The Rubik's Cube Explanation: Why Analogies Are Your Secret Weapon

Your developers might write flawless code, but can they explain it to someone who doesn't speak their language? Hari breaks this down.

I've been teaching storytelling and communication skills for seven years now, and I'll tell you something that always surprises people: stories aren't just memorable – they're survival tools.

Our brains evolved to retain information through stories because that's how knowledge is passed down through generations. Before we had books, before we had Post-it notes, before we had diary reminders, we had oral storytelling traditions.

And the data backs this up. In a 1969 study, researchers asked two groups to memorise a list of twelve words. Group one just memorised the list. Group two had to put those twelve words into the form of a story. When they tested both groups ten to fifteen minutes later, people in the second group were seven times more likely to remember all twelve words.

Seven times.

Not because they had better memories, but because they'd given those words context, connection, and meaning.

It's Raining Chair Legs

Let me ask you something. If you were caught outside on a particularly wet and miserable day – the kind where you're soaked to the skin – how would you describe that rain?

You might say it was bucketing down. Torrential. A deluge. The heavens opened. It was lashing down, biblical, relentless. The rain was bouncing. Maybe you'd even reach for that classic: it was raining cats and dogs.

Here's the thing though – none of those descriptions are literally true. There's no one up there with a bucket. The heavens don't have doors. Cats and dogs aren't falling from the sky. Yet we all understand exactly what these phrases mean because they paint a picture, they create an image that's instantly relatable.

That's the power of metaphor. That's the power of analogy.

According to Will Storr's book The Science of Storytelling, we use a metaphor about once every ten words in English. At first I didn't believe that statistic. Once every ten words? But then I started paying attention. The rain is hammering down. It's pouring. These aren't just descriptions – they're creative expressions that help us understand intensity, volume, and impact.

If you start looking around the world, the ways different cultures describe heavy rain are wonderfully creative. In South Africa and Namibia, it's raining old women with clubs. In the Czech Republic, tractors are falling. In Greece, it's raining chair legs. Can you just see those raindrops? Those long, thick, heavy drops coming down? Of course they're chair legs. It's raining chair legs.

We like our creative expressions, and that's really what analogies are. Analogies are metaphors with meaning. Analogies are when we use something simple to explain something complicated.

The Cork Boat Interview

I love the example from John Pollock's TED talk. He was interviewing for a speechwriting position at the White House when the chief speechwriter started frowning at his CV. "What's this about building a cork boat?" he asked.

Pollock had been saving wine corks since the age of seven to build a Viking ship. You can imagine how that might look to a potential employer. The entire interview was slipping away until this analogy popped into his head:

"Building a cork boat and writing a good speech are a lot alike. In both cases, you take a jumble of small things – corks or words that don't do much on their own – but if you put them into just the right order, they'll take you on an amazing voyage."

He got the job.

By the way, he did actually build the cork boat and sail it down the Douro River. If you have a search on Google, you can see photos of the Viking ship made out of wine corks, which at least is good for a giggle.

That's what a good analogy does. It creates an instant connection between something unfamiliar and something your audience already understands.

The Blockchain Breakthrough

A few years ago, I worked for a technology consultancy that wanted everyone trained on blockchain. They produced two videos. In the first one, someone just stood there holding a long silver chain. That's literally the only thing I remember about that video – someone holding a chain. Blockchain, chains. Do I know how blockchain works? No. Do I know what it is? No.

The second video changed everything. Someone held up a Rubik's Cube.

Imagine, they said, that I've posted all of you a brand new Rubik's Cube, straight out of the box. All identical. We're going to make adjustments to our cubes together on a video call, and we'll keep them all exactly the same.

How long do you think that would work? Someone's going to ask if you turned clockwise or anticlockwise. Is it my right or your right? Which bit's the top? We're going to very quickly end up with a bunch of Rubik's cubes that look nothing like each other.

Now imagine instead of a physical Rubik's Cube, you have a virtual one on your laptop. When I change my Rubik's Cube, that change immediately transmits to all sixty of you. All sixty Rubik's cubes stay in sync. If one cube gets out of sync – maybe someone tries to cheat – we immediately know that one doesn't match the others, and it can be excluded.

That's blockchain.

I mean, yes, there are some complicated bits about cryptography and bits and bobs, but effectively it is a bunch of virtual Rubik's cubes sitting on computers and staying linked together so they always remain in sync and the same.

It's been eight years since I heard that explanation, and it's still the best description of blockchain I've ever encountered.

The Restaurant API

I've worked with enough technical teams over the years to have said "we'll just set that up via an API" many times. I don't actually know what API stands for. Application Programming Interface, apparently – which still doesn't really help me understand what it does.

But I understand it perfectly through this analogy that I found on LinkedIn:

Imagine a restaurant. You've got the kitchen where chefs are cooking food, and you've got the dining room where customers are ordering food from waiters. The API is the waiter.

The waiter takes the order from the customer, brings it to the kitchen, the chef makes it, and the food comes back out. In exactly the same way, an API has a request for information in one system, it goes across to another system, gets that information, and brings it back.

An API is a waiter in a restaurant. Blockchain is a virtual Rubik's Cube. Both of these help me understand something rather technical without getting lost in the implementation details.

What Makes a Good Analogy?

A good analogy needs to be simple. You don't use rocket science to explain brain surgery. You use Lego, or ball games, or something accessible. We want to make something simple and easy to understand.

A good analogy also needs to be familiar. This is where you have to think carefully about your audience. There are loads of sports-based analogies out there – bases are loaded, we need a Hail Mary pass, it's an unguarded goal. But I don't understand cricket. One of my stepbrothers played cricket for England, and I still don't understand cricket. So any analogy that requires me to know cricket is going to fall flat.

And in the end, this should enable us to see whatever we're talking about in a new light. This should simplify and make something really easy to understand.

The Six-Year-Old Test

When you're creating an analogy, think about explaining your concept to a six-year-old. Not because your audience are children, but because a six-year-old understands concrete things – school, friends, ice cream, telly, cartoons – without the baggage of technical knowledge.

A six-year-old understands a lot of words, but they don't understand the universe yet. For the most part, they understand things like school and friends and telly and ice cream, right? But they don't understand democracy, or they don't understand tax or mortgages.

So if we need to explain something like democracy, we want to think about how we would explain it to a six-year-old.

In our schools, we talk about choice and decision-making. How do we decide what book to read at the end of the day? How do we choose our golden time activity? It's like a PE lesson where the class all has to do one activity. They can either do football or they can run races. Put your hand up if you want to do football. Put your hand up if you want to do races.

Whichever activity has the most people who want to do it, that's the one we're going to do. And that starts to give children the idea of voting. It starts to give children the idea of majority choice, starts to explain the concept of democracy.

This works at the other end of life too. I still remember having to explain to my grandmother what the internet was. But when you need to come up with a good analogy, try and think of a six-year-old – the virtual six-year-old we imagine rather than an actual child.

Analogies at Scale

Sometimes when you're dealing with a complicated project delivery, you might wonder how to find an analogy for thirty different things in one presentation. There are analogies that can cover multiple different things. Sometimes you can use things that are thematic and draw it together.

Try and do something at a high level that gets the purpose of the presentation with a good solid analogy for it. If you're doing something on a complicated project delivery, it might be that old agile favourite – we want to build a faster bike. So what can we do to build the faster bike, or to build the faster car? We might say we could have better tyres or we could have a stronger engine or we could have stronger fuel.

If you set up a high-level project or programme-level analogy, you might be surprised at how many little baby analogies you can hang off that, which can be really helpful for being able to explain complicated and technical things.

Props Make It Real

Analogies can sometimes be made a lot easier to take on board when you have a prop. When I was explaining blockchain with the Rubik's Cube, I was actually holding a Rubik's Cube up to the camera. That visual element, that physical object, it makes the explanation stick in a way that words alone might not.

Sometimes the simplest props work best. Even just holding up a chain when talking about blockchain – whilst it didn't explain how it worked – at least gave people a memorable visual anchor.

Making Technical Brilliance Understood

When done right, analogies don't just make things easier to understand – they make complex ideas accessible to people who need to make decisions about them. They bridge the gap between technical possibilities and business needs.

The technical teams with the most influence aren't necessarily those with the best technical skills. They're the ones who can make their brilliance understood. They're the ones who know that a good analogy will take them further than diving straight into tech specs.

Because what's the value of a brilliant solution if no one understands why it matters?

The next time you need to explain something complex, don't just think about what you want to say. Think about your six-year-old. Think about your grandmother. Think about what simple, familiar thing could help someone see your idea in a completely new light.

An API is a waiter. Blockchain is a virtual Rubik's Cube. Democracy is choosing football or races in PE class.

What's your analogy?

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Want to help your team become better at translating technical brilliance into accessible explanations? Our Storytelling for Business training helps professionals master the art of analogies and communication. No corporate jargon required – just practical skills that work. Find out more about our next open course on Storytelling for Business, starting Friday, 6th June.

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