Better Ways to Communicate Tech to a Non-Tech Audience

The simplest way to ease up these conversations is to avoid tech jargon and acronyms

One of the superpowers that a tech PM need is the ability to make the business easily understand tech concepts. It’s a skill that is hard to master. Numerous unsuccessful and successful attempts have taught me a few lessons that helped in becoming better at it.

The simplest way to ease up these conversations is to avoid tech jargon and acronyms.

Elon Musk once wrote an email to all of his SpaceX staff with the subject like ‘Acronyms Seriously Suck’. In another leaked mail called ‘productivity recommendations’, he lists ‘jargon avoidance’. Elon Musk doesn’t hate jargon and acronyms cause he can’t understand them. He hates them because he understands that ‘anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication.

Personally, I stopped using jargon due to another reason. I realised that people are sometimes reluctant to ask for explanations even if they don’t understand a concept. A small minority might even assume it to be something else and would continue listening. I started explicitly encouraging others to ask questions if they don’t follow and soon realised that I was spending more time explaining tech jargon and acronyms. The easiest path was obviously not to use them in the first place.

Tell them what they need to know instead of confusing them with all available information

Keep it simple. One good way of narration is the STAR approach. Tell them about the situation, then the task or the problem followed by the action and the expected result. But when that’s done, keep the concepts at a high level. Messages like “The input data was corrupt”, can be easily understood by the business instead of fear-inducing messages like “The streamed in JSON file has multiple key-value pairs missing from the web scrape array”.

Some situations might demand a detailed explanation. The top-down approach works in those cases.

A problem or solution generally has many layers. The most abstract layer can be assumed to be the top layer. The lowest layers would combine all the details and integrations. Explain the whole thing first in terms of the top layer. Then once again goes from end-to-end in the next detailed layer. Go deeper depending on the situation.

Simple visual aid works wonders

Human beings can digest pictures much faster than they can digest words. While it’s not practical to prepare slides for every possible situation, simple pen and paper illustrations can do the trick for quick discussions. Make an attempt to draw or write down keywords; circling, highlighting, or boxing when necessary. Create an illusion of data flow in form of directional arrows. Connect the box to visualize integrated systems. Use that empty whiteboard and markers when in a meeting room.

Meeting rooms shouldn't be too big

Well, the meeting rooms can be big, but the number of people in them should be small. It’s better to have a smaller group if the interaction needs to be engaging. I have faith in Amazon’s two-pizza rule. Jeff Bezos believes that no meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed the whole group. The meeting effectiveness is maximized when this rule is applied.

Listen to understand, not reply

Once a stakeholder came up to me and requested to initiate a planning session to build an ML solution for a problem. While my team did have multiple ML pipelines in place, the use case that was in the discussion wasn’t one that needed it. Business leaders often have a different perspectives on AI/ML solutions. Many believe that it is the ultimate problem solver. However, not all problems need AI/ML. As I listened further, asking questions when necessary, the real problem was exposed. It was quickly sorted out as we already did have the tech capability to provision it. The business got the results that it wanted quickly and was very appreciative of it. Had I blindly followed the initial request, we would have spent many sprints building a complex solution that wasn’t quite necessary.

Communication is a two-way path. It’s not always about articulating your views and ideas. Listening is as important. We all generally have a tendency to listen to answer questions. Instead, we need to listen with an open mind to understand that perspective.

Conclusion

For solving a real-world problem, both the business and tech viewpoints need to go hand-in-hand. The first step in getting that sorted is to make sure both sides understand each other. A technical product manager ideally needs to understand both sides and need to use their communication skills to make sure both sides understand each other.

Clear communication is the key to both understanding and explaining thoughts and processes. By avoiding jargon, maintaining simple language, and following a straightforward explanation strategy, it becomes easier for the non-tech staff to understand tech on a high level. Visual aids as well as maintaining a small crowd improves the effectiveness of this ritual. Listening to understand with an open mind is the final piece to this puzzle.

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