous fix only to lurch away moments later searching for more prey. This is very different from a generation ago, when people sat passively in libraries carefully reading books uninterrupted from start to finish."
"You don't often find a video clip in a company's strategic plan."
"Don't be lured by the bright lights of multimedia just because they're eye-popping. Evaluate the options at hand, and only choose multimedia options if they serve your needs .... But remaining stagnant and sticking with old-school communication techniques can be just as dangerous, if not more so."
"He's right - 'know thy audience' - if there were a cardinal rule of communication, this would probably be it."
"If you want to produce a singular product designed to address disparate audiences - people with varied levels of experience in myriad subjects - be careful. It may seem easier to produce just one communication product for everyone, but if may not reach those varied audiences as effectively as you'd like."
"He studied hard and learned his material thoroughly, but he doled out his new found knowledge carefully - not spiting out everything he studied all at once. Holding back on information - and knowing when to masterfully insert your expertise - is communication excellence."
"By giving our audience more detail, using bigger words, and creating grander sentences, some think we'll be more successful in getting them to understand our complicated topic. Effective
communication is about reaching your audience and getting them to understand your point. Don't complicate when you can simplify."
"The best way for us to reach them is by delivering meaningful, understandable information."
"When you use jargon, special words, or expressions specific professions or groups use, you're creating a barrier between yourself and your audience. Like memberships in a private club, you may feel warm and fuzzy if included, but if you're the person unable to get past the security desk, you may feel purposefully left out. Jargon makes people feel excluded. Communicating the complicated is about inclusivity, not exclusivity."
"When to simplify and when to clarify are judgement calls you the communicator need to make. The more you understand your audience and the better your understand your topic, the more likely you'll be able to know when to simplify and when to clarify."
"Layering breaks big, unwieldy concepts into bite-size morsels that prevent audiences from gagging on too much information. Building new ideas on top of what is already known eases the sting of comprehending the complicated."
"Never omit elements of the steps in your explanation. Doing so could compromise accuracy. Layering is about simplification through steps., not about dumbing down."
"But that's because so many documents are cluttered with visuals that are more decorative than informative. Images we think add value to a document or instructional piece may not be effective and can actually deter audiences from comprehending the message."
"Caught up in the geewhiz excitement about digital tools, many of us forgot that good communication means bringing insight to an audience, not glitz. The widespread availability of graphics programs ha opened Pandora's Box of visual stimuli, but much of what 's in there has been meaningless adornment."
What is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book?
I checked a word document of mine using the Readability Statistics and it had a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 12.7. I would have guessed it to be lower then that. The author states that you want to shoot for somewhere between 8 and 10 when addressing a professional audience. I may not quickly alter my writing style but having the measuring capability as well as understanding of where I want to target will help me to be able to reach more of my intended audience.
What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book?
"There are no hard and fast rules to follow regarding what should be presented to your audience and what should be tossed into the trash. Finding the right formula - the prefect balance of 'simple enough, but not too simple' content - is an art form in itself." When creating a presentation or delivering a message there are a lot of things that we should think about and evaluate. Just being more aware of all the small details that can add or detract from a communication will help form better communication. I will think about the media being used, the graphics to include (charts, graphs, pictures) as well as the correct level for the intended audience.
What is one point you disagreed with, or at least questioned, in this book?
The author was making a case for adding a human style to corporate communications to increase connectivity. Although this could help connect with some of your audience, I can hear others in the audience saying "that's dumb why do I care about this personal stuff? just tell me what needs to be communicated." With this you would be capturing better attention from some of your audience but more drastically driving away others.
"Effective communications promote reflective reasoning by helping people open their minds to dig past the superficial and find deeper meaning."
"The abundance of data - both hurtling through cyberspace and in our everyday, pen-and-paper lives can easily push us into infomageddon - a chasm where content is plentiful, but meaningless."
"Words printed on paper have always facilitated concentrated and sustained attention and thought."
"Like hungry predators, we charge forward into our devices demanding an instantaneous fix only to lurch away moments later searching for more prey. This is very different from a generation ago, when people sat passively in libraries carefully reading books uninterrupted from start to finish."
"You don't often find a video clip in a company's strategic plan."
"Don't be lured by the bright lights of multimedia just because they're eye-popping. Evaluate the options at hand, and only choose multimedia options if they serve your needs .... But remaining stagnant and sticking with old-school communication techniques can be just as dangerous, if not more so."
"He's right - 'know thy audience' - if there were a cardinal rule of communication, this would probably be it."
"If you want to produce a singular product designed to address disparate audiences - people with varied levels of experience in myriad subjects - be careful. It may seem easier to produce just one communication product for everyone, but if may not reach those varied audiences as effectively as you'd like."
"He studied hard and learned his material thoroughly, but he doled out his new found knowledge carefully - not spiting out everything he studied all at once. Holding back on information - and knowing when to masterfully insert your expertise - is communication excellence."
"By giving our audience more detail, using bigger words, and creating grander sentences, some think we'll be more successful in getting them to understand our complicated topic. Effective
communication is about reaching your audience and getting them to understand your point. Don't complicate when you can simplify."
"The best way for us to reach them is by delivering meaningful, understandable information."
"When you use jargon, special words, or expressions specific professions or groups use, you're creating a barrier between yourself and your audience. Like memberships in a private club, you may feel warm and fuzzy if included, but if you're the person unable to get past the security desk, you may feel purposefully left out. Jargon makes people feel excluded. Communicating the complicated is about inclusivity, not exclusivity."
"When to simplify and when to clarify are judgement calls you the communicator need to make. The more you understand your audience and the better your understand your topic, the more likely you'll be able to know when to simplify and when to clarify."
"Layering breaks big, unwieldy concepts into bite-size morsels that prevent audiences from gagging on too much information. Building new ideas on top of what is already known eases the sting of comprehending the complicated."
"Never omit elements of the steps in your explanation. Doing so could compromise accuracy. Layering is about simplification through steps., not about dumbing down."
"But that's because so many documents are cluttered with visuals that are more decorative than informative. Images we think add value to a document or instructional piece may not be effective and can actually deter audiences from comprehending the message."
"Caught up in the geewhiz excitement about digital tools, many of us forgot that good communication means bringing insight to an audience, not glitz. The widespread availability of graphics programs ha opened Pandora's Box of visual stimuli, but much of what 's in there has been meaningless adornment."
What is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book?
I checked a word document of mine using the Readability Statistics and it had a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 12.7. I would have guessed it to be lower then that. The author states that you want to shoot for somewhere between 8 and 10 when addressing a professional audience. I may not quickly alter my writing style but having the measuring capability as well as understanding of where I want to target will help me to be able to reach more of my intended audience.
What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book?
"There are no hard and fast rules to follow regarding what should be presented to your audience and what should be tossed into the trash. Finding the right formula - the prefect balance of 'simple enough, but not too simple' content - is an art form in itself." When creating a presentation or delivering a message there are a lot of things that we should think about and evaluate. Just being more aware of all the small details that can add or detract from a communication will help form better communication. I will think about the media being used, the graphics to include (charts, graphs, pictures) as well as the correct level for the intended audience.
What is one point you disagreed with, or at least questioned, in this book?
The author was making a case for adding a human style to corporate communications to increase connectivity. Although this could help connect with some of your audience, I can hear others in the audience saying "that's dumb why do I care about this personal stuff? just tell me what needs to be communicated." With this you would be capturing better attention from some of your audience but more drastically driving away others.
July 27, 2018
"Supercommunicator" claims to explain the complicated so that anyone can understand. Written by Frank J. Pietrucha, this book discusses the ideas of communication in the age of internet and instant gratification. Many of the experts in this book argue that people have lost the ability and desire to actually sit down and read things. I can understand that sort of thing I suppose. It used to be that you would go to a library and see people reading; now they all are on some device or another. There are rare exceptions of course, but those are few and far between. So the idea is to facilitate this mental weakness that we are fostering with devices and instant content. It’s pretty interesting to consider that we just give up, but it just becomes too much eventually. Even I have only so much of an attention span, so that isn’t really saying something groundbreaking.
