What Is Not of Interest to Suits (Generally Speaking)

• Discussion of technical risk.  As the sorry story of the Obamacare website debacle unfolds, one can only imagine the yawning, fidgeting with gizmos, and other signs of audience uninterest that greeted the tech team’s feeble attempts to discuss the tech risks of the project at the outset.  Suits hate to hear any details about technical risk: all they want is the geeks’ assurance that tech risk will be manageable and will be managed.
• Discussion of technical merit.  As with risk, so with merit.  Suits don’t want to hear what approaches are preferred, and why.
• Discussion of Schedule/Budget risk.  The one thing that is sacred in the Obamacare discussions is the immovability of the end date.  One of the first big software projects I worked on as a programming professional had a delivery date of April 1.  No one saw – or at least admitted they saw – the irony of a project end date of April Fools’ Day which, as early as January of that year, we all knew was completely unachievable.  Yet we solemnly swore that 4/1 was written in stone until the week before.

All this is quite a change from the investor presentation setting, where most of the questions from potential investors revolve around risk and reward (although here, too, the discussion is almost never very technical).

Is There an Argument for a Framing Slide in a Business Case Pitch to Suits?

In an earlier post on raising money from investors, I argued for the importance of a “framing slide” at the beginning of a presentation to help your audience situate themselves within your pitch.

Is there the same argument for a framing slide in business-case pitch to suits?  And does the slide contain the same bullet points?

Yes, and no.

Yes, a framing slide is good in a pitch like this, and for the same reason: It shows respect for your audience, understanding of what questions will be on their minds at the beginning of your presentation, and a promise to answer those questions.

But, no, the questions on the mind of a business-case audience are not the same as an audience of potential investors.

A group of suits hearing a geek pitch a business case are not generally investing their own money, or even the money of limited partners.  They are spending out of a budget or hearing an argument to lobby for budget.  Therefore the budget and use of funds, although important, is perhaps not as important as the investor pitch.

What business-case investors care most about is:

• Whose turf is affected by the proposed initiative?
• How will that stakeholder benefit or suffer?
• What are the bona fides of the team making the case?
• What argument can be made to my superior in favor of this business case?

(Not an exhaustive list, perhaps, but one that stems from an attempt to get into the mind of the audience.)

The core insight here is that business cases within a large organization have much more to do with turf than with ROI.

Make no mistake, a business-case pitch will need slides on budget and slides on ROI (perhaps lots of them).  But the essential first slide is all about the politics.

Classifying “Suits”: Early Adopters and Early Majority

Geoffrey Moore of “Crossing the Chasm” fame is often misunderstood on the topic of Early Adopters and Early Majority.

Moore actually has three kinds of early customers: Innovators, Early Adopters, and Early Majority.

Most of us confuse Early Adopters with Innovators.  When we meet a visionary customer, we wrongly assume they’re an Early Adopter.

What’s the difference?  Innovators love technology and innovation for its own sake.  They want one of everything to play around with.  Innovators are essentially indifferent to the business value of an innovation.

Early Adopters, on the other hand, care about the business value of innovation.  They are willing to take a risk on an innovative technology approach, but they are doing so as a calculated risk in order to gain a business advantage.  Early Adopters see the business advantage of an innovation and accept the risk of using it in order to reap the business reward.

And, finally, Early Majority customers want to “let Joe drain out the risk.”  They don’t want to take chances with new technology until they believe everyone else is doing it and they are in danger of being left behind if they don’t.  Early Majority customers wish that innovation risk would go away.

Within the organization, then, geeks are likely to comprise mostly Innovators and Early Adopters.  And suits are likely to comprise mostly Early Adopters and Early Majority (as well as Late Majority and Laggards, but those are topics for another day.)

The business value of an innovation and the unvarnished risk associated with it are the two things Early Adopters want to be crystal clear about.

The business value of an innovation and the strong hint that everyone else is already doing it are the two things Early Majority want to be crystal clear about.

It’s possible to speak to both of them in the same pitch, since Early Adopters don’t care what everyone else is doing (much) and Early Majority don’t listen to blah-blah about risk as long as they see others taking the risk.

Why Marketing and Engineering Don’t Understand One Another

The inner workings of the tension between Marketing and Engineering are similar to the tension between management and tech staff discussed in my last post.  Similar, but different.

Safe to say that the two don’t understand one another, but the twin elements of unpredictability and needing one another are absent.  And there is a new element: Marketing and Engineering each think what the other does is magic.

Let’s take these one at a time:

• Unpredictability.  Marketing and Engineering don’t trust one another, but that’s not the same as finding the other unpredictable.  “Those weasels from Marketing, they always do this.”  “You know Engineering will throw up their hands.”  We know what the Other is going to do, we just don’t like it.
• Needing One Another.  Management wishes we believed we need one another, but in fact neither of us is giving the other a paycheck or the wherewithal for a paycheck, except in a very abstract and attenuated sense that makes no impact on our feelings for one another.  Part of the very tension between the two stems from the fact that there is no urgency to try to work with the other side.  We can fold our arms – and do – and wait for steam to come out of their ears.
• Magic.  Probably the most interesting of these points.  Marketing has no idea of how software or hardware or even physics works.  To them, everything Engineering does is essentially magic (per Arthur Clarke’s Law #3: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  And, on the other side, Engineering has no idea of how to persuade markets to value or like things; the idea of persuasion in Engineering is that you present your listeners with a fact, and, if they are agree, they are persuaded.  The methods that Marketing uses to involve markets emotionally are magic to Engineering.

One consequence of the “magic” problem is that neither side knows how to assess a promise or a caution from the other side: “We don’t think we can make that schedule” (Why not?  Why not just add more magic?), or “We can’t sell that to soccer moms” (Why not?  Just use your Jedi Mind Tricks on them?).

Understanding the source of the tension between the two groups should help us to talk to one another and, hopefully, break through.

What is the Source of Tension Between Management and Tech Staff?

A first way to approach the divide between geeks and suits is to understand the nature and dynamic of the tension between management and tech staff.

For my money, the heart of it is we need one another but don’t like one another.

From the geek point of view, management is unpredictable.  When you say something to a suit, you have no idea what you’re going to get back: it could be a pat on the cheek; it could be a knife in the back; it could be flattering praise; it could be a curse and a blow; ultimately, it could be a pink slip.

What’s to like for a geek about a system whose output isn’t predictable – or at least understandable – as a function of your input?

But it’s a system that we need.  The pink slip says it all: management controls access to food, clothing, shelter, self-actualization, and self-esteem.  So your whole Hierarchy of Needs is in the hands of a lunatic.  That’s the geek point of view.

Strangely, management thinks of geeks almost exactly the same way.  When you speak to them, you have no idea what you’re going to get back: a smile; a snarl; a great demo; terrible news about a slipped schedule or a new tech obstacle.

What’s to like for a suit about a system whose outputs aren’t predictable from your inputs?

And, it’s a system that we need.  Without the geeks, the Morlocks of modern industry, management can’t get food, clothing, shelter, self-actualization, or self-esteem.

Both sides find the other side unpredictable and incomprehensible.  That’s a recipe for some touch Solution Pitching.

Features vs. Benefits

The core shortcoming in a “geek” presentation attempting to make a business case is surely touting features rather than benefits.

A feature is an attribute of the solution under discussion.  It’s one of the things a solution can do:

• “The new JetEdge can achieve speeds of up to Mach 20”
• “The T_g of the material is 1200 degrees C.” (thanks to Jack Lesko for that one!)
• “We have achieved latencies of down to 2 ns”

The problem with features, of course, is they’re inside out.

People who are deciding on the merits of a solution don’t care what it will do (even if they say they do); they care about what it will do for them.

What a solution will do for a potential solute (is that the right word lol?) is a benefit, and benefits are what a presentation should pitch.

• “The JetEdge can get you to London before you left”
• “The new material can line exhaust pipes without turning plastic”
• “Web apps can be written on the new platform without messy client-side code”

It is so common for geeks to conflate features and benefits that it’s worth wondering why.  I have two theories, not necessarily exclusive:

• Geeks hate to lie, generally speaking, and a feature sounds like a fact whereas a benefit sounds like a (potentially false or lying) opinion.
• Geeks hate to urge someone else to do something; we believe that everyone should make up their own minds about things.  Touting benefits sounds like urging.

Needless to say, geeks have to get over it!  Without urging, those suits are never going to fund your business case.  In fact, the gist of a presentation – bearing in mind all of the caveats from previous posts – is respectfully urging the listeners to take a certain course of action.

The trick is being respectful.

Use Case #2: Geeks and Suits

Time to switch gears.

I know the most about entrepreneurs pitching business ideas to investors, because that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years.

But prior to that I was a tech guy, and got a lot of experience (among other things) trying to get the managements of my companies to take on a new tech project, and watching my tech brothers and sisters do the same thing.

I want to turn to this use case next, and spend a few posts on special Solution Pitching angles to Geeks and Suits.

Of course, the fundamentals remain the same:

1. Know what your audience is thinking
2. Benefits Not Features
3. Be Respectful

Onward and upward!