Clear Is Kind – Technical Granularity for Granularity’s Sake

Words matter. Most of what we do in our professions is communicate, written and oral, with each other. So why is it so often that we talk past each other? It’s a problem I’ve set out, accidentally at first then very intentionally in recent years, to work through. My fellow technical individuals, especially, are not typically known for our strong communication skills. Why is that? Part of it, I postulate, is that we confuse “inundating” with “informing”.

I've heard several variations of the same analogy for this phenomenon. Let's run an experiment where you are sitting across a table from a person and there's a frog between you two. The person sitting across from you is blindfolded and you must convey to them what's on the table. If they don't know the word “frog”, then you're going to be sitting there describing something that's maybe slimy, maybe sticky, probably green, longer back legs and than front legs, eyes on top of its head, flatter and wider than it is tall. It's going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and it's not certain that the other person is going to understand completely what's on the table between you two.

Now let's say you repeat the experiment only now there's a pizza on the table. Great news, everyone knows what pizza is! “Pizza” in Spanish, Italian, and French is still “pizza”. Only this time you realize there are different levels of detail that you can use to create shared understanding of the pizza, and its up to you to determine which level is most appropriate. Do you come in at the highest level and only say there's a pizza between you? Do you go one step further and say there's a thin crust pizza between you? What happens if you say there is a Hawaiian pizza between you? Do you go further down the rabbit hole and say it is a 12-inch, thin crust pizza that has tomato sauce, cheddar cheese, chunks of pineapple, and chunks of ham? At what point is the description you’ve chosen sufficient to convey to correct amount of information to your audience, where further specifics won’t increase the quality of the message received?

This is the start of the trap in which we as engineers and technical professionals find ourselves on a regular basis.

For the final step in the experiment, your counterparty takes off their blindfold. Now you must convey to them a technical idea, problem, or solution. Describing the pizza doesn't seem so hard in comparison now, does it? At this point you must ascertain if your counterparty understands the meanings of the specific technical words, like our limitations in the experiment where there is not a shared understanding of the word “frog”. Next you must determine if they have the depth of knowledge in the subject matter to understand, or even care, about the nuances of the ideas you're trying present. Finally, you must assess the required outcome of the conversation. Do they have to make decisions, or a monetary commitment? Do they need to gain confidence in your own level of understanding of the subject matter at hand? Taking this back to the pizza analogy, are they a baker who wants to know the exact type of flour and quantities that have been used to make the pizza dough, or are they a client who is just wanting to order a cheese pizza? The level of granularity you provide is going to be directed by your assessment of these questions.

 Unfortunately, when the majority of us in the technical fields, myself included, are presented with a situation in which we don't know what is required of us, we tend to default to “more information is better”. The “Look how big my brain is!” mode of failure, per an engineering friend of mine. We figure we can at least convince the other person that we know what we're doing by “informing” them (or “inundating” them, by their perspective) with technical information, our own analysis, and supplementary-appendix-type information in one shot. Unfortunately, this mode is often incredibly detrimental to our message. Instead, I suggest that we forego granularity for granularity’s sake and instead focus on the mantra “Clear is Kind”. This was advice shared with me by an incredibly insightful friend about management generally, but I suggest we interpret it from a technical standpoint: that the best way to respect your audience is to create clarity on what information they need to know and why they need to know it. Only once that is established and agreed to by all can we dig into the granularity, and even then we should only do so if the audience wishes to.

What does that look like? Well for me in 2024, that looked like a client for whom I couldn't for the life of me seem to properly identify the level of detail they needed. They said they were very technically intensive and “in the details”, which led me to want to give them an abundance of details, rationale, and technical background. Seems logical. Every time I did, though, I got my hand metaphorically slapped for being too much of an engineer. It took me far too long to realize that though they believed themselves to be highly detail oriented, they were only technically minded on the concepts that peaked their personal interests (which never seemed to coincide with the topics of my conversations). For everything else, they just wanted the high-level outline.

My challenge to you, dear reader, is for next time you feel yourself struggling to get a point across, you feel yourself struggling to be heard, or you don't know how to approach a situation, remind yourself that Clear is Kind. Take a breath, come up with one sentence or singular question that will bring everyone to the same page for first, understanding what is sitting on the table between you; and second what you need to do with it together.

 With this in mind, I started shifting my communication with them to start with "the outcome of my analysis is X. Knowing that, options A and C appear to be most in line with your desired goals”.  Their feedback on my work immediately changed. No longer were they asking a long series of questions as they tried to sift through the content to find what was relevant to them, and by extension our conversation became more productive. What was previously taking us half a meeting to work through was now resolved in the first five minutes. They started coming to me instead of other team members when they had questions. Most notably, when I gave feedback that was not aligned with the direction they wanted to pursue, I had built enough trust with them to be able to stand my ground on my unpopular recommendation and still be heard.

I now begin my emails with the ask or the outcome stated in the first line or two. “I require your input based on the analysis, would you like to proceed with option A or option B? Below in the body of the email I have provided context for the nuances of these options." I keep reminding myself: Clear is Kind.

I've even started noticing that I'm developing the skill set in my speech. My natural propensity is to pepper an individual with questions. Be it about themselves and getting to know them or be at about their work in a professional setting, I've been compared to a Spanish Inquisition more than once. Lately, though, as soon as I hear myself ask several questions in a row without taking a breath, I will take that breath, pause, then ask “Actually the real question I want to know is why do you find X so interesting” or “Can you give me a quick synopsis about Y”.

In all these moments I remember: Clear is Kind. Figure out first what's on the table between you. Is it a frog or is it a pizza? Only once I have clearly established my thesis statement can I follow up with “If you would like to delve into the analysis further, I'm happy to do so with you offline." Sadly, very few people have ever taken me up on that offer…