Some people are hyper-technical, and they can be intimidating if you don’t feel technically minded. It can feel like you’re not even speaking the same language as they seem to bury you in TLAs and FLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms and Four-Letter Acronyms). Information professionals can communicate with their technical colleagues – even when they’re not that technical.
Driving Forces
How many people really understand what’s going on in their car as they drive down the road? Do you understand how the internal combustion engine harnesses thousands of micro explosions every minute to propel you down the road? Do you understand how the suspension system keeps the car moving smoothly down a rough road? If you’re like most of us, the answer is probably no. But here’s the important thing: you don’t have to.
It’s not necessary to understand the intimate details of the mechanics of a car to be able to drive one. The beauty in this allows all of us to use amazingly complicated tools to navigate our world without getting bogged down into the details.
Baking Bread
Sometimes technical people believe that they’re better or more important than the rest of the team because of their skills. However, the truth is that the technical team is no more – or less – important than any part of the larger project team. Sure, flour may make up the bulk of material in baking a bread; however, without salt, yeast, and eggs, the flour won’t make a very good bread. It takes all kinds of people to get the project done, and sometimes the technical team doesn’t understand that.
If you’re struggling with a technical team that doesn’t value others, perhaps it’s time to explain to them how baking a loaf of bread works and ask which of the ingredients are the most important.
As Simple as Possible – No Simpler
Albert Einstein said that the goal is to make the problem as simple as possible – but no simpler. Arguably one of the smartest people who ever lived said that it’s the expert’s responsibility to make their knowledge seem simple to others. Everyone expects that others “just know” what they know – and it’s called the curse of knowledge. It takes a bit of work to help everyone understand that others don’t know the same things they know.
If you’re not understanding what a technical person is saying, it’s their responsibility to communicate it in a way that makes sense. Analogies and stories are great ways for them to do this. Similarly, if you’re struggling to communicate non-technical or business topics, you’ll need to find some common analogy or story that will help the technical team understand.
You don’t have to know the bits and bytes. You don’t need to understand all the details of the technical implementation. You need to find ways to communicate that speak to their common universal experience of being human – and expect they’ll be able to apply that to the technology.
Flows not Feelings
William Issacs, co-founder of the organizational learning center at MIT, said that all effective dialogue includes the three voices of meaning, aesthetics (feelings), and power.
Technical staff tend to be more focused on meaning, and secondarily with power. Aesthetics is often the last thought of the technical team, but it’s often what business leaders lead with. “It feels like…” starts many conversations with the technical teams, and it’s like speaking a foreign language.
If you want to make sure that your technical team understands what you’re saying, start with the meaning of the conversation and only come back to the aesthetics when you’ve satisfied their need for meaning.
If you want to learn more about how to talk tech to the team, check out Confident Change Management for the Information Professional.
