Stanford Webinar - Talking Tech: Creating Stakeholder Excitement

today we're here with Matt Vasser Matt Welcome Matt is a core lecturer with the technical Communications program at the School of Engineering and a principal at vaster and Associates where he helps people learn how to create compelling presentations ideate leadership strategies and Inspire High performing teams you can read more about Matt as we have his bio Linked In Your dashboard and I just want to thank everyone for being here today and also thank you Matt for being here today and looking forward to the session take it away it's my pleasure and thank you Robin for that generous introduction give some likes and hearts and applauses for Robin she does way too much work in order to make sure that really cool experiences like this one happened for you also behind the scenes Tim produced this course and this we AR and we also have rth and enry who are helping out as well they all do incredible work they're the ones who are making everything seem so seamless so that we can have fun together all right I want to start with a little bit of fun here and we're gonna let's see let me make sure I can click there we go here we go now I can advance my slides so we're gonna talk a little bit about how you can excite stakeholders to your Technical Solutions no matter how dry no matter how complex those details may be how how do you get people excited about what it is that you do and why it matters now I hate to break it to you I am a teacher by trade and I prepared a pop quiz for you this morning so I want to hear your best guesses to these questions question number one what was the first company to have a mass marketed PC available to Consumers and in just one moment you'll be able to see a poll go ahead and just click any of those options take your best guess who was the first op on the market to get a mass marketed PC available to Consumers by the way it's totally Anonymous so it's okay no one will know if you got right or wrong we got some responses already so I'm going to keep it going and most people said IBM about two-thirds of you said IBM was the first the answer was Apple all right let's do another one who do you think was the first company to have a mass marketed PC with a graphic user interface go ahead and take a guess there and I know there's a delay between when I answer when I ask this and when on 24 actually brings it up but we'll get some responses shortly here all right let's go ahead and take a look at the results click it quickly if you can and then I'm going to move on over and most of you got it this time kind of seeing through my trickery here a little over half of you said apple and sure enough you are right so last one what was the first company to have a mass marketed PC with a mouse go ahead and make your guess here we'll see if everyone sees through what I'm doing here response is coming in go ahead and click it if you got it really fast so here come the poll results click it quickly and here they come all right 80% of you saw through what I was doing the answer once again is Apple Welcome to our webinar we sponsored by Apple no apple is not a sponsor I would like some of that trillion dollars but never mind that all right I have a new question for you which company invented the first PC with a graphic user interface you know that apple had the first mass marketed one but who first invented it go ahead and take a guess which company first invented the PC with a graphic user interface all right respon is coming in on 24 is finally caught up and click it if you got it one last second before I go over to the results most of you went with IBM again a plurality of you went with IBM it looks oh I'm sorry I didn't scroll far enough down on 24 made it hard for me to see actually nearly 40% of you two out of five people got the correct answer which is Xerox all right let's do the next one and which company did Steve Jobs first see the mouse go ahead and take your guess here wh at which company did Steve Jobs first see the mouse response is coming in right now I'll give you one more second to get yours in click it if you got it I do see one person saying in the Q&A that unfortunately on 24 isn't popping up the polls for them I apologize for that all right we're getting responses in take one last second to click it and we will go over to the results and let's see if people are seeing through what I'm doing here just under half got zrox this time Shing enough the correct answer so now let's see I'm guessing everybody's going to get it now what company developed a PC a full five years before Apple released their Mass marketed PC go ahead and put your answer in there and responses are coming in I'll give you one last second click it if you got it and we will go to the final result and let's see nearly half of you again said that it was Xerox so what gives here if Xerox was responsible for these many inventions why is it that today I carry around an Apple iPhone why don't I carry around a xrock X phone by the way here it is and I think that this is just absolutely beautiful seeing this piece of computing history that's the xrox alto that was the first PC that came with a graphic user interface windows and also had a mouse and I just think it's incredible breathtaking when you see history in action here so what happened how is it that xrox came up with these Technical Innovations but Apple was the one who cashed in why is it that today Apple became the first trillion doll company ever and yet xrox has floated into largely obscurity just becomes a footnote in Computing history why is it that so many people were not aware of what happened with the xrox alto here is what happened in this moment in Computing history xox hired the brilliant the most brilliant most Innovative technical Minds to come up with these Solutions and they did it at a place called Park PC it was an acronym that said stood for pal Research Center here's where the greatest Innovative Minds came together and discovered features that would move Computing forward everybody knew though that Apple was the Hot Shot company everyone wanted as Apple was about to go public about to have its IPO everybody wanted some of that Apple stock because they knew that it was a rising star Steve Jobs approached zrock and said hey if you let me into park to see some of the technical innovations I will let you have the first opportunity to buy shares for Apple 100,000 shares of Apple they signed a deal Ste jobs visited Park saw all of these incredible Innovations and then he was able to Market them but why am I telling you this story because you can be the most brilliant technical mind in the world but you may not be the person who gets your Technical Solutions to catch on even if you're not creating a company like zrox or apple the truth is that if you cannot communicate your Technical Solutions there's going to be someone else who can Steve Jobs commented in an interview in the 90s that if xerrox knew how to talk about the technical innovations that they had created they would have become a bigger company than IBM apple and xrox all put together all they needed to know was how to talk about it and this doesn't just happen with companies and how they talk about their Solutions too it it happens with everyday people like you and me if I were to share with you maybe the biggest single biggest complaint that I hear from my clients when they come to me and request coaching from me probably the number one biggest complaint they have is I had a great idea that I shared in a meeting but someone else was able to explain it better than me and everyone got excited about them they were the ones who got credit for the idea even though I may have had the idea was someone else who swooped in and communicated it in a way that will excite in a recent survey of Engineers published in the Journal of engineering education Engineers rated communication skills as the number one most important skill for advancing a career in Tech it's not enough to have the brilliant Technical Solutions you also have to be able to talk about them in a way that gets people excited about those solutions that gets stakeholders to instantly say wow that's really cool why don't you tell me more about that because I want you to imagine this scenario it happens all the time all of these opportunities just these brief little Windows happen throughout your career where somebody who can make a difference in your career asks you hey what do you do again and why should I care about it maybe they'll explicitly say that second part but in the moment when you're talking about the technical work you do especially to someone who does not have the same technical background as you will you be able to talk about your Technical Solutions in a way that's exciting will you be able to talk about your Solutions in a way that's inspiring will you be able to talk about them in a way that demonstrates the value of all the work that you do because if you don't know how to do it there's someone else who will now I know I get it it can be really hard the challenge is sometimes you have a really technical complex idea and you're goal is to untangle it and untangle it until that idea is clear so how do you do this and I want to give you a three-step process that you can follow in order to make all of your technical communication clearer by the way this is probably a good time to talk about my own academic background my background is in cognitive psychology if you're not familiar with the field of cognition it's the study of how we think and in my proc in in my in my case it's what message mesages tend to stick in our minds so that when we hear them we just can't shake that idea it's so cool we can't wait to tell other people about in the idea spreads and conversely what ideas just go in one ear and write out the other so we'll talk about the difference and why and how you can create messaging that lasts one Hallmark of my practice both the classes I teach as well as the webinars like this one or the coaching that I do is that all of my strategies by and large are evidence based P reviewed scientifically proven to work one thing that people who work with me really enjoy is that I'm not in the business of opinion giving it drives me crazy when I listen to other communication gurus and at the end of it I just feel like you gave me a lot of opinions why don't you show me the numbers show me that this works and show me how it works scientifically and so you can be assured that many of the strategies we'll be talking about today are evidence based peer reviewed scientifically proven to work so as we talk about how do you make hear technical ideas sing how do you make them jump out so that people pay attention to them I want to show you a real life image of the human brain on the next slide so here it is breathtaking isn't it beautiful now some of you may have already picked up this is indeed a metaphor this comes from social psychologist Jonathan height of New York University and he describes that your brain metaphorically is divided into two different parts there is an elephant which represents the emotional part of your brain and there's a writer sitting on top of that elephant pulling the rein which represents the rational part of your brain now here's the thing is that we make decisions with both of these parts of the brain in mind we make decisions based on the emotional part of our brain and we make decisions based on the rational part of the brain tomb and good persuasive communication takes advantage of both because the elephant is this huge animal when it gets stimulated it moves with a lot of force when your emotional part of your brain gets stimulated you move with a lot of energy when you get excited about something like yeah let's go let's do it but you also need to engage the writer I don't know about you but sometimes I hear like documentaries I love watching documentaries and at the end of it I may get riled up and say ah this is BS I can't believe that this is happening to real people someone should do something about it what do we do my writer just kind of excuse my elephant just kind of spins around and spins around runs around in circles but doesn't know what to do at the end of it that's where the point you want to engage the rational part of the brain the writer as well because the writer once you have the elephant motivated the writer can chart out a path for the elephant to go down so you want to stimulate that elephant first get people motivated get them excited about what you do and then once you have them excited then shape a path for the writer to go down so that they know what to do with your Technical Solutions so I promise you three steps for being able to do good technical communication let me unveil those three steps right now first I want you to find the through line that unites all the disparate Parts look I know that what you do is complex there are many different parts to it so first you need to find that through line that beautiful Simplicity that takes all of these many parts and unites them together with one line next you're going to structure your talk and then finally I'm going to give you some strategies for with that talk how do you just add a little bit of spice make it a little bit Savory make it so that when the audience taste your talk they're so they're like this is cool I I I'm I'm savoring it and I'm enjoying it so let's take these in turn and we'll start with finding the through line here is our inspiration for the through Line This is theodocious djoni and in the 1960s he took the field of biology by storm when he said one simple statement he came up with this statement that was a beautiful through line of all of the many complexities of the field of biology that through line was nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution when he published this this sentence went viral before there was an internet it went viral everyone was talking about it so much so that my spouse who is a health educator She was recently taking a class through Stanford on plant-based nutrition and I was listening in on the class in the background wasn't really paying attention to it she was watching her class and I was doing whatever washing dishes or whatever I might have been doing at that moment in time and I hear them talking about in the 2020s this sentence that was published in the 1960s extraordinary it's attention grabbing isn't it you can't shake it once you hear this nothing in biology make sense except in light of evolution I saw one person leave a heart for theodus do jonski if you are feeling inspired and feeling emboldened even just hearing that if you're impressed by the boldness of this statement feel free to leave a reaction a thumbs up a heart and Applause but let me ask you a question as we think about how attention grabbing this is State this statement is is it accurate is it true that nothing in bi ology makes sense except in light of evolution for instance I can think of parts of biology where you may not need any fundamental understanding of evolution to make sense of it for instance DNA sequencing you don't need to know anything about Evolution to sequence a strand of DNA but what it have been as attention grabbing if not for the boldness if he had written something that was a little bit technically more accurate would have had the same effect if he had said hardly anything in biology makes sense except in light of evolution probably wouldn't have grabbed your attention in the same way so here's what I want you to do I want you to play around with this let's just do kneejerk reactions but I want you to play a game of mad lies just fill in the blanks when I give you this sentence nothing in blank makes sense except in light of blank I want you to talk about some element of your technical work and let's make it bull let's say nothing in blank makes sense except in light of blank for instance if I were to talk about my work including what we're doing right now I might say nothing in Tech makes sense except in light of when it's well communicated how about you I want you to fill in the blanks some that I've gotten in the past are uh nothing in it makes sense except in light of the user experience so this is what I want you to do is come up with something type it up and go to the Q&A box I realize the Q&A box is usually for questions and answers but go ahead and share what you came up with in the Q&A box just so that way I can see some of the really cool suggestion some of the really cool ways that you came up with for how you can make your own work sound a little bit Boulder so when you're ready feel free just knee-jerk reaction type in nothing in blank makes sense except in light of blank and we'll just see what you all come up with nothing in code makes sense except in light of the user interface I love that thank you for sharing that one I'm not I'm not going to read names I do see your name but I don't I I don't want to put out your name image and likeness without your consent um nothing in business makes sense except in light of profit nothing in organ ation makes sense they're flying too fast for me except in light of digital nothing in sports makes sense except in light of tennis o wow uh nothing in nothing in research makes sense except in light of data I love this but all of these really sound incredibly bold the way that you're putting it and here's the thing when you put it in this framework nothing in blank makes sense except in light of blank you have a through line that connects all of the disparate parts of your technical work together nothing in healthare makes sense except in light of the patient's care nothing in accounting makes sense except in light of results nothing in Parking Solutions Mak sense except in light of a better user experience all of these are incredibly cool and here's the thing when someone asks you here's another one that just came in nothing in it makes sense except in light of business nothing in equity makes sense except in light of humanity o that's really interesting nothing in golf makes sense except in light of your swing Tempo huh uh nothing in Innovation makes sense except in light of profits so the really cool thing about nothing in AI makes sense except in light of value creation I'm going to stop reading them but feel free to keep them coming come up with your own through lines but here's the thing a lot of the times when someone might ask you why are you doing this project why are you so obsessed with the morality of all of this if you respond nothing I'm doing it because nothing in and Equity makes sense except in light of humanity that's going to stop people in their tracks that's going to people get people to see oh yeah that's something that's really cool and why it's important for you to be doing the work that you're doing all right so let's go ahead and move forward and and continue with some more strategies once you do have that through line the next step is to come up with a compelling structure for how you then talk about your work so theodocious jsky was our inspiration for coming up with the through line I want to introduce you to a new inspiration for this next part this is Randy Olen he was a a Harvard trained biologist became a tenur professor and that did something that was a little bit surprising of someone who finally earns tenure he quit his job he left the ultimate job security of the tenur professorship to pursue a career in film making now admittedly he didn't stray far from the biological sciences and he did do documentary films but from his experience as a filmmaker and telling stories of how scientists can make their findings accessible to the public he realized that he could impart these strategies to Everyday people like you and me how we can talk about our technical work in a way that excites in similar ways to how filmmakers pitch their films here's how he learned that filmmakers typically pitch their films they use a framework known as ABT and that stands for and but therefore this is not a new idea by the way it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks when they created theater in the first place but it's basically the threea play structure we're going to wrap your talk into a threea structure structure that gets people excited and interested about what you have to say so let me Define each of these parts the and is what sets up the context for your talk I was asked to do research on this specific question and here is why this question was important to our oranization you then introduce the butt which creates tension this is what gets people excited about what you have to say so in the second act we're going to create tension I was asked to do this research on what will get people to download our app and we want to know this so that way we can have more users and join our products but there was a problem before this research users would download the app and then immediately delete it so I after conducting this data analysis discovered that if we make one simple tweak which is whatever whatever that tweak is it will increase user retention by over 300% all right so that's how the and but therefore is structured after you've introduced the tension in the butt you then use a therefore or a so to bring about a conclusion that brings resolution to the whole thing let me give you a few examples of this apart from me talking about my research on what would get people to download our app let's give a few other examples since this came from film making let's start with an example from film let's do Star Wars and here's how the filmmakers might have pitched the original Star Wars movie in Empire his enslaved the Galaxy and it is building the Ultimate Weapon but the rebels steal the weapons plan therefore there is a New Hope for the Galaxy Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope the original Star Wars movie so we can neatly pack the entire story line story line of the original Star Wars movie into just a few sentences to give the and but therefore form here's a really interesting thing about this particular framework it is everywhere even people who have not been trained in this framework use it and you'll start to notice it everywhere you go now that you're familiar with it for instance do you remember about a decade ago there was a song all over the radio I still hear it today but there was a song all over the radio by Carly Ray jebson do you remember this song Hey I just met you and this is crazy but here's my number so therefore call me maybe and I see people are giving some reactions to this one it's pretty cool how this is everywhere how you'll start to notice and but therefore everywhere people tend to use it because this framework is so incredibly compelling so think a little bit and by the way one thing that I'll point out as we're on the Carly Ray Jepson example sometimes people ask me do I have to use these exact words and but and therefore no of course not you can use so like car Ray jebson did instead of therefore you can use although or however instead of but it's more of an idea rather than using these exact literal words you can use whatever words you wish to use but have the larger idea of here's the context set up with the and here's a butt that creates tension and here's a therefore that brings about a satisfying resolution so if you're pitching your own technical ideas you might say something like we've created a prototype that people love and they're already using it right now but we have a problem we cannot scale it we don't have enough money to put this product at scale so if we receive funding so that we can Mass Market this technical solution we can make this company millions of dollars there you go there's an and butt there for that talks about we've done something that's really cool but we have a problem we can't scale so with your help you'll be able to have our Technical Solutions be something that everyone can benefit from and make our company money think about how you might structure them by the way this is not the only way to structure your ideas but it is one compelling way and it's a good thing to have in your back pocket so that why you don't have to think so hard about organization especially since so much communication happens on the Fly where you may not be able to prepare ahead of time you're in a meeting and a stakeholder says hey can you give us an update on the project you've been working on and in the moment you just have to say something well in that moment you can just take a few quick seconds to ask yourself what is the and what is the but what is the therefore and then you're ready to go you have a statement that you can use that'll make people understand the importance of your work so you've now structured your talk and now I want to talk a little bit about what you can do in addition to that to bring the spice to make your talk a little bit more save so the audiences will really pay attention to it so let's go back to our metaphor of how the human brain works with the rational part of the brain and the emotional part of the brain represented by the writer and the Elephant respectively if I were to create two axes of writer and Elephant at the Pinnacle of those axes is you your elephant is energized you're excited about the work you do and your writer is roused you know what it is that you're doing in your Technical Solutions your goal then is to bring the audience closer to you so that way their elephant is also energized and their writer is also roused so how do you do that I'm going to give you a few strategies with each of the parts of the brain in mind let's start with the elephant and how you can energize the elephant I'm just going to give you three quick strategies for the elephant and then three quick strategies for the writer and then we'll wrap this up with Q&A following those six strategies all together but let's start with the elephant the first strategy is what I call look to the one this was inspired by a quote from Mother Teresa Mother Teresa once commented if I look to the masses I'll never act but if I look to the one I will this is something that uh charitable organizations have long known that people are not moved when you appeal to statistics people are moved when you talk about just one person we'll talk about how this applies to your Tech research in just one moment and your Technical Innovations and Solutions in just one moment but first the broader principle of looking to the one Carnegie melon did some interesting univers interesting research on this particular phenomenon on how people act and how people move when they are stimulated in different ways so if you signed up for the study from Carnegie melon University you filled out some surveys and as compensation for the surveys you receive five crisp $1 bills the surveys actually had nothing to do with what they were studying they just wanted an excuse to give you the money in the first place after they gave you the money they then dropped a pamphlet on the table and they said hey by the way we're also organizing a charitable drive for Save the Children how many of your five $1 bills would you like to give to save the children and you received a brochure that said one of two things if you were in one condition you got a brochure that was heavy on statistics you open up the brochure and it said all over Africa right now food shortages are affecting people in Ethiopia millions of people have been displaced from their homes as a result of food shortages in Malawi a 33% reduction in maze has made it so that people are not sure where their next meal will come from in Molly there isn't even access to clean drinking water with your donation though you can help to people to have a better life in creating better education Better Health and food abundance all right take a moment and reflect if you just heard that how many of your five $1 bills might you give to save the children if you were anything like the actual study participants you gave on average only about a buck 20 of the money that you just earned what if on the other hand you received a brochure that sounded something more like this every dollar you give to save the children will directly benefit roia Ria is a seven-year-old child from Malawi but because of food shortages she doesn't know where her next meal is going to come from but because of your donations and donations from others like you you can ensure that roia will get access to better education Better Health Care and food every dollar you give will directly benefit Ria now take a moment and reflect how many of your $51 bills would you give to save the children if you were anything like the actual study participants you donated over half of your money it was over $2 and a half dollars more than double the rate that you gave when you heard the statistics sometimes we're tempted to think well if one person is compelling then millions of people must be really compelling but that's not the way the elephant works the elephant processes feelings with much more weight than logic and if you want to move the elephant into action if you want this big powerful animal to get excited about what you have to do you want to speak from the perspective of one how does this apply to your Technical Solutions yes you may have data Trends yes you may have all kinds of compelling data but what I would recommend is focusing on just one person focusing on one representative data point how might this person engage with your technical solution here's Jane Jane does X Jane has a problem Jane found our app Jane's problem was solved that's the basic gist of how you can talk about your Technical Solutions and by the way you don't even have to have a real life person you can create a fictional Jane you can create a fictional character as the star of your story when you talk about your Technical Solutions let me give a real life example of this so HP knew that it had technology that would benefit the Walt Disney Resort they did not know how they would Market that technology to Disney and how they would pitch Disney on that they should adopt HP technology they hired a design firm based in San Francisco called Stone yamashito and stone yamashito created a life-sized model that you could walk in and see how a real life family interacted with HP technology at the Walt Disney Resort and the Walt Disney parks in the first scene you walk in and you're introduced to the Ferrari family in their living room there they are at their computers booking their trip to w Disney World everything on the web supplied by HP Technologies client side Technologies server side Technologies everything by HP you walk into the next room and there are the Ferraris at the theme park guess what they're not waiting in line they are fast-tracked through everything courtesy of HP Optical scanners that allow them to seamlessly move from ride to Ride walk into the next scene and there are the Ferraris at the Walt Disney Resort that night they walk into their home hotel room and already uploaded to a picture frame right next to their bed is the Ferraris on Splash Mountain from earlier that day courtesy of HP technology Disney signed the contract instantly they said this is really cool here's the thing though the Ferrari family never existed it was an invention of stone yamashito to demonstrate how these Technologies would work and how everyday people would be able to benefit from HP Technologies as epilogue to this story HP kept the model on campus even after the pitch took place and the actual Engineers who engineered these Technical Solutions would walk through the model and they would turn to each other and say did you know that we were working on this sometimes we are so obsessed with the technical details of our work that we forget to pull back the lens and see the bigger picture to see how our work actually benefits other people make sure that you pull back the lens when you talk about the technical details yes you'll excite people who know about the technical details but when you talk to people who are not from a technical background you'll want to pull back the lens a little bit and explain how do people benefit from these and why are they important all right let's go to strategy number two for how you energize the elephant one of my favorite behavioral psychologist is Robert chalini of Arizona State University and he was looking at scientific papers to try to figure out what makes some of them interesting and others of them boring as all living hell and he found a commonality among the interesting scientific papers so here's an example from one of the real life papers he read it came from some astronomers and they wrote the rings of Saturn are one of the most unique astronomical formations in the galaxy what did they made out of though three different teams of scientists from three different universities came to three completely different conclusions a team of scientists from Caltech were utterly convinced that they were made out of dust a team of scientists from MIT knew that they were made out of ice and a team of scientists from Oxford were utterly convinced that they were electromagnetic particles so what did it turn out the rings of Saturn were made out of and I want you to take a moment and reflect to yourself right now do you want to know what the rings of Saturn are made out go ahead and give me a reaction if you do go ahead and put down a thumbs up a heart or an Applause go ahead and let me know if you want to know right now what the rings of Saturn are made out of because I've done this example even in kyos with literally hundreds of people in the room and when I'm there in person suddenly everybody is looking up at me people are leaning forward in their seat they're really wondering what are the rings of Saturn made out of and if you're having this very typical reaction the delay from on 24 just came through and I'm seeing all the hearts and thumbs up all flooding in all at the same time everybody is having this reaction not because this really matters to your life you could have gone the rest of your life not knowing what the rings of Saturn were made out of and it wouldn't have affected your existence but the way the story was told made you interesting made you interested so let me reveal the punchline the rings of Saturn are made out of dust just dust well actually ice covered dust which may explain why there was a difference of opinion from the scientists to begin with but the way the story was told made you interested so let's dissect what the researchers did here to make it so interesting they introduce a mystery at the very beginning and here's the thing when you know your technical solution that your audience doesn't know you can use this strategy you know something your audience doesn't know you can build a mystery and get people interested in what you have to say so we start with the mystery itself the rings of Saturn are one of the most unique astronomical formations what are they made out of them you're probably not too interested at this point in the story because there's such a large chasm in your knowledge Gap and so the researchers begin to three different teams of scientists from three different universities came to three different conclusions there deepening the mystery they're filling in your knowledge Gap they're making the chasm more like just a little Gap right here and then once we have that Gap remaining once I filled you in with enough background information to get you curious then I allow you to sit in suspense just for one moment before I reveal the answer dust actually ice cover dust which is why they had a difference of opinions in the first place so use using a mystery is a powerful way to get people interested in what you have to say and to build up suspense around it all right last one for the elephant and then we'll flip over to the writer this one I call bringing them on the journey audiences remember your Technical Solutions a lot more when they're a part of the discovery than if you just spoon feed them the solution so Barry Marshall is a Nobel prizewinning scientist but he was frustrated at the beginning of his career because nobody believed him when he said most ulcers are caused by the exact same bacteria if you were right about this this is a groundbreaking discovery in medical science because up until that point it was believed that ulcers were incurable you can treat the symptoms but you cannot cure ulcers if he was right though that ulcers are caused by bacteria not only are they curable The Cure is simple just take an antibiotic and you're all better nonetheless even though he had this important discovery that would eventually win him a Nobel Prize nobody believed him after getting dismissed one too many times he finally called a meeting of the entire Hospital doctors nurses administrators and he came with a beaker full of the bacteria that he knew caused ulcers and then to the horror of everybody in the room he lifted that back Beaker full of bacteria put it to his lips and began drinking now I want you to imagine what if you were in the room as that happened as this real life experiment played Out imagine your own feelings of horror as you see him drinking the bacteria now imagine if you were one of the doctors who he then calls over and says do an x-ray of my stomach the doctors do the X-ray and confirm he has ulcers they check his symptoms sweating stomach cramps classic classic symptoms of ult of ulcers he then takes an antibiotic and cures himself what a powerful way to engage your audience now I am not saying that you should drink a beaker full of bacteria please don't make don't make that the the takeaway from this lesson but what I am saying is that you can engage your audience to make them interested in your findings you can do live demos of your Technical Solutions you can have discussions where the audience begins to brainstorm their own solutions to problems you can have role plays where the audience imagines that they are actual consumers interacting with your technology you can do many different ways to bring them on the journey and to get them excited about what you have to say all right really quickly we're going to talk about how you Rouse the writer now and the first solution I'm going to offer here is benefits versus features let's say I was trying to pitch you on my broadband internet here it is 15 microbits per second How likely are you to buy internet from me right now probably not very likely at all all right now what if I framed it this way way have you ever had this situation where you were streaming your favorite television show when out of nowhere you get this with my broadband internet you will never suffer through buffering again 15 microbits per second is a feature no buffering ever again is a benefit whenever you're tempted to talk about features ask yourself how does this feature benefit real life people when you focus on benefits rather than features it'll be more likely that the audience's writer will understand and appreciate what it is that you have to do visual aids are another powerful way that you can make the writer understand what's going on sometimes are when we talk about an idea in the abstract it's remarkably complex but a simple visual can help let me introduce you to Tunnel boring machines I had a student in the past a civil environmental engineer who explained to me something that I never even knew existed a tunnel boring machine is what creates the tunnels that your car drives under every single day and he described to me that a tunnel boring machine has two parts it has a head that drills into the surface of the Earth but if it just withdrew at that point the Earth would collapse so thankfully it also has a body that solidifies the surface of the Earth so that when it w withdraws you have this beautiful tunnel that your car can drive under how you should break down components into their key Parts is exactly the way way that my student did first of all describe the overall process a tunnel Boring Machine creates tunnels that your car drives under and then describe how each of the individual Parts contribute to that function the head drills the body solidifies now you can do this both with actual materials or objects such as a tunnel boring machine but you can also break down ideas or complex and Abstract models into their key Parts as well even if they don't readily understand a concept around perhaps how a business principle takes place you can break it down through its individual parts of how it takes place as well all right last one is we talk about the writer making it concrete so Beth beky did her PhD research at Stanford University and she was looking at communication breakdowns she discovered that communication breakdowns were most likely to take place between engineers and assemblers what would happen is that when a machine broke down the assembler would go to an engineer and say could you fix my machine for me or tell me how I can fix my machine the engineer would pull out a blueprint and show them how to fix the machine the assembler would go downstairs they would not be able to figure out how to fix the machine they would come back up and say oh I'm sorry I didn't get it could you please explain that to me again the engineer would then make the blueprint even more detailed here's the problem if the assembler didn't understand a simple blueprint what's the odds that they'll be able to understand on the complex one it makes it even harder once the abstraction gets more abstract make everything as concrete as possible a blueprint is abstract a screw is concrete what would be more helpful is if the engineer just went downstairs and showed them which screw they were supposed to turn when we talked a moment ago about the Ferrari family though that was a way of making it concrete too the Technical Solutions from HP were remarkably abstract when you show how a single family benefits from them it makes it concrete one last way that you can make concrete is through analogies so we talked before about tunnel boring machines and how they have a head and a body what I didn't mention was that my student also talked about an analogy a tunnel boring machine is just like an earthworm an earthworm has a head that drills into the surface of the soil and it has a body that prevents the soil from collapsing on the earthworm so that way wherever the earthworm goes there's a beautiful tunnel behind a tunnel boring machine works exactly the same way it creates a tunnel through having a head and having a body the only difference is it creates much larger tunnels than an earthworm so now you understand how you can move the audience to action through how you energize the elephant and how you Rouse the rider you also know the three-step process of find your through lineing your talk and also have some strategies so that you can bring a little bit of spice to that talk to make it a little bit more saf I'm really excited for what you do when you go out there because the truth is that your Solutions are too important for you not to be able to communicate them and for you to be the one who gets the credit for your ideas not to have somebody like Steve Jobs swoop in and get everyone excited about them because you couldn't you now have a number of tools in Your Arsenal so that you'll be able to talk about your research and your Technical Solutions in a way that excites I'm excited for what you'll do with these skills so we now have time for questions and so let's see uh Robin I think you've been monitoring the questions has anything come up so far hi Matt thank you so much really enjoyed that session especially the Frameworks the tangible takeaways I always like to think you know when I'm attending a session I like to learn something and then very quickly try to apply it and I think what you've provided today was wonderful I'm just going to look here for a second on my other screen so I'm definitely just over here um I wanted to ask you for some things that I've seen come in it seems like a lot of these conversations can take place maybe in like a casual environment let's say you're not presenting but let's say maybe it's the beginning of a zoom meeting and you have a couple of minutes or maybe you're in person and it's over lunch or maybe in a breakroom or something like that what would be the a Goto method because we have great Frameworks that you've given right for the writers and for the element what would be a goto method that someone could pull from like immediately like okay I got three minutes at the beginning of this Zoom meeting there's someone here from senior leadership I'm going to try it here what would you suggest that they do yeah I think ABT is a really powerful framework to use in that context so and but and therefore which we discussed earlier in this session it's something that you can use here it is again it's something that you can use really easily whenever you just want to talk about something in a way that excites it gets people excited about what you have to say if you have even less time if you're like I don't have time to communicate the whole Vision uh the whole talk but I do want to talk about you know the overall vision dojy is another one that you can use nothing in blank makes sense except in light of blank so if you just have to cut to the Chase and just grab their attention quickly and then starting the meeting it's about to start I got to get out of here that can be one that you can use really really rapidly what I would say as a goal for either case though is if you have this very short window don't expect to get the Sun the moon and all of the stars at the end of a very very brief window to make an impression use it as an opportunity to get people to notice you and ideally have further conversations around the solution that you're talking about so that way perhaps you have a follow-up meeting with this person or maybe even if in the absence of that follow-up meeting the person goes to their next meeting and they say wow that was a really cool idea that I just heard about and I want to share this with other people because it's just so memorable to me so I wouldn't necessarily use these brief Windows as an opportunity for an ask but more an opportunity or at least not a big ask but more an opportunity for a little ask of let's keep the conversation moving let's keep this going forward so that we can continue talking about these ideas Wonderful by the way see I'll just say too as I'm seeing in the chat I'm seen a lot of people in the Q&A saying thank you for the session really loved it fantastic um thank you for showing me how I can talk to leadership roles even without prior experience here and and one person says I'm about to do this on a project and use everything I've learned today so congratulations to all of you and I I appreciate too your growth mind mind set and your willingness to jump in and experiment and try on new strategies I know sometimes when you're trying something new it can feel uncomfortable and so I really appreciate that all of you are willing to put yourself out there and try on new things knowing that it'll pay dividence if you make the effort so keep up that effort and keep trying out things keep being able to grow and find ways to grow anyway Robin you were about to say something I I love that yes I'm I'm watching everything come in and just such powerful things that you shared today so I I'm I'm excited that other that people are excited as well um I really appreciated the Frameworks and I see everyone is really getting a lot of value from that if you are advising a coaching client of yours for example who is a tech person what would you like if the client was going to walk out of the room what would you tell them or maybe a couple of things to avoid things to avoid when they're communic what would what would be a couple of things you'd be like listen not a really good idea to X yeah oh wow one person as as as you asked that question a comment came in saying you literally just saved my job right now wow I that was you could definitely caught my attention with the boldness of that statement too and and I'm I'm glad that you you got some value out of this and are able to apply some of these Str things to avoid going back to the question I got distracted by see here's here's the thing about breathtaking communication is that sometimes you can stop me in the middle of my tracks with a message that is compelling such as you literally just saved my job anyway thank you for sharing that uh all right going back to things that you should avoid a couple of things immediately come to mind one that we did not talk about in this session is your non-verbal presence one thing that I would say to avoid is s sounding listless about your own work sometimes people in technical roles especially are used to hearing scientific presentations or technical presentations that are just boring everyone I've ever heard talking about this subject before has sounded bored while they talk about it and so I'm going to emulate that style please don't please here's the thing if you don't sound excited about the work that you do what are the odds that I on the audience side am going to get excited about the work you do so sound excited sound enthusiastic sound passionate about the difference that you make and how you are helping out better people how how helping people to have better lives through the technical solution you do there are a number of ways you can do this but in order to sound more excited and passionate about the work you do some is the vocal intonation you use don't be the monotone Professor who know nobody wants to listen to you know use a dynamic voice as you're speaking you can also integrate some gestures to show your excitement around key ideas using a big impactful gesture can get people excited about the idea itself so number one I would say is first of all think about how your presence is coming across even before the words that you say think about how you are landing with um with how you're coming across and how excited and passionate you sound about your own Solutions second once you do have that passion and excitement around those Solutions I would say another Pitfall to avoid is getting two in the weeds of things you know talking to a non-technical stakeholder and talking about perhaps details that would be really fascinating to someone who does the exact same technical research but to someone from outside they have no idea why those Technical Innovations even matter why is it that this one little tweak to this one little cell or this one little chip or processor why does that matter you know and so pulling back the lens a little bit making sure that you're able to see the entire forest from the trees sometimes as people in Tech were so focused on not just the tree I'm not even gonna say it's a we're fixing on the bark you know not just the bark the micr level details of the bark sometimes you need to pull back the lens to see the whole forest from the individual parts of the tree and really talk about as we mentioned earlier how it benefits actual people why does your research matter why do your Technical Innovations matter and here's the thing they do matter if you don't have the answer to this question already think about it because someone is paying you to do this work there is literal value in the work and that someone is paying for so why are they sometimes one solution that you can use in order to in order to um to get to this is just ask yourself why over and over over again we increase inefficiency in this processor why does that matter oh well that means that computers won't overheat why does that matter well that means that people will be able to get their work done why does that matter because all of business relies on computers oh okay so you create bottom line profits I saw by the way I'll answer this is I realized we're one minute until the top of the hour but one person asked where can I learn more about this topic and whyn't you know we do have an entire course devoted to this topic so if you would like to learn more about non-verbal communication about verbal communication and how you come AC how you convey Technical Solutions then go ahead and sign up for communicating with confidence I believe you've gotten details about that here in the on24 uh platform and as I'm looking at the Q&A as well I see a couple of people instantly recognize the strategy that I mentioned a moment ago of asking why repeatedly they did identify it identify it as the five Y which originally came from sakshi Toyota the founder of the Toyota car company sometimes just asking your the question why around five times it doesn't have to be five it could be four it could be six it could be three but around five times gets you to the real benefit of why your work matters all right I realize we're at the top of the hour anything else wonderful Matt Vasser um talk about why our work matters thank you so much for being here um this morning with us to wherever you are in the world um you make these sessions so special so thank you so much for joining us today you are going to be getting an email with a recording of this session and then also um there'll be links in that email where you can see more about the course Matt was talking about which is communicating with confidence Matt I definitely feel like I learned something here about communicating with confidence today so thanks so much for being here thanks everyone for joining us and we're signing off from Stanford thank you

2024-12-08 04:37

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