Chris Fenning explains the magic box technique: put technical details in a mental box and only describe what it does for the audience. Use "this is what" and "this is when" instead of "this is how" or "this is why." A smartphone becomes a magic box that lets you call, work remotely, and manage finances, without explaining internal components.
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Hi and welcome to the How to Talk to Non-Experts tip series. This is tip number 9, and tip number 9 is one of my favorites: use the magic box to keep things simple. When you're talking to a non-expert, you do not want a complicated message. You do not want lots of detail, and you don't want to try and educate them on your expertise. As we've talked about in this series so far, we need to focus on the impacts to the audience. Consider their perspective. Make sure our message is adapting to their level. And one of the easiest ways to simplify everything you want to deliver is to use the magic box. Now, why? And sort of a little bit more about what this is. Well, when we communicate, we want to focus on the impacts, the results, and the benefits. This is what people understand no matter what their expertise. We do not want to focus as much on the methods and processes. The caveat is if you're in a process discussion meeting, then probably focus on the processes. But generally, when you're talking to a non-expert, your focus should be on impacts, results, and benefits from their perspective. And the best way, one of the simplest ways to do this, and quite a fun way, is to use the magic box. Put everything that that audience doesn't need into the box. And I'll show you how in just a moment. Now, what happens if you don't do this? Well, if you don't use the Magic Box, you're going to give way too much detail and possibly have the wrong focus. And what I mean by the wrong focus is your message might focus too much on how the thing works or the details behind it or the history. And when you're communicating to a non-expert, there's a reason for it. You want them to do something. You want them to understand something. They probably don't need to know how your product, service, data, idea works. What they do need to know are the impacts, results, and benefits from it. And the Magic Box helps you do it like this. So this is how the Magic Box works. It's very, very simple. It's why I love this. When you're describing an idea, when you're talking about a topic, when you're talking about data, process, anything at all, you can say, here's a magic box. This is what it does. The key bit is what it does, not necessarily what it is and what's inside it and how it works and how you made it. This is what it does. Or this is what it costs to make. But mostly, this is what it does for you, the user. This is what it does for you or us as an organization, as a business. And more specifically, you can use particular phrases. You can say, this is what— this is what my idea will enable for you. This is when it will happen. If you're using sort of this is what and this is when, That's a good start for knowing that you've put all the detail in the magic box, closed the lid, and you're not showing them how the box works. You're talking about what it does and when it'll do it. Don't say, this is how, or this is why, or this happens because. If your sentences start with these, that is a pretty quick path to going into lots of detail, and we don't want to go into lots of detail with a non-expert audience because there's confusion, overwhelm, getting bogged down, and all those things we mentioned before. So if your sentences are starting with, oh, this is how, or this is why, or this is because, that's the moment to think, ah, I need to use the Magic Box. Now, I'm going to give you an example of this to hopefully make it really concrete and make more sense. I'm going to describe something to you, something very complex, using the Magic Box. And this is something that I'm pretty sure every one of you has Almost within reach right now. If not, you're watching this video on it. And this is the object that I'm going to describe. This is a magic box. Pretty sure most of you don't know how it works. Not, not really. You may have some idea that this connects to cell towers and data and so on, but how does it work? What is it made of? Who cares? The people who make it care. The people who are making the next one care. But this phone is a magic box and it's a magic box because once you've closed it and put all the detail inside, we can talk about what it does. This is a phone. It enables you to talk to someone on the other side of the world. It enables you to work from anywhere. It enables you to watch funny cat videos. You can manage your finances, pay a bill. These are all things you can do. This can save you time. This can suck time out of your day because you're watching cat videos rather than doing the work or paying the bills or talking to the person on the other side of the world. None of my statements were, this is how it works, this is why it works. All of my statements are, this is what it does. And if I was talking about a new phone, I could say, this is when it will come out. When you use this, this is what it will do for you. If you start saying, well, how does it work and what are the, the, the silicon wafers and the chips inside it and exactly what is the screen technology, then you're getting into the detail. That experts may care about, but most people from a user and a business perspective will care that this is a magic box that helps them do stuff they care about. And that is one of the simplest examples of how the magic box can help you explain a very complicated topic in a simple way. So those instructions again are, you can say, this is what it does, this is when it does it, and avoid saying, this is how, this is why, and this happens. And as an example from my own work, I've been in client meetings where they've wanted detail, or they thought they wanted detail, about how the software we were delivering worked. And what we actually said was, here's the problem that we're hearing from you. Here's the goal that you're trying to achieve. We have a magic box that helps you do X, Y, and Z, helps you achieve this, helps solve that problem. And we never once opened the box to talk about what was inside or how it works. So when you are communicating with a non-expert audience, put all of your data or as much data as possible inside the magic box and only open it if they ask. Now, this is why tip number 9 is use the magic box to keep things simple.
