Why has my research been shelved?

The Strategic Defence Review called for Defence to ‘innovate at wartime pace’, committing 10% of the equipment budget to novel technologies, and the Defence Investment Plan must now translate that ambition into contracts. This requires decisions to be made more quickly: progressing promising technologies early, failing fast, and working more collaboratively with industry. Many of those decisions are taken by people who are not technical specialists and who have limited time. Communication is therefore not simply the final stage of research and development; it is fundamental to how quickly innovation reaches the front line.  

I’ve felt the frustration of excellent research and development that fails to go anywhere. Technology that I’ve spent years studying and helping to develop, that I’m convinced can improve operational capability, gets ‘de-scoped’ to make time and budget available to progress other innovations considered higher priorities.  

Sometimes it simply comes down to timing. A technology that shows great promise may not align with current operational priorities. Conversely, urgent capability requirements have seen technologies rapidly progressed into prototypes or fielded solutions that would otherwise have gathered dust in a lab. 

But at other times, despite a promising technology and a capability gap to be filled, technology fails to be progressed or adopted for a simple reason: the people who decide just don’t ‘get it’. Looking back, I’ve come to accept that at least part of the reason lay in how I communicated the work. 

Isn’t that how I’m supposed to write? 

As scientists and engineers, we’re taught to write precisely. Passive voice, neutral tone. Method, results, conclusions. It’s a style that everyone adopts. I learnt to embrace it at school and university, and refined it as my engineering career progressed. Technical reviewers would rigorously apply the same code and pull me up on any transgressions. 

As an engineer or scientist, there is also a fear that drives us when writing: the fear of technical scrutiny and criticism of our work. We’re afraid of being accused of oversimplification, misrepresentation or, even worse, incorrect conclusions and recommendations. This leads to an abundance of caution, layer upon layer of caveats and weak messaging that fails to inspire the reader. 

I remember the perplexed expression on the face of a military advisor as he tried to make sense of my executive summary. Though providing an accurate description of the technical conclusions from my research and the next development steps, I had failed to explain the consequences for the operational capability that the technology could provide. I began to realise that my writing needed to stretch to reach beyond technical audiences to those who would eventually sponsor or use the capability. These were the stakeholders that would ultimately decide the fate of the work. 

What do I want to achieve? 

As time went on, although it felt uncomfortable, I learnt that not all readers need the technical detail. More important is to communicate the key messages for that audience, safe in the knowledge that there is technical evidence to back it up if required later. Furthermore, I found that it is possible to deliver writing that appeals to a range of audiences whilst remaining technically credible. 

My experience has led to a shift in perspective when I start writing. For an operator who is short of time and attention, the methods-results-conclusions format simply doesn’t work. In practice, this meant learning to tell a story: the same information, in a different structure and order. Understanding the context and the audience becomes the fundamental first step, before I get to what is now scientifically possible. The technical evidence then follows, backing up the key points after they have been made. 

For one government project, transforming communications style from written technical specifications to a compelling story and visualisations of the technology in use, both set in realistic operational environments, has transformed how stakeholders have perceived the capabilities, increasing engagement and helping to secure funding for further development. 

Similarly, on the British Army’s ZODIAC programme, a single narrative, an animation and consistent briