Show Me.

Communication 4: Show Me.

I spoke at a public meeting about a proposed coastal project’s salinity effects in a treasured fisheries area. More than 200 people crowded into a cavernous hotel ballroom for the meeting. Proponents and opponents of the diversion applauded or booed the preceding speakers, depending on their point of view. I spoke, trying to be neutral on the project, but the crowds were having none of that.

The crowd’s raucous behavior continued through my usual PowerPoint presentation but at the end one of my colleagues had added a color animation of salinity contours pulsing in and out of the estuary. Projected on the ballroom’s 20-ft-tall ceilings, it looked like an IMAX movie of a human heart, pumping in and out bands of vibrant red, yellow, green, and blue. That room full of shouters suddenly became quiet and sat open-mouthed, mesmerized by the rich colors and majestic movement. When it finished, there were no boos, just applause and questions about how we had made the great animation. Graphics tamed the raging beast of partisanship in that hotel ballroom.

There is a specific field, info-graphics, devoted to creating compelling graphics. Color, size, texture, and orientation of objects can display the rich detail of data sets, particularly those derived from “big data” as it is now known. This cylinder plot from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office presents Federal spending in a much more understandable way than a tabular listing and it’s a very simple info-graphic. It’s better than a pie chart, which tends to over-emphasize large numbers. Its use of muted colors diminishes the impact somewhat.

An even better infographic example is this one of the electoral college votes in the 2016 U.S. election. Each state’s size is proportional to its number of electors, and the color indicates which candidate won that state’s votes. It conveys a huge amount of information in a single glance and invites a more detailed examination for more detail.

Source: By Ali Zifan - Cartogram—2012 Electoral Vote.svg by Kelvinsong, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48100982

Infographics can also show connections not readily discernible from ordinary displays. I made this connection diagram showing researchers (blue circles) and funding institutions (orange boxes) for proposals with the keyword “water.”  The blue circle size indicates the relative total funding amounts proposed by that researcher for water-related projects. Another version of this chart showed collaborations among the researchers but made the chart too busy to readily comprehend. That’s perhaps the most common failing of graphical displays.

Try infographics. They are best created by specialized software, particularly when the data sets are large but even PowerPoint offers the capability to construct them. You may find the services of an infographic expert to be useful.

Books and articles on speaking and writing offer great ideas on how to properly prepare ordinary graphics – adequate font sizes, uncrowded slides/figures, and such. I commend them to everyone. Some other tips for graphics accompanying your talk:

·       Don’t cram too much information into your presentation. As one expert put it, “Leave out anything but the pauses.” Your audience has to have time to think.

·       Don’t use too many slides. More than one per minute, on average, is too many unless it’s a travelogue.

·       Minimize the number of words per slide. Avoid complete sentences.

·       Always explain the axes and units of any X-Y plots. Make the labels large enough to read from a distance.

·       Use color but use it carefully, too many colors or too garish a combination distracts from the message.

·       Remove the X-Y plot internal grid lines unless they are essential to your message.

·       Increase the thickness (weight) of your lines.

·       Plot observed data as points, computed data as lines.

·       Remember that slides look different on your monitor then they do when projected. Test on a real screen for fonts and colors.

 Do you have a communication or miscommunication story? Share it with me.

Communication 3: Prove it!

Engineers write in two formal modes – detailed instructions on how to do something, as in plans and specifications, and documenting what has been done, as in analysis and design memos and articles for publication. Engineers’ formal documents must be precise and correct and are best understood when they are also easily readable. Informal writing includes the emails, memos, and texts that are common to all professions.

Like speaking, writing well is the subject of many books and how-to articles and I commend them to you for the basics. Here are some additional tips:

·       Look to your organization’s or intended publication’s completed documents for format and style examples. Follow them unless there’s good reason not to do so.

·       Make a deliberate decision about the intended audience and write for that audience.

·       Remember the “so what?” admonition from the prior blog and make it clear near the front what the document is about and why the reader should care.

·       Separate facts from opinions.

·       Understand “significant figures” and don’t show inappropriate precision in your results.

·       Understand uncertainty and be sure that your document expresses the inherent uncertainty in your results clearly.

·       Be certain that your conclusions are supported by the data and analyses you present.

·       Ask someone who knows language well to proof your writing for grammar and spelling.

·       Ask a fellow engineer to look for errors of fact, logic, or omission in the completed document. Done properly, this step takes significant time and effort, so be prepared to reciprocate in some way.

Even if you dislike writing, do it anyway. Do it to protect your rear end, if nothing else. It may be the only way to prove a point. On multiple occasions my hide has been saved by producing nominal “progress reports” which documented events and decisions made by others. One example: An anonymous caller warned me that a certain Army General had boasted that he was going to have my head on a platter because I had delayed his pet project. When he arrived, I had a 3-year stack of progress reports to his office showing that every delay had been caused by them changing plans and delaying funding. For a tense 40 minutes the General read through the stack, stood and said, “I’m been misinformed. Thank you for your time.” 

Communication 2: Speak or Die?

We’ve all seen the surveys showing that many people fear public speaking even more than dying. Well, maybe.

Public speaking is difficult and doing it well requires knowledge and skills. Successful speakers know their subject, know the audience, and know the best practices for oral communication. Engineers usually know their subject well and readers of my earlier “So What?” blog have been exposed to how to know their audience.

Best practices are the subject of multiple books and courses and I strongly recommend using those resources to learn them. I also recommend searching for public speaking mentors. Your mentors don’t have to know they are helping you. All you have to do is to regularly watch and hear them speak. Note their best and worst aspects – slides, timing and pacing of remarks, level of detail in explanations, asides, even their jokes. Bad examples work almost as well as good ones. I had a co-worker whose mind was so quick that he anticipated people’s questions from their very first words and began his answer before they finished. A terrible practice, since he sometimes anticipated incorrectly and answered the wrong question and always annoyed the questioner because they didn’t get to have their say. Good examples? One of my mentors, Jim Sale, walked among his audience, engaging them by eye contact and noting their reactions. After answering a difficult question, he focused on the questioner and asked, “Does that address your concern adequately?” I learned so much from him.

Beyond the standard best practices, remember how to get to Carnegie Hall – “prepare, prepare, prepare” and “practice, practice, practice.” Practice giving speeches and solicit feedback.  Toastmasters Clubs provide a wonderful service to everyone wanting to improve their speaking skills. I wish there had been a local club when I was learning. It would have saved me many embarrassing episodes.

Next up: Prove it!

Communication 1: So What?

Many of us dread the required technical communications courses in engineering school, reinforcing the stereotype of engineers as introverted, language-challenged techno-nerds. That’s unfortunate, because good speaking and writing are just as essential to an engineer’s career as solid technical skills.

The proof comes in two forms – complaints from employers that new graduates often lack good communication skills, suggesting that our coursework isn’t producing a lasting improvement; and testimony from practicing engineers like me who have struggled to become good communicators out of necessity. “So what?”: You need good communication skills for a successful career.

Good communication is needed for the obvious situations – giving a presentation or preparing a report – but also when explaining an issue to a supervisor, convincing a client, and giving instructions to a subordinate. Just one example: I set up 10-day continuous experiment that required laboratory technicians to adjust a rheostat hourly to regulate an electric pump’s speed. They all nodded when I explained what to do, read the instruction sheet to them, and explicitly told them to NOT adjust the pipe valve, because that would cause the pump to overheat. My communication must have been flawed, because they burned up three pumps in the first two days. Only after MY boss George shouted, snarled, dangled ruined pumps in front of them, and threatened to fire the next person who screwed up did they follow the instructions. He answered the “so what?” question for them. Lesson learned.

The first rule of good technical communication is to know your audience: who are you speaking to or writing for? It’s obvious that communication with a group of elementary school students during Engineers’ Week will differ from a technical conference audience of our peers, which will differ from a design presentation to a client. You MUST tailor every aspect of communication to your audience. Example: We invited an upper level EPA official to  speak to the Northern Gulf Institute conference and she explained to our engineers and scientists that the southeastern U.S. has water quality problems, patiently telling us that DO was short for dissolved oxygen. Every person in that room knew that, and knew the processes and problems better than she did. We didn’t need or want her naïve views on the challenges we faced. We wanted to hear what EPA was planning to do about those challenges and how it might affect our work.

The second rule is to understand your audience’s “so what?” If all they care about is their personal safety during an earthquake, they won’t care about the innovative structural analysis methods that you are so passionate about. You can inflict some education on them but only if you show them how their interests are affected.

For presentations to audiences of unknown background, such as civic groups, it helps to ask a group representative for advice before you prepare your talk. Then, asking your audience a few questions at the beginning can zero in on their preferences and even their mood. I once gave a speech to a business club and was baffled by their refusal to participate or even pretend to listen. Later I learned that in the business meeting to follow my talk they were going to vote on a power struggle between competing cliques. I could have skipped most of my speech and all of my jokes and no one would have noticed.

Discussions, either one-on-one or in small groups, requires both knowledge of the individuals’ technical background and an understanding of their concerns – their “so what.” I cannot overemphasize the importance of listening, sometimes even Active Listening in which you repeat what the person just said. For example, say, “Do I understand correctly that you believe X?” where the X is a verbatim repetition of what they said. (Not a paraphrase.) Only when you understand their concerns and satisfy their need to be heard can you expect them to give your ideas a fair hearing.

Next up: Speak or Die?