The book is alright. It isn’t really phenomenal or amazing, but it does what it sets out to do in a fashion that explains the subject of communication. The chapters are very short as is suggested in one of the points and tells us that advanced computer graphics don’t need to be applied to a graph or chart. I didn’t really know that this was a thing that needed to be said explicitly.
Anyway, my thoughts are a bit scattered so here I shall finish this review.
The book is alright. It isn’t really phenomenal or amazing, but it does what it sets out to do in a fashion that explains the subject of communication. The chapters are very short as is suggested in one of the points and tells us that advanced computer graphics don’t need to be applied to a graph or chart. I didn’t really know that this was a thing that needed to be said explicitly.
Anyway, my thoughts are a bit scattered so here I shall finish this review.
March 28, 2019
I found the book to be "preachy".
The author should hold the mirror up to himself.
He talks about an inter view with a CEO of a Chilean Telephone company that he had not prepared for. Then later on he commends David Frost for doing his homework and learning the subject before conducting his interview with Nixon.
He places the entire responsibility of communication on one side, and says that everyone else is to dumb or lazy.
Communication is a two way street. If you want to communicate with someone in another field, you shoudl make just as much of an effort as you want the person you are talking to to make.
The author should hold the mirror up to himself.
He talks about an inter view with a CEO of a Chilean Telephone company that he had not prepared for. Then later on he commends David Frost for doing his homework and learning the subject before conducting his interview with Nixon.
He places the entire responsibility of communication on one side, and says that everyone else is to dumb or lazy.
Communication is a two way street. If you want to communicate with someone in another field, you shoudl make just as much of an effort as you want the person you are talking to to make.
July 18, 2019
There are some really good tips in here, but I've gotten them from other sources as well. It does have some practical steps for communications that everyone should follow, but if you have read a number of books on communications, marketing, and writing you'll find that you already know 95% of it.
July 2, 2019
This is a great read for anyone in a marketing/content writing field. Or anyone who wants to communicate better. He has some great points.
July 9, 2023
A helpful and simplified way to look at communicating your message. Great real life situational examples.
January 9, 2024
Easy to listen to and very well presented. Ideal for people that do presentations, writing, or graphics.
February 9, 2024
A good book, although I was hoping for more story examples of bad communication help compare to good communication.
Read
November 30, 2025DNF
March 3, 2014
I'm sorry, but I only made it 20% in. It reads like a first draft, and even an ARC needs to be more polished than this.
My annotations were mainly correcting outdated facts (Apple has been selling multimedia ebooks for at least a year, they're not coming), or making notes to research the claims and statistics because they feel generalized and misused.
I really wish I had of been able to read this. My usual Who is the audience? question went to Facebook, because I struggled to believe there are enough people left in the working population who need definitions for multimedia and still images.
Also, if you're releasing something for review, please correct the typos first. It makes reading more difficult.
If you need an editor, I'm happy to help out.
My annotations were mainly correcting outdated facts (Apple has been selling multimedia ebooks for at least a year, they're not coming), or making notes to research the claims and statistics because they feel generalized and misused.
I really wish I had of been able to read this. My usual Who is the audience? question went to Facebook, because I struggled to believe there are enough people left in the working population who need definitions for multimedia and still images.
Also, if you're releasing something for review, please correct the typos first. It makes reading more difficult.
If you need an editor, I'm happy to help out.
August 4, 2014
I wasn't a huge fan of "Supercommunicator: Explaining the Complicated So Anyone Can Understand" by Frank J. Pietrucha. The book was drawn out and could have been much more condensed. Pietrucha makes some good points though and it's worth skimming through to highlight the valuable advice he gives.
April 1, 2015
I loved having so many great examples of effective, and ineffective, communication stories in one book. I am sure I will be recounting some of these stories in the future to make the point that communication skills matter a lot.
January 20, 2016
A basic primer on how to communicate complex info more effectively
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews