Got reprimanded the other day. Explained logistic regression methodology to some stakeholders. Was told ‘they knew all this stuff’ and that it appeared I was ‘talking down to them’. They demanded an apology through my manager - which I gave. I then gave a presentation on model performance and purposefully did not define Precision and Recall. They had no idea what I was talking about.

likefunny
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Ah yes. 99% of work is “show” work. It needs to look like it took the 3 months they gave it. You do it correctly and detailed for that one Reddit guy in the meeting who wants to poke holes. After you deliver the work they then promptly ignore it.

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"actually....."

The art of presenting finding is a delicate one, you have appendix slides for the nerds a pretty slides in the main deck for the “talking heads”. You’ll get it next time it happens

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Well are you a consultant or in industry? Talking heads hate data scientists / analytic types and think they’re blowhards (we kinda are). You have to be able to be ready to present things at a highly granular level in case they have an analytical type present but also keep the conversation flowing naturally (I.e. not talking about p values and data irregularities). Tell them a bedtime story they want to hear most corporate stakeholders are just babies in suits

likehelpful

Get out of there!

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It's easy to focus on your work instead of the client's needs. Often we are explaining how and why we did something when they are looking for why and what to do with it. Unless the engagement is teaching, put your work in the appendix. Get to next steps. They hire us because we know how to do this.

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Always engage your audience to test the waters and probe main technical terms for need of an explanation.

I'm surprised you hadn't run across this earlier in your career. Curious how your path to Sr Director looked (to learn from; no offense intended)

Point is - I haven’t. Leads me to think it is them and not me. I always go simple and clear, careful to understand if I’m being too basic or technical. I’ve learned that even a technically adept audience may not fully understand subject matter. These guys appeared fine. Then complained I was too basic. Then didn’t understand basic stuff

likesmart

It's rare that you can create that feeling from one presentation. Instead, consider each stakeholder may have felt that individually and that presentation was when everyone discussed and realized they all felt the same.

They didn't need the apology. They needed you to know to stop being condescending

Yes I have. And my performance reviews have been great. Otherwise I wouldn’t be at my level.

You can’t work magic in all engagements. I just try to spend my time and resources with clients who are serious about value.

Sound like you prefer to spend your time with anyone who will write a check and tell them whatever they want to hear

And we wonder why so many juniors on here complain about toxic leadership and crappy engagements?

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Not coming off as condescending is truly an art. I like the ideas here about slides- I’ve also been thinking about putting together a preso for execs to teach them basics. Have any of you done that?

Do you think they actually wanted to hear an answer or were going to find an issue with you, no matter what?

I think they were posturing among themselves to convince each other they were smart. ‘Of course WE know all this stuff - don’t we all Team Client?’ No one wants to stand out as the ‘one’ who doesn’t.

It’s like linear regression. Most people would tell you it’s easy. How could someone not understand it? LOTS of people don’t understand anything more than y = Mx + b. But if you really don’t know it and think it should be simple you posture.

I think that’s what happened here. They all THOUGHT they should know it and so the postured reaction was ‘Since of course we all know this [they didn’t] it really isn’t necessary for you to explain it. But since you are explaining something to us that is SO fundamentally simple [it isn’t] you must be talking down to us [but please please please explain because we don’t understand]’

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