Better Communication with Non-Technical People?

tinpan asks: "I've got a communication problem. When non-technical managers ask me to explain technical choices, they often make choices I recommend against and they later regret. I can tell that they do not understand their choice because of how they are explaining things to each other, but they usually refuse further explanation. So, it's time for some education. I want to get better at communicating technical subjects to non-technical people. More accurately, I want to get better at helping non-technical people make better technical decisions and I'm willing to accept it may include some understanding of 'selling your idea.' What advice do my fellow readers have in accomplishing this? What books, online courses and/or seminars do you recommend and why?"

Comments

3 Choices

[jfb3]

Give your manager 3 choices. The first choice won't quite solve the problem. The second choice costs way too much. The third choice is the one you want him to pick.

Re:3 Choices

[foniksonik]

Graphic Designers use this same technique. We are always asked to develop multiple 'comps' or compositions to present to a client. Usually there is really only a budget for one 'comp' as creativity takes way more time than people think and we always always take as much time as we can to come up with something interesting to us AND the client (good designers also consider business needs, demographics, existing branding strategies, etc. etc.).

SO, we will typically make 3 designs. A) is bland and boring but meets the requirements. B) is outrageous and cool and but doesn't meet requirements and C) meets requirements but has a very cool concept that we spent 90% of the time working up.

They usually pick A ;-p but we got to have fun on B and C.... AND the client feels like we made a great effort to present them with viable options (even though B was never in the budget) and every once in a while some client will go crazy and pick something other than A or incorporate some aspect of B and C into A.

Be careful though, never present (design or technical) any option that you DO NOT want them to pick. They assume that all options are recommended because you presented them. You wouldn't be presenting a bad option now would you?

Re:3 Choices

[amuro98]

Don't talk about the "wrong" choices first. Think about it - if you were CEO, you don't want to hear what's NOT going to solve the problem. You just want to know a problem has been identified, and what the solution is - not what the solution isn't.

Between your introduction and high-level description of the "right" choice, you shouldn't use more than a few paragraphs. Seriously, most folks won't bother to read more than a page - maybe two.

And KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don't write something like "The ambient temperature in the enterprise equipment room has risen beyond reccomended levels. To address this, we are requesting additional infrastrctures for waste heat management". Instead write "The server room is too hot. We should buy a second air conditioner." After that, you can explain things like why this is a problem, what other choices could be, and why they're wrong. Even go into mathematical analysis that would make your thermodynamics prof. proud - just don't do it on the first page.

I wouldn't have thought that a writing class would have been among the most useful classes I took in college until one of my reports ended up being presented at a board meeting, where it was used as the basis for making a rather large-scale decision affecting the entire company. Eep...

Some times you just need to speak with authority

[FreeKill]

I have been in the same situation before and many times I've found the best way to get your ideas across is the be authoritative and not back down when you think they are making the wrong choice. That obviously depends on the type of environment you're in, but for me I find that sometimes it just takes standing up for your ideas to convince those in charge they are worth looking into.

Re:Some times you just need to speak with authorit

[QuantumG]

Absolutely. Typically, when someone is non-technical and asks me a technical question, I ask them why they want to know. When they tell me the problem, I tell them how to solve it. When they ask if there is another way to solve it, I say I wouldn't recommend any other way. Even if I have a few alternatives up my sleeve, I don't offer them.. it only confuses the non-technical person.

The worst is when the non-technical person asks a room full of technical people for a solution to a problem. You usually get a whole lot of really poorly thought out solutions. Sometimes, however, you will get one good solution.. and the non-technical person will ask a lot of questions about how this is going to effect business needs of some description. This is bad. If this is your solution, you should immediately suggest that you will follow up with the non-technical person at a later time.. or immediately take them out of the room.

Because you know what's coming? An alternative. Typically a worse alternative. This happens all the time. Technical people love to bring up poor solutions to problems and contrast them against the better solution. They think the non-technical person is going to see why the best solution is better if they can see the reasoning behind why the worse solutions are worse. They want to elevate the conversation out of talking about business needs and back into the technical realm. This is guarenteed to confuse the non-technical person.

The result of which will be the wrong decision. And who gets to clean up the mess? Yeah, we do.

influence, not communication

[nido]

Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion might be what you're looking for.

Don't use Acronyms

[caferace]

I learned this simple technique 23 years ago, as a 22 year old hot-shot at a startup called Microwave Communications Incorporated.

Non-technical people (read: bean counters) like to have slow, soothing explanations, not a lot of jargon laden speechifying. Sometimes, it takes some leveling of your personal technical hubris to ratchet it down a notch, but if you want your IT life to be simple, you have to explain things in terms they'll understand.

None of this requires a book, a seminar or a conference. It's internal, and if you don't learn it intuitively, you won't use it properly.

-jim

Re:The best advice you can get....

[zappepcs]

Without trying to vitriolic, I did say start reading CIO magazine or whatever it takes. Managers read magazines, talk to their peers, or watch the news etc. to find out what is happening in the world, and they are more often motivated by the CIO (due to SarbOx rules) than anything else lately. If you don't EDUCATE yourself in order to communicate on their levels you will never get through to them no matter how elegant or cost efficient your proposal is.

I'm not going to tell you to trust me on this, but I will say that if you don't learn to communicate effectively with the audience that you are trying to appeal to, you will never get anywhere no matter what your message is. This is why we see so much political posturing during elections; they are trying to appeal to the voters - their audience.

At every level of business, you have to be political. The absolutely largest part of politics is relating to your intended audience. If you need to take speaking classes, finance classes, whatever... do something so that you can relate to your audience in a way that is EASY for them to understand.

Is that a bit more clear?

Re:retail

[cerberusss]

Don't feel bad about it. You can't avoid other people's mistakes, they have to make their own. That girl will probably remember your advice for the rest of her life.

My dealings with non tech savvy CIOs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had a couple of bosses who were very ignorant of the technological aspects of the work the company did. They were CIO's and were hired primarily because the company owner thought that a good manager should be able to manage anything.

One had some promise. He understood that he was, to be kind, completely devoid of any real understanding of the technology. He relied heavily on the knowledge of the staff and focused on the client facing and staff management aspects of the job. All was well, until it turned out he was a paranoid nut who started playing a variety of political games instead of doing the job, but until then, he was able to do well. He'd demonstrated that a good manger really can manage something of which they have limited understanding.

Another manager was the flip side. He had no understanding of the technology, and was, to be kind, a hand wringing, spineless jellyfish. The thought of pushing for the cash for a major hardware upgrade was beyond his capabilities, and all of our insistence that the system was dying fell on deaf ears because "Well, it's working now, isn't it?"

And when I say "hand wringing" I mean it literally. He would walk around wringing his hands like he was washing them. Walt helps Locke out of the pit. Charlie drowns when Mikhail blows up the underwater station. Jack attempts to contact Kate in flash-forwards off the island. And whenever we discussed budgets or the need for new servers, our manager would get a terrified "Deer in the headlights" look in his eyes.

While he accomplished literally nothing and was, through his inaction, responsible for several major system crashes, he lasted a VERY long time, because he always told the owner what he wanted to hear, and blamed the IT staff when something went wrong, something the owner was apt to accept at face value.

Re:Start using 'good' analogies

[rts008]

That's it in a nutshell. Very concise and to the point.
However...as good as your advice is, I get the impression that he is needing more.

The rest of this is not a direct reply to your post, but in the hopes he actually reads this.

Okay Cliff, I can't give you specific books or classes to take to help you, mainly because what you are asking help for is difficult to define, much less give specific info to help you without actually being in your shoes.

Two things I learned in college that have helped me to no end. (I went to school to become a Veterinary Technician...kind of like a RN in human medicine- trying to remember the river rat in Ethiopia that is a common carrier of an internal parasite's particular scientific name!!?! How will that help me to try to remember that in Oklahoma?)

1. No matter how good you are in your field, ya' can't remeber it all, but if you know where to look for the reference/info/documentation, then that is good enough as long as you have a good grasp on what needs to be available on recall, and what can be looked up as needed.

    How does this relate?
    Get your PHB a reference library (simple FAQ on Corp. net, Linux for Dummies, etc.-use what fits) that's easy and quick for him/her to reference.

2.One of the most difficult subjects I had was Anesthesiology (put 'em under for surgery). Our finals were a blank sheet of paper with one problem:
"I am a layman, explain everything you know about anesthesia to me so I understand it."
Theory was that if you actually know the subject, you can explain to a layman on one page, if you didn't know the subject, then you would have to turn the page over, even some asking for more paper to explain.

On that note, practice on friends, tolerant family, cow-orkers, etc. and try to get constructive critics to give you specifics.
If their eyes glaze over during your explaination, then you need to study/practice more.

I wish that I could give you the magic wand effect and point you to the perfect tutorial, but this is all I can give you.

Thanks in advance for your patience Beefysworld, wasn't trying to trash you- you were spot on.

Re:retail

[Aladrin]

Okay, I'm totally against shitty salesman tactics. (I passed this test... I was a salesman for a year and a half and was really bad at it because I refused to push a sale... Heh.)

But this is not one of them. You did EVERYTHING in your power, even went WAY beyond (shame on you) and she still insisted on buying that car at a stupid price. You didn't sell her that car, you merely ran the paperwork. 'Selling' involves an effort to entice the customer to buy. You did exactly the opposite.

Maybe your immortal soul will have to atone for other saleman-sins, but this is not one of them..

Re:The best advice you can get....

[Skapare]

As much as I hate it, zappepcs is exactly right on this. Management will not adjust itself to your terms. You need to adjust to their terms and concepts, or find new management (e.g. change jobs ... yeah, there are vast differences in managers).

Things to especially keep in mind include: 1: Express the issue in business terms, including short and long term costs, impact on revenues and sales, legal liabilities, and a thorough risk analysis (risks not only of a paradigm shift in technology, but also a shift in markets, staffing, etc). ... and 2: Give managers choices, but not too many. Two choices can usually work. Three or Four choices is better, even if one or two are obviously bad choices. More than that is probaby too many (depending on the complexity of the issue).

Put it in writing. Summarize entirely in not more than one page, better if it is one or two paragraphs. The whole report shouldn't be more than 2 to 6 pages, shorter is better. Then just say the full details can be made available if needed (they usually don't want it, but some will). And include your recommendation and why in one paragraph. The higher level the manager is, the shorter all this usually needs to be.

Re:Give them one choice

[2nd Post!]

Your manager doesn't want choices. They want the right decision. Going technical doesn't help them make the right decision. Neither is giving them choices (though using the Decoy effect is very efficient).

Give them the right choice. You know what the requirements are. You know if it's too expensive, or too difficult, or too time consuming. So make the right choice and then give it to your manager.

Give them the explanation only if they ask for it.
Give them the alternatives only if they ask for them.