‫Let's say you asked yourself once again when you're trying to communicate your work.
‫Who's it for?
‫And the answer is people outside your team.
‫So clients, customers, fans, it's also really important after you've asked who's it for to follow
‫up with that other question we talked about.
‫What do they need to know?
‫And now, again, remember always the line here between these two groups isn't set in stone.
‫They have overlaps.
‫These exercises were going through only to get you thinking from a perspective of the person you're
‫trying to communicate with.
‫What do they need to know?
‫Now, I think this one is best explained with a little story that I have.
‫Now I'm at a presentation for a board meeting.
‫Once we were there to present our results on a recent software proof of concept to some executives and
‫now being an engineer.
‫My presentation slides were clogged with detailed text, barely large enough to read.
‫It contained every single detail of the project.
‫The techniques used equations, algorithms, acronyms with no definition.
‫The presentation looked great to other engineers, but caused the executives to squint, lean in and
‫basically ignore everything I was saying to just try and read what was on the slides.
‫But once we made it to the end, a slide with a visual appeared to which I palmed off as basically unnecessary.
‫Oh, I don't worry about that.
‫But this immediately sparked the interest of the executives.
‫One of them asked, What's that?
‫And we spent the next 45 minutes discussing that one slide in detail on the slide, which to me didn't
‫matter.
‫Now, the lesson here is what you think is important.
‫Maybe the opposite to others and what's obvious to you.
‫What was obvious to me on this slide, maybe amazing to someone else now, knowing this obvious to you,
‫but amazing to others, you'll start to realize unless they directly tell you.
‫Figuring out what your clients, customers and fans want to know is a challenge.
‫And a solution to this is to ask.
‫So most people have a lot to offer.
‫Like in my original presentation, no one was saying anything because I was just trying to read the
‫slides.
‫But once we got to something that sparked their interest, they had a lot to say.
‫So remember, most people have a lot to offer but rarely volunteer it.
‫Ask if what you're saying is clear.
‫Ask if there is anything else they'd like to see, which is what we were talking about here for 45 minutes.
‫Once I realized, Oh, wait, there is a lot of other things they'd like to see.
‫Now, of course, you may get something left of field, things that you're unsure of, and these cases,
‫it's up to you to address them before they become larger issues.
‫Don't forget, sometimes the best answer is I don't know, but I'll figure it out and get back to you.
‫Or That's not what we're focused on for now and then bringing it back to what you are focused on.
‫So these things are just some of the tricks of the trade that I've picked up over time.
‫In the next video, we're going to wrap this all up and put together what we've talked about in the
‫last few videos.