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Let's say you've asked yourself once again when you're trying to communicate your work.

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Who's it for.

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And the answer is people outside your team.

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So clients customers fans.

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It's also really important.

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After you've asked Who's afford to follow up with that other question we talked about.

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What do they need to know.

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And now again remember always the line here between these two groups isn't set in stone.

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They have overlaps.

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These exercises were going through only to get you thinking from a perspective of the person you're

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trying to communicate with.

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What do they need to know now I think this one is best explained with a little story that I have now.

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I made a presentation for a board meeting once we were there to present our results on a recent software

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proof of concept to some executives and now being an engineer.

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My presentation slides were clogged with detailed text barely large enough to read it contained every

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single detail of the project.

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The techniques used equations algorithms acronyms with no definition.

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The presentation looked great to other engineers but caused the executives to squint lean in and basically

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ignore everything I was saying to just try and read what was on the slides but once we made it to the

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end a slide with a visual appeared to which I palmed off as basically unnecessary Oh don't worry about

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that.

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But this immediately sparked the interest of the executives.

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One of them asked What's that.

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And we spent the next 45 minutes discussing that one slide in detail the slide which to me didn't matter

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now the lesson here is what you think is important may be the opposite to others.

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And what's obvious to you what was obvious to me on this slide may be amazing to someone else now knowing

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this obvious to you but amazing to others.

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You'll start to realize unless they directly tell you figuring out what your clients customers and fans

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want to know is a challenge and a solution to this is to ask.

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So most people have a lot to offer like in my original presentation no one was saying anything because

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they're just trying to read the slides.

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But once we got to something that sparked their interest they had a lot to say.

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So remember most people have a lot to offer but rarely volunteer it.

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Ask if what you're saying is clear.

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Ask if there is anything else they'd like to see which is what we were talking about here for 45 minutes.

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Once I realized oh wait there is a lot of other things they'd like to see.

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Now of course you may get something left of field things that you're unsure of.

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In these cases it's up to you to address them before they become larger issues.

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Don't forget sometimes the best answer is I don't know but I'll figure it out and get back to you.

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Or That's not what we're focused on for now and then bringing it back to what you are focused on.

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So these things are just some of the tricks of the trade that I've picked up over time.

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The next video we're going to wrap this all up put together what we've talked about in the last few

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videos.