Technical professionals take pride in their craft, their knowledge. It’s what got them hired. If the data is solid, they believe they’re standing on solid ground. The data is their badge of honor, what they’ve spent countless hours building. When stakes are high, many technical professionals want to make it abundantly clear how and why they reached the conclusion they came to. Hence, the weeds. It gets worse from there. They don’t just get into the weeds; they get into

You’re prepping for a big presentation. Slides are done, talking points are sharp, everything looks good. You send it to your technical colleagues for a gut check, they suggest a tweak or two, you make the edits, you present. Here’s the trap. No one in that review had decision-maker eyes. Your technical colleagues judged it against their own values, precision, completeness, rigor. Decision makers don’t score you on any of that. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤, 𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬

You can walk in with your knowledge of the data down pat and a clear strategy from start to finish, and still lose the room. Strategy tells you what to say. It does not tell you how to deliver it so it lands. That is not a knowledge gap. That is a communication gap. The engineers who get funded are not the ones with the cleanest slides. They are the ones who translate risk into terms a decision-maker feels, not

Some say to “dumb it down” when speaking to less technical decision-makers. Wrong. Technical Communication that fails: Accelerated insulation degradation is increasing the probability of unplanned transformer failure. Dumbing it down also fails: The transformer is wearing out faster than expected. WHY IT MATTERS WINS EVERY TIME If this transformer fails, tens of thousands of customers lose service, restoration could extend several days depending on spare availability, emergency replacement drives significantly higher costs, regulators initiate a review tied to reliability

Authenticity in communication doesn’t mean saying everything on your mind. It means aligning what you say with what you truly mean. When your words and intent match, trust follows.

𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 #1: “I recommend approving the construction of the second transmission line to reduce the risk of a single point of failure and improve long term system reliability.” Board: after discussion, “Let’s look at this again in 3 months.” 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 #2: “I recommend approving the construction of the second transmission line to reduce the risk of a single point of failure and improve long term system reliability. Last winter’s outage in the north corridor cost us 40,000 customer

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝. The recommendation was sound. The analysis was solid. The data supported the conclusion. The room even seemed to agree. A week later, nothing changed. The project stalled. The funding was delayed. The recommendation lost momentum. Technical professionals are trained to explain the problem. Far fewer are trained to explain why it matters. 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐭.

The technical urgency is clear to you. The cost of waiting doesn’t feel urgent to them. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐩:You communicated technical urgency. They evaluated business urgency.

𝐀𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬: “When I’m presenting, I’m thinking, this is a great idea, but they’re going to see this as something that derails an investment that they’ve been considering for another project. And here I am presenting this. It’s a great idea, but it’s not the right time to bring it up. But I don’t even know what, what they’re thinking about there.” 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦, 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. He wasn’t unprepared; he knew the material cold. The issue often

“Fake it until you make it” versus “Putting your best foot forward.”Those are not two ways of saying the same thing. They begin from completely different beliefs. One starts with the belief that who you are isn’t enough. The other starts with the belief that who you are is enough, even when you’re nervous and imperfect. I’ve watched technical professionals struggle with this distinction. Not because they’re trying to deceive anyone, but because they haven’t stopped to examine the mindset

Technical Professionals:  reminder for your next presentation. Decision makers don’t respond to detail first. They respond to whether they believe the problem is real- and whether they trust you to fix it.

Technical Professionals: You’ll see exactly where your message loses the room-and what to change. Sometimes the issue is usually not the quality of the analysis. More often, something changes in the room early.The work is sound. The logic is there. The recommendation is right. But the room begins responding to something before the substance has fully registered. Most professionals try to solve that by adding more detail.In many cases, that only weakens the recommendation further. Anthony Vincent Bova works through