A lot of young people think you should write a massive comprehensive report.
And if you do that, somehow everyone will read it fully and understand it.
I’ve never seen that in 20 years working.
It’s a naive notion that’ll be knocked out of you in the first meeting.
You’ll start out wondering why everyone’s so dumb.
It’s not that. The humans want a clear, digestible, and actionable set of documents.
And they only have the bandwidth for so much in a given context window.
But instead of 2M tokens in a large language model, you’ll probably get about 4 pages of large bullet points.
My point is: You might be able to see the whole story. But they can’t, and won’t.
A lot of them aren’t as smart as you think.
Use the following techniques to simplify without losing accuracy:
Just lay out the core idea
- State unambiguously what you are presenting and why:
- Tell them—today I’m here to cover X.
- This is what they need to remember; and
- The hope is to do Y next.
- Make sure they understand—or clarify questions before moving on.
- Throughout the presentation focus on the outcomes:
- Talk through the variables.
- Emphasise what is important in the variables (e.g., cost, time, quality, speed, automation, insight).
- Don’t talk in the first instance about the internal mechanics about how you got where you got.
Delete jargon and cut to the information they need
- Use necessary terms only:
- Every time you introduce a special term, you’ll lose someone.
- Only use the terms you NEED to complete the conversations.
- If you do use a special term, be sure to define it in plain language.
- If you are trying to be persuasive don’t use analogies:
- Analogies are easily defeated in an argument.
- State your argument on the input facts, and the probable outcomes of something else based on the known evidence.
- The probability of that happening is then a function of reality.
- As soon as you extrapolate, people just see the incongruent arguments, and shut it down.
- Omit non critical details:
- Don’t pump the audience with information they don’t need.
- It wastes bandwidth; and gives people an excuse to throw you off.
- The best thing you can do is keep the main flow uncluttered.
Conclusion
Effective simplification distills the essence of technical concepts via purpose first framing, minimal jargon, layered explanations, vivid metaphors, and concrete examples so anyone can grasp and apply them, regardless of background.