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Research scientist turned entrepreneur and investor got a crash course in business that all started with a “communication problem”.
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关于作者
Dr. Xuhui Shao is a managing partner at Tsingyuan Ventures, a technology-focused venture fund investing in seed to series-A startups in the United States. 
Before Tsingyuan Ventures, Xuhui was Yahoo's VP Engineering from 2011-2017, where he led the company’s engineering organizations in data and analytics systems, advertising platforms and mobile backend and content recommendation platforms respectively. He has extensive experience leading R&D in computational intelligence, big data systems and software engineering. Xuhui has also been the Chief Technology Officer of Turn (acquired by division of SingTel for $310M), VP of Analytics at ID Analytics (acquired by Lifelock for $100M).
编者注
旭辉是我多年老同学加好友。与人沟通是大多数中国人在职场遇到的最大的挑战，旭辉提到的 tailor your message based on the audience 对我们所有的人都适用。非常感谢旭辉特别坦诚的分享，让我们从他个人的功课中受益。欢迎转发，让更多人受到启发。-- Richard Liu, Leap.ai CEO
精华瞬间
Trained as a research scientist early in my career, I know how to communicate a complex scientific concept and present large quantities of data with visualization and water-tight logical arguments. My audience’s feedback usually reinforces that every time. Once, in a startup company, I presented to a mentor who is very technical. After 10 minutes he quipped “I’ve just learned in 10 minutes more about your business than I learned in 3 days from Larry (not his true name)”. Another time, we had a really successful sales trip that landed our biggest client early in our company’s history. Afterwards, the banking client’s head of marketing called my boss and told him I was the “best salesman” he had ever seen. In short, I thought I had my communication skills down pat.
So it came as a big surprise when, 10 years ago, less than 2 months into my new job as the CTO of Turn, my CEO Jim pulled me aside (after a long presentation), and told me I had a communication problem. As a very successful serial entrepreneur who is very sharp with a joint degree JD/MBA from Stanford, Jim was someone whose opinion I wholly respect. So what went wrong?
He said, “look you are really smart technologist and you possess a lot of data from your work. However, I’m not as technical as you are (even though he can do business number crunchings by heart better than most). And I don’t understand what you are trying to say. And that is a big problem.”
And I didn’t get it either. I tried to polish up my presentation - working out the logical steps again and again, adding even more analytics and visualization to help, and so on... Despite my best efforts to change the presentation, it didn’t get better. In fact, Jim became a bit exacerbated that I didn’t get what he was trying to tell me. My big problem just turned into a crisis. I began to think I could really be fired soon.
Then one day I went to visit Jim at his house. A mutual friend was also there and I had a chance to catch up with her before Jim could talk to me. Sensing my stress, looked at me and said, “you know, Jim really trusts your judgement, he wants you to tell him what you really think. That’s why he hired you.” 
I was dumbfounded and felt my head was physically transformed at that moment of realization - it wasn’t how I presented or how hard I work on the presentation; it was what I presented. I was not giving him the conclusion and recommendation that he was looking for. Aha! And of course, I’m not fired just yet...
I was a good presenter in technical settings. Places where people appreciate the puzzle solving challenge of sifting through lots of data points and intricate arguments to arrive at their own conclusions. But this is not how to run a business. Most business leaders are Type-3 Achievers (in the Enneagram taxonomy) who focus on goals, priorities, actions and reactions. Business leaders want to know the “what” before they dig into the “why” and “how”. Once I realized that, my path forward became clear, though it still took me years to improve. And because I’ve since worked with many smart technologists who are trapped in the same quandary I faced, I want to share some of the insights from my learning/coaching process:
1. You need to start with the goal in mind, what are you trying to discover or prove. In other words what are your hypothesis and then working backwards on how to investigate and support/disprove it.
2. Presenting the conclusion and recommendation takes courage, the courage of being wrong more than occasionally. As good students and brilliant technologists this is sometimes uncomfortable. You need to let go of your ego. You can’t hide behind your data or your work.
3. Communicate your ideas crisply. Many business leaders or your investors don’t have a lot of time or long attention span. You need to hit home the main point quickly. Communicating crisply enables you to build a productive back-and-forth discussion. Yes you are cutting out details. Maybe they are really important. Maybe your shortened sentences only bring out 70% of the merit. But you are building many more rounds of engaging debate that ultimately is far more effective.
If you’re reading this, I hope this story and these lessons are helpful to you now as much as it was to me 10 years ago. 

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