Let's say you've asked yourself once again when you're trying to communicate your work.
Who's it for.
And the answer is people outside your team.
So clients customers fans.
It's also really important.
After you've asked Who's afford to follow up with that other question we talked about.
What do they need to know.
And now again remember always the line here between these two groups isn't set in stone.
They have overlaps.
These exercises were going through only to get you thinking from a perspective of the person you're
trying to communicate with.
What do they need to know now I think this one is best explained with a little story that I have now.
I made a presentation for a board meeting once we were there to present our results on a recent software
proof of concept to some executives and now being an engineer.
My presentation slides were clogged with detailed text barely large enough to read it contained every
single detail of the project.
The techniques used equations algorithms acronyms with no definition.
The presentation looked great to other engineers but caused the executives to squint lean in and basically
ignore everything I was saying to just try and read what was on the slides but once we made it to the
end a slide with a visual appeared to which I palmed off as basically unnecessary Oh don't worry about
that.
But this immediately sparked the interest of the executives.
One of them asked What's that.
And we spent the next 45 minutes discussing that one slide in detail the slide which to me didn't matter
now the lesson here is what you think is important may be the opposite to others.
And what's obvious to you what was obvious to me on this slide may be amazing to someone else now knowing
this obvious to you but amazing to others.
You'll start to realize unless they directly tell you figuring out what your clients customers and fans
want to know is a challenge and a solution to this is to ask.
So most people have a lot to offer like in my original presentation no one was saying anything because
they're just trying to read the slides.
But once we got to something that sparked their interest they had a lot to say.
So remember most people have a lot to offer but rarely volunteer it.
Ask if what you're saying is clear.
Ask if there is anything else they'd like to see which is what we were talking about here for 45 minutes.
Once I realized oh wait there is a lot of other things they'd like to see.
Now of course you may get something left of field things that you're unsure of.
In these cases it's up to you to address them before they become larger issues.
Don't forget sometimes the best answer is I don't know but I'll figure it out and get back to you.
Or That's not what we're focused on for now and then bringing it back to what you are focused on.
So these things are just some of the tricks of the trade that I've picked up over time.
The next video we're going to wrap this all up put together what we've talked about in the last few
videos.