The Tech Geek’s Guide To Talking To Other People At Work

THAT BLANK STARE FROM THE CMO DOESN’T MEAN SHE’S AN IDIOT. IT MEANS YOU NEED TO TRANSLATE YOUR TECH SPEAK INTO BUSINESS SPEAK.
BY ANETT GRANT

I was talking with the head of research and development for a major medical device company, and he was really frustrated. “Anett,” he said, “my leadership team doesn’t understand what we’re doing. We’re not just a back-office function supporting the company–we’re building our products!” He felt like his team was getting trampled on and disregarded–he just didn’t know how to get his message across.

The scientific method is critical to your work, but it can screw up how you talk about it.

People in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields are used to getting blank stares and being asked dumb questions when they talk about their work. But it’s not that everyone else is stupid–it’s just that you know a lot more about the technical details than they do.

In other words, it’s a communication challenge: You need some better ways to present your solutions, discoveries, or obstacles to everybody else in your organization–to translate them from tech speak into business speak. So whether you’re a recent engineering grad just entering the corporate world, or a mid-career IT manager hoping for that big promotion, here are four tips to help you explain what you do and why it matters.

1. Give Your Conclusion First

As a technical professional, you’ve been trained to follow the scientific method: Articulate the hypothesis or problem, explain your process, describe your results, and then give your conclusion. The scientific method is critical to your work, but it can screw up how you talk about it.

You can’t follow that same sequential structure when you speak. In business, you have to give the conclusion first, ideally in the first two minutes. You have a narrow opening: The audience’s window of attention closes quickly. So avoid the urge to show your work first, and present your conclusion immediately.

2. Don’t Expect An “A” For Effort

Just as your senior leaders don’t want to hear the details about how you came to your conclusion, they don’t care how much effort it took to get there. When you go to a restaurant, you don’t care about how long the pastry chef spent on your cake, just as long as it looks and tastes great. It’s the results that matter.

The same goes if you’re a tech expert or science wonk. It may be the process that excites you intellectually and gets you up in the morning. And sometimes those results look so deceptively simple that it almost feels deceptive to focus just on those. But to communicate to everybody else, you can’t take them through every hour–that’s not going to make them see how good you are.

3. Use Analogies From Their World

When you need to explain a complex technical concept, reach for analogies that connect to your audience’s experience. Don’t say “we’re implementing a distributed caching layer to reduce database query latency.” Instead say “we’re adding a shortcut so the system doesn’t have to search through everything every time—like keeping frequently used files on your desk instead of in the filing cabinet.”

The best technical communicators develop a toolkit of business-friendly analogies. They know their audience thinks in terms of customers, revenue, and efficiency—so they frame technical decisions in those terms. “This upgrade will let us serve 10 times more customers without hiring more staff” lands better than “we’re scaling our infrastructure to handle increased concurrent connections.”

4. Connect Your Work To Business Outcomes

Every technical project ultimately serves a business goal. Your job is to make that connection explicit. Don’t just say “we fixed the memory leak.” Say “we fixed the issue that was causing the app to crash for customers, which was costing us about $50,000 in lost sales per week.”

When you pitch a new project, lead with the business impact: “This will reduce customer support calls by 40%” or “This will let us launch new features in days instead of months.” Then, only if asked, explain the technical approach you’ll take to achieve it.

Remember: Your colleagues aren’t stupid for not understanding the technical details. They’re just focused on different things. When you bridge that gap by speaking their language, you’ll find your projects get more support, your team gets more recognition, and your career advances faster.