The subtle art of saying enough…
Any technical business obviously has countless challenges to navigate. That’s a given and we’re no different.
But this isn’t a sob story. Not a shred of ‘woe is me’ here. I love the challenge. We all do. I’m just thinking…
One of the quieter challenges at Smoke Screen isn’t so much engineering… it’s explaining!
A few months ago, I wrote about how a bit of healthy conflict keeps a team productive. You don’t want a room full of nodding heads. You want debate and friction and someone piping up to say, “hang on a bloody minute…”
Well my goodness, that theory gets a proper workout when marketing meets data.
Finding the balance between marketing language and technical detail can feel like seating sworn rivals next to each other at a wedding and hoping nobody ends up launching a fork.
Scott is currently putting together a new datasheet. A sensible, straightforward job, you might think. Describe the product, explain what it does, make it clear why it matters.
Simple.
Except the minute it went to the technicians for review, it came back looking like the appendix of a PhD thesis.
Line-by-line adjustments here. Additional specifications there. Clarifications on clarifications. Acronyms that only really exist inside our building.
I did chuckle. Because I get it…
From their perspective, that level of detail isn’t optional – it is the product. It’s the years of refinement, testing, and marginal gains that even got the thing to market. Strip too much of it away and you’re not just simplifying; you’re misrepresenting.
From Scott’s perspective, there’s a limit to how much the average reader wants to know about internal tolerances at paragraph three.
And here’s the gorgeous, beautiful, majestic thing: they’re both right.
This internal balancing act mirrors something much wider in the security world.
If there’s a spate of burglaries in a town, the local shopkeeper doesn’t want a twelve-page breakdown of crime pattern analysis and response protocols. They want to know: are we safer? What are we doing about it? Does it work?
At the same time, the consultant or security lead tasked with making a recommendation absolutely does want the detail. They want to understand the mechanism, limitations, edge cases etc. They need confidence that what they’re signing off isn’t smoke and mirrors.
Different audiences. Different appetites. Same product.
Dressing everything up in polished headline language isn’t the answer for everyone. Nor is writing a peer-reviewed journal for a product overview. Neither approach keeps everyone smiling.
The trick, I guess, is knowing when to zoom in and when to zoom out.
Engineers deserve respect. They’re remarkable, enigmatic, baffling creatures. Their scrutiny is what keeps standards high and products credible. If they win every argument, though, you risk producing something so dense it only appeals to the already converted.
Equally, if marketing smooths every edge and sands off every technical corner, you may win attention but lose trust. And let’s be fair, in crime and safety trust isn’t so much decorative as it is foundational.
So what happens in practice?
We argue. Politely. Scott states his claim. The engineers huff and rebuke. We revise and go again. We trim, restore, and question whether that third decimal place truly needs daylight.
IMPORTANTLY: we run it past people who aren’t immersed in it daily.
Eventually, usually, we land somewhere sensible.
The engineer sees enough substance to stand behind it. The decision-maker sees enough clarity to act on it. The shop owner understands it without reaching for a dictionary.
The middle ground is hardly glamorous work, but it’s damn necessary isn’t it?
It’s all about making sure the right people understand why stuff works… in a way that matters to them.
Smiles all around!