You explained it clearly. They still did not get it.
Your instinct in that moment is to say it again, slightly louder, with the same words. That almost never works, because the words were not the problem. The frame was.
Everyone listening has a different hook to hang your idea on. The engineer wants the mechanism. The product manager wants the consequence. The person who has been here nine years wants to know how it is different from the thing you tried in 2023.
Same idea. Three completely different doors into it.
So build the habit of holding more than one explanation.
Have the mechanical version. Here is what the system does, step by step, and here is where it breaks down.
Have the consequence version. If we do nothing, checkout fails for about two percent of users on mobile, and we will not notice until support tickets pile up.
Have the analogy version. It is like a queue where the person at the front can quietly walk away and nobody behind them notices for an hour.
None of these is the correct explanation. They are three ways in, and you cannot know in advance which one fits the person in front of you.
Watch for the moment it lands. There is a real physical tell, a slight lean, a nod that is not just politeness, a question that shows they are now working the problem with you rather than waiting for you to finish.
Before that, keep offering doors. After that, stop explaining. Continuing past comprehension is its own kind of failure.
And when none of the three works, do not conclude that they are slow. Conclude that you have not yet found the version that connects to what they already know, which is genuinely your job and not theirs.
Ask them to tell you what they think you are saying. Their wrong version will show you exactly which door to try next.
Clear communication is rarely about finding the perfect sentence.
It is about being willing to say the same true thing several different ways until one of them opens.
– Asael Shinder
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