Photo: Cory Doctorow via Flickr
A few years ago, I knew a girl whose personal motto was:
If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em
The logic behind this is that anybody who doesn’t instantly recognize your brilliance is an idiot, so you should show off your superior intellect by confusing them with all the obscure stuff you know and they don’t.
What nonsense!
Incomprehensible = clever? How does that work?
I know it’s a bad habit many geeks have: we talk geek. Talking geek to other geeks is fine. Prattling on about esoteric technical stuff when you’re talking to regular people (e.g. your customers) is bad.
If you do this, stop it.
Learn to talk like a regular person with decent social skills. Learn to explain complex technical stuff in an easy-to-understand way, but without ever being patronizing. Most importantly, learn to relate what you’re doing to the effects it has on real human beings.
For example:
Faster computer! => Who cares?
Less waiting for my computer to start up (or catch up) => I care!
If you confuse potential customers, staff and investors, you’re hurting your chances of success. You might get to feel clever, but you’ll be doing it in a call center while you work to pay off your failed-startup costs.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Sara Goldstein // Jul 6, 2008 at 11:40 pm
PS: Apparently it’s also a Harry S. Truman quote, referring to one of the ways politicians get their own way — by making sure nobody understands what they’re actually doing (when it’s something they could never convince somebody to accept if they knew what they were getting into). Clever.
2 Startup Lessons #15: Communication iteration // Aug 17, 2008 at 7:29 am
[...] I’ve also met some startup founders who cling to a crap way of explaining what they do, despite the blank looks they get whenever they tell someone their brilliant idea. Perhaps they think confusing people makes them seem smart? [...]
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