Why? What? How? – Lessons from DPEEE

Convincing people of "Why, What, and How", wins them over.

In my previous post, we discussed the importance of passion in research, work, and life in general. That was inspired by the DPEEE Summer Conference I recently attended. In particular, the invited speech by the Finnish MEP Ms. Sirpa Pietikäinen definitely had passion, making me listen and consider despite generally not agreeing.

Her passion was also noticed remarked-upon by one Mika Tukiainen. Tukiainen was the next speaker in line, a university lecturer from the Language Center of the Tampere University of Technology. Fluent and energetic, he gave an excellent lecture-slash-exercise about presentation skills and convincing people.

Besides the importance of passion, both Ms. Pietikäinen and Mr. Tukiainen also demonstrated the procedure of convincing people. She was talking about politicians, while he extended it to research and work altogether.

To the point. In order to win people’s trust and attention, you must answer the following questions, in the following order:

Why?

What?

How?

Let’s briefly discuss each of them in detail.

Why?

This is obviously the biggest factor. If people don’t know why they should care – they won’t.

This is especially important if your audience consists of non-experts. They will have no prior idea of the importance of your work.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant your how is. You’ll never get that far. You never demonstrated that there is a need for it in the first place.

It is also maybe the most overlooked factor. I know I’m often quilty of this when writing abstracts or talking about research in general. The why of my research is so obvious and self-evident to me, it’s too easy to forget it’s probably far less certain to others.

Of course, the level and angle of why is highly setting-dependent. Simply, it will depend on the people you are addressing. Their backgrounds, skills, and even personalities. For instance, when I’m discussing my research with other algorithm-focused academics, I can begin with some specific limitations of the finite element method. By contrast, for “simple” (no offence here, haha) electrical engineers I should probably start with either heat management or even price of electrical machines. And finally, for a complete layperson I could simply paint visions of better and cooler electric vehicles.

It also depends on your what. Pitching a luxury item probably requires a far-more feelings-oriented approach than, say, an appliance solving a widely-acknowledged industrial problem.

What?

The next logical step is what.

You have managed to convince people of the existence of a problem. Now it’s time to take the first look on whatever’s going to solve it.

Again, the angle and the level of detail will – and should – depend on both the audience, and the problem in question.

Experts can be interested in and convinced by a highly-specific description. For complete outsiders, a very rough mental illustration is probably in order. Most of the time, a middle-lane approach is probably the best one.

Let’s use me as an example again.

For algorithm people, I might say that I have a new reduced-basis approach with significantly-reduced computation times. With the layperson, it might be better to simply state I have made a program to design better motors.

How?

Only now it’s time to bring in some details.

Well, assuming you haven’t managed to alienate your audience just yet. Kinda illustrates the importance of the previous two points, right?

The contents of this is quite self-evident. You have by now convinced people of the existence of a problem, and given some kind of impression your way to solve it. Now you can go deeper into the details.

Again, the level of detail depends on the topic in question, and your audience. They should be able to understand what you are explaining.

Note that I didn’t advice you to say exactly what you have been doing. If your how is about anything highly-specialized, most people are not going to be able to understand the details. Not without an hour-long explanation with some supporting visuals. Like a lecture, really. Or two.

But, you can always roughen-down your speech to the level of your listeners. Just use simplifications, parallels, and skip some details (lots of them) when necessary. You’ll still be able to cover the naked basics.

Example time

I’ll use myself as an example.

That handsome bastard above is me, standing in front of my poster in the DPEEE session. (Organized in a log-cottage-slash-shed by the way. Definitely the most memorable venue for a poster session ever.) The poster is the one I made for the ICEM Student Forum – a broad overview of my research work.

The audience consisted of other PhD students in electrical engineering. As such, they knew the basics of electrical machines, and the role of simulation software in their design. Thus, my why could be e.g. the time needed for good winding analysis with the current software. Hours, easily. Not good.

My what would be almost as simple – one of the algorithms I have developed for faster analysis (vastly so, mind you).

The how would be a bit more difficult. Remember, the audience were mostly not experts in numerical analysis. So, it wouldn’t make sense to confuse them with implementation details. Instead, I would stay on a more general level: briefly explaining the basics about assuming the conductors to be thin enough, or pre-computing how a part of the winding reacts to boundary excitation.

Conclusion

Convince people of why, what, and how you have been doing whatever the awesomeness you have been doing.

Do it in that order, but don’t be a moron – adjust the angle of approach and the level of detail based on your audience.

-Antti

Why? What? How? – Lessons from DPEEE