Know your audience. đź’
One of the earliest professional lessons I learned in my career is to know your audience.
There I was, what felt like barely an adult, a young mother of 3 at 26. I had a laser focus on providing for my children. I was balancing classes at Minnesota State University while working for Taylor Corporation as a business analyst—a respectable position that opened doors to incredible opportunities.
Under the wings of an attentive manager and a scholarship mentor, I received career advice that has stuck with me to this day: Know your audience.
My manager focused on my presentation delivery. He acknowledged how smart I was and thanked me for being able to hold the torch, but then he explained: “Not everybody can go into that depth, Mary. You need to adjust your delivery for your audience.” As a quick study, I didn’t need much more direction than that to realize it is always best to keep it simple. Figure out what details matter most to the people in front of you, and stay fiercely focused on that.
My mentor focused on addressing an audience through written communication. She explained that written forms naturally create more opportunities for people to read things incorrectly or over-analyze them. The goal is to keep communication strictly to the point, focus tightly on what they need to know, and ensure the most vital information stands out clearly.
She once had me draft a corporate communication she intended to send out. She provided feedback on what she liked and what she wanted to change. I smiled from ear to ear when the final communication was broadcast mostly in my original words, under her name. It was an incredible privilege.
The Reality of the Field
When I eventually left Taylor Corporation and transitioned into consulting, I entered a whole new world where taking the time to truly know your audience and doing things highly efficiently felt like competing forces. As consultants, we are sent in to get to know a business—and fast. We are tasked with building and executing enterprise resource planning systems where the stakes are incredibly high. They are the kind of stakes that make or break careers and sometimes whole companies.
At the beginning of my consulting career, there was constant travel. So much so that I was almost sure one of my children was going to come out with a Southern drawl based on traveling five days a week, up until two weeks before my due date. But being physically onsite gave us the opportunity to hold those relationships and truly know our audience. Who likes coffee, and who doesn’t? Who takes lunch at the exact same time every day, and who skips it? What common likes or dislikes can bring a room together?
Baking a Cake
Walking into host a group of engineers at a heavy manufacturing corporation, I initially knew very little about my audience. I knew their current system wasn’t tracking inventory correctly, and they were tasked with solving it. My job was to train them on bills of materials (BOM) and complex routing pathways.
When preparing for the session, I did extensive research to understand them better. What does a typical bill of materials look like in their industry? What common data problems are caused by inaccurate information? The underlying problem was highly complex, sometimes taking years to unwind tribal knowledge and uncover the root issues.
Then, I had an idea. I wasn’t going to magically learn enough about their specific manufacturing nuances in a few days to hand them all the answers, so I focused strictly on what they needed to know and kept it simple.
We baked a cake. 🎂
I began the session by explaining: “I am not an expert in your specific bills of materials or the machinery processes to manufacture them. But I am an expert in how systems operate, how they need to be configured, and how they scale. Now, who here is familiar with baking a cake?“
The room vibrated with deep chuckles, and waves of smiles flashed across the room. Everyone knew how to bake a cake.
So, field-by-field, step-by-step, we baked a cake together on the screen. During the session, I watched the light-bulbs start to go off. By reducing a terrifyingly complex system problem down to a universal human baseline, the engineers began solving their own problems. They started pinpointing exactly where their own system configurations and routing pathways were off. The team worked incredibly hard and was immensely proud when we ran our first production orders under a completely new light. We had found alignment.Â
Afterward, as we were packing up to head home, multiple engineers thanked me for keeping it simple and baking a cake. I felt like I had found a cheat code, but in reality, I had just tapped into human nature and the simple things that connect us all.
The Digital Shift
Today, I was reminded of the power of knowing your audience.
Post-pandemic, fewer companies are paying for heavy consulting travel. Largely, we can execute what we do entirely remotely. As a result, getting to know my audience has become a brand-new challenge. Yet, noticing the fine details of what connects us remains just as critical.
LinkedIn is a tool I frequently use to close that gap. It gives presence to ourselves in a digital space. Whether I am scanning trends in my feed or studying individual profiles, it allows a glance into what connects us. I also appreciate its ability to act as a matchmaker.
Recently, it’s been matching me to the same career opportunity, again and again.
Curiosity finally got the best of me.
When reviewing the organization’s page, it’s clear they deeply know their audience. It’s transparent that every detail was obsessed over—from their primary architecture to what their executive leadership posts. Their mission is crystal clear. Who they are trying to attract (and not attract) is intentional. Their core values are truthfully displayed through a commitment to absolutes and structural integrity. I am genuinely intrigued by how seamlessly they capture an innate human desire to be a part of that kind of culture.
So there it was: my reminder of the power of knowing your audience and finding the thread that connects you.
The Missing Connection
Today’s public feed was filled with people looking for employment, and it made me pause. I am deeply thankful to have a job I love. I believe completely in my company’s mission to bring the highest value to our customers’ investments in technology. As an employee of over a decade, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given and immensely proud to be a part of a team that is customer and team centric.
The match maker made me think about what my own LinkedIn profile says about me. How do I come across to people who find themselves on my page? The truth is, there wasn’t a whole lot for people to truly get to know me. It was primarily focused on a technical list of work history, platform modules, and related skills. There were no stories of what I’ve actually done. Nothing personal giving an indication of what drives me.
Don’t get me wrong; my technical experience is impressive and it speaks volumes. It says I am skilled, loyal, and highly experienced.
But what was missing? There was nothing connecting me to my audience.
Skills, loyalty, and deep enterprise experience are fantastic commodities, but the reality is that many senior people possess them.
That is when I remembered the cheat code: leaning directly into what connects us to enable distributed teams to fulfill common milestones.
In my curiosity I found a leader’s post that broke down simple advice for making your LinkedIn profile stand out.
Personal stories. Real stories.
I decided to start with something that might help others find the courage to put themselves out there in this hyper-competitive tech market, or perhaps help you discover that unique spark that makes you, you. It is a reminder that we all share common ground and have our own unique ways of finding it. That is what truly makes a leader stand out.
Scaling Through Humanity
Through attentive managers, mentors and invaluable colleague feedback, I have learned to see my audience as human, and I am driven by finding the things that connect us. Because in all of my years of architectural execution, the most valuable lesson I have learned is humbly reminding myself that finding what connects us makes us scale.
People want to be valued.
People want to be motivated.
People want to be a part of a culture that makes them feel good about their work.
We’re all just human at the end of the day, and there are core things we all have in common.
So today, was a perfect reminder that curiosity is the mechanism through which I understand people, and understanding people has been what’s enabled leadership, communication, adoption, and scale.
