TJ Walker explains how to communicate complex technical information to non-technical audiences by prioritizing a small number of essential ideas, testing that the audience remembers them, and simplifying visuals. He emphasizes limiting spoken points to about five, providing detailed materials as handouts only, and using iterative testing with representative audience members to obtain empirical evidence of what is remembered.
Chapters
What do you do if you have to communicate the value of complex technical information and you've got to do it to a non technical audience? This is a challenge so many people face. And unfortunately, the solution most people choose is, oh, I know, I'll just give people more and more and more data, I'll overwhelm them, they'll be convinced I'm really smart and no one will criticize me. That is far and away the default position of most people who are given the responsibility of communicating the value of complex technical information. And what's the second thing they do? Add a whole bunch of complex slides, lots of graphs, lots of numbers, charts with eight different color codes. And they put in a lot of hard work, often hours and hours, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, on these elaborate PowerPoint presentations. And how much communication actually takes place? Typically that much, zero. Remember what communication is? It's an idea in your head that goes from your head out your mouth, typically, or something else you're presenting into the eyes, ears, brain of one person or audience member. Whether it's 1, 2 people, 10, 10,000 goes into their brain, they understand your idea and they remember it so they can act upon it. Again, if you're trying to convey the value of complex technical information, it's typically because you want them to buy this reactor or buy this complex EV car. You want them to take the information to do something. Therefore, you've got to start off by asking yourself, what ideas of all this complex technical information do I absolutely, positively have to have my audience understand and remember so they can take the actions I want? Always start off by asking yourself, what is it I really want my audience to do? Then you've got to brainstorm on every possible idea, every complex technical idea you could say about it. But here's the hard part. This is what trips people up. This next step. You now have to put all these technical details, all this complexity, and put them in priority from most important to least important. And the big mistake everyone makes is they figure, well, I don't know, that seems like a lot of work. Let me just tell people everything. If you try to communicate everything, you will communicate nothing. If you're speaking to a non technical audience, guess what? They don't have to know all the technical details. It's not their job. It's your job to know all the technical details because you have been asked to speak or present. It's an opportunity for you to really help these people in what they need to know. And you can't do that unless you use your judgment you have to ask yourself, of all these ideas, I know what are the most essential for this audience and what is critical for you to do is to limit it to a handful, literally a hand. How many do you see there? Do I have 12 fingers? No, there's only five. You've got to limit your ideas to five. Now, you can certainly give lots of slides and handouts and PDFs of all the other complex technical information for anyone who wants it. But when you are speaking, do not be greedy. Don't quickly lay out one technical fact, another technical fact, another one, one after another, and overwhelm people. Yes, you can say them, you can understand it, they might understand it. But the challenge is not getting your audience to understand complex technical information and benefits about product or service you have. The challenge is to get them to remember these key points. If they don't remember them, how are they going to take action? How are they going to tell other people about this? Quite often, if you're conveying complex technical information, it's because you're giving a demonstration to one group of people who then have to go back to their company to recommend whether or not they buy your product or services or someone else's. If they don't have the ability to not only understand it, but to remember it, how are they going to tell their colleagues? So you always have to look at this through the lens of what is the ultimate where is this really going? How does this filter out to what I need? If you're trying to get people to buy you, if you're trying to get people to sign contracts, if you're trying to get funding, what is it you want them to do? If you're giving a complex technical presentation on some new scientific discovery and you're pitching venture capitalist, you got to realize maybe the final decision maker isn't in the room. You might be talking to a junior partner who may love what you're talking about, but if they can't, then explain it to the senior partner who has to finally do the check and sign the check for you. You haven't accomplished anything. Here's the number one thing you can do to really dramatically increase the odds that your complex technical information is working on your audience. Test it. That's right. Test it. Well, tj, Public speaking is a soft skill. You can't relate to it. Wrong. You can test the effectiveness. So if you are giving, for example, a highly technical presentation about a new device, a new scientific discovery, a new application, and you're giving this to 20 venture capitalists on Thursday. Find one or two venture capitalists, perhaps a friend, perhaps a friend of a friend, who will meet you for lunch Tuesday or will let you come to them. Give them your entire technical presentation. And when you're done, ask them not what they think, not what they liked. Ask them what they remembered. Ask them what slides they remember, ask them what messages they remember, ask them what stories, case studies they remembered, and then listen. People can lie and tell you, oh, you did a good job and not really mean it, but they can't lie and tell you they actually remembered stuff if they didn't remember stuff. So this is crucial information. So if you have a highly technical slide that you put up and you talked about it quickly for 30 seconds and you went to the next one and the people you tested your presentation on Tuesday didn't remember it, you now have empirical evidence that that slide is ineffective. Empirical evidence, it's worthless. Take that slide, tear it up, throw it in the garbage can, or give it to people after your presentation. But don't spend time projecting it, showing it. If you have evidence, it's not sinking into your audience. You get credit not for the ideas in your brain. You get credit not for the ideas, facts, and technical messages that come out of your mouth. You're getting credit for the ideas that go into the brains, the memories, your audience, so they can not only understand it, but remember it to tell other people. So you need to keep practicing refining your complex technical presentation until you have empirical evidence it works. And maybe you do this and it works the first time on your test audience. Maybe you do it again and email it to other colleagues in different places and see what they remember. Maybe you have to do it twice, maybe you have to do it a hundred times. Guess what? I don't care. It's not that I don't care about you, but what I really care about is your audience. I think understanding your complex messages are they remember. The key to really making a complex idea understandable is you have to truly isolate one idea at a time, truly isolate one fact at a time, and then you have to put it into context so that people can see it. They have to see the significance. Doesn't matter if you're talking about a financing instrument, atoms and protons, they have to visualize it if you want them to remember it. You can make any complex idea understandable if you break it down. You go from the abstract level down to the ground so that people can see it, taste it, touch it, feel it metaphorically. If you do that, you can be a master of communicating complex technical ideas to a non technical audience.
