Chris Fenning explains how to talk to non-experts by choosing the right perspective for your audience. He breaks down three perspectives: user, business, and expert. Each asks different questions, and he shows how Uber looks different from each angle.
Chapters
Hi and welcome to the How to Talk to Non-Experts tip series. Let's jump in with tip number 1: choose the right perspective for your audience. Now, what does this mean? It means that when you're talking to your audience, they will have a particular perspective on the topic that you're talking about, and it's likely to be one of 3 main topics— one of 3 main perspectives. And the main perspectives we have at work are the user perspective, the business perspective, and the expert perspective. Now, as an expert, this tends to be how you'll think about your topic, but your audience might be thinking about, how do I use it? Are they a user of your product or service or data or whatever it is that you're telling them? Or do they have a business perspective? Are they thinking about, what does this mean for the business? Does this inform business decision? Is there going to be an outcome that the business cares about? These are the three perspectives that most people use when they hear, understand, and evaluate information. Now, if you don't do this, what happens if you don't consider the audience perspective? Well, it leads to confusion and less attention. If I'm an expert and I'm talking to a user about a new service that they will use within our organization. They will— and I'm talking about the details of how this thing works and how it was built and the history behind it— they're going to be confused because they'll be thinking, well, what is in this for me? Likewise, if I was talking to a manager about this new particular product, but I was using the user perspective, so I was telling them what it did in a person's job and how it made that person's job easier, the manager might be confused because they're thinking, Well, what does this mean for the business or for the budget? What does it mean for the organization? So using the wrong perspective leads to confusion. And when people are confused, they generally pay less attention. So now that you know you need to consider the audience perspective, how do you do it? What is it that you can actually do to make this easier for yourself? Well, the first step is to identify the relationship between the audience and the topic that you are talking to them about. And there are a few questions you can use to make this easier. If you're talking to a user, these are the 2 questions they're going to think about: What does it mean for me? And what can I do with it? If your audience, the people that you're talking to, are thinking these things, they have a user perspective, and it means that you should frame your message and deliver your message helping to answer these 2 questions. Now, if they have a business perspective, these are the 2 questions: What does it do for the business? And what can the business do with this idea, product, problem, risk? What does this risk mean for the business? What does it do for the business? So if these are the questions that your audience might be asking themselves, they have a business perspective and you should be presenting your information or delivering it With— to answer these types of questions. And finally, the expert perspective. If you're the expert talking to non-experts, well, you already know how it does the thing. You already know the detail and so on. So the expert perspective tends to fit into the how does it do it category. This is the question that they would have. Now, to make this a little more real, I've got an example for you. I'm going to describe Uber, the taxi company, the people-moving company, using each of these 3 perspectives. Perspectives. I'm just going to describe what the company does to give you an idea of how these 3 perspectives differ. If I was describing Uber to a user, I'd say, well, it gets you where you need to go. So the user perspective, my perspective is it gets me where I need to go. If I'm a manager, a leader, an executive within Uber, and I'm thinking about the business, how would I describe it? Well, I'd say Uber earns money by transporting customers. That's what Uber does from a business perspective. Now, from an expert perspective, and there are lots of different types of experts, but from an expert perspective, I could say Uber is a combination of booking systems, cars, drivers, and so on. And they do, well, they do this, they move people and they transport people and goods and food in Uber Eats, and they earn money. So in describing one company, I can describe it in 3 very different ways by considering the user perspective, business perspective and the expert perspective. And considering what the audience perspective is will help me describe it in a way that makes the most sense for them. So if you are talking to a non-expert audience, the first tip is make sure you choose the right perspective for that audience.
