What Happens If You Speak Gibberish

If you want to persuade a group of officials and politicians, they must understand what you are saying.

A lot of interests fall at the first hurdle. The decision-makers you have to influence don’t understand what you are saying and want.

The words coming out of your mouth or from your pen onto paper make no sense to them.

It is tragically too familiar.

I think it is one of the significant reasons many groups don’t succeed.

It is a virus that infects industry and NGOs. The effects are (politically) deadly. Your cause is DOA. What’s worse, most lobbyists and their clients don’t even know they are infected.

When working for WWF many years ago, I read a letter we were about to send to the Fisheries Commissioner on fishing quotas. I had no idea what it meant. I’m not a fisheries technical expert. It had some equations in it.

I revised the letter and sent it to the Commissioner, with the Head of Cabinet in CC. A few minutes later, I got a call from the Head of the Cabinet to come in for coffee. When we met, he thanked me for the letter. It was the only one we had sent to him on the issue he understood. He said he had just sent them to the Chief Scientific Adviser, as he was one of the few officials on staff who understood the equations and magic code language that fisheries scientists use.

The positive impact was once we understood each other, the levels of trust grew. We did not always agree on decisions, but we better understood why we differed.

If your audience does not understand you, it is near-nigh impossible to persuade them.

Your audience as a lobbyist comes down to these groups:

The audience to persuade is not the client/interest.

Whatever you want to say, you can’t say/write just based on how you see the issue/things.

You must adapt what you want to say to words, a case, interests, a mandate, and values that speak to the officials, politicians, regulators, etc.

I’ve noticed, that those inside the “group”, understand their unique gibberish. They think what they say/write in their secret code language is crystal clear.

This is usually fatal for your interests for two reasons.

First, what you say is likely incomprehensible to the 4 of the 5 audiences, and usually all 5.

Many groups are just comfortable engaging at the ‘Technical Expert’ level.  After 29 years, I do not know of any political/regulatory file that technical experts decided on.

Second, you are usually not addressing the audience’s concerns. If you don’t answer what the intended audience needs to know, you have wasted their time and given off some deep, untrustworthy vibes.

So, if you are serious about succeeding, you must take what you want to say and do a lot of work.

I’ve noticed over time that this is difficult for most people. They see the idea of translation as offensive to their very identity. Their view is that anyone working on a political or regulatory decision that impacts them – whether they are a politician, official, regulator, or technical expert – has to understand the individual’s issue with the same amount of specific insight and obscure language. And, if the politician, official etc, does not understand the specific issue and obscure language, the politician etc should recuse themselves from working on the issue.

This is a common sentiment.

And, yet, after a few decades, I’ve never seen a politician recuse themselves from making the decision.

Indeed, in all cases, I’ve noticed a common trend. The politician, etc., decides against the person who makes no sense.

If you thought this bad, it gets worse.

I’ve also noticed on many files that on the winning side, there tends to be a politician, group adviser, or official, etc., who possesses the unique superpowers to turn deep complexity and double Dutch into a specific language that speaks to fellow politicians or officials values, mindset, mandate, and language.

Their success is often simply from possessing the superpower of communicating clearly.

You can copy them. The rewards are spectacular. You win.

There are three cases when you should speak/write gibberish. This is when what you are asking for is:

Here, the less clear you are, the better.