Speaking the language of your audience

Yesterday. I wrote a quick post about how you can often easily elicit information from "knowledge hoarders" by making a statement that is deliberately a little out of whack, and letting them correct you. A great friend and colleague said "This is like the professional version of being wrong on the Internet as a means of getting to the correct answer quickly!"

Well, yes. Yes it is. And I reworded the answer so that people on LinkedIn who are seeking some insight will be able to allow the words through their particular perceptual filters. We all have them. Psychologists and philosophers call them a priori assumptions, but what this means is that when new information comes our way, we test it against a hierarchy of values and beliefs to decide if we'll accept it or not.

I've popped a pic above of some optic filters. These screen out any light that doesn't match the frequency of the filter - so a deep red filter only allows red light, UV filters screen out light above the visible spectrum, and so on. Our perceptual filters work like that, and one of the key marketing tasks is to align their "colours" with our filters - or better yet, find a way of getting us to align our filters with their colours!

So, when we security practitioners are talking with others, we need to align our message with the framework of understanding possessed by our audience. Bear in mind that the more senior our audience, the more likely it is that they will have a heavy investment in their framework! If we are talking with leaders who have P&L responsibility, a good message to use is how our recommendations will help control unnecessary costs. If we are talking with people who care about compliance, then we talk about how our recommendations will reduce risk. And so on.

We are a tribe of storytellers. And the next question is, why? And what is the story we'll tell?

That's for another day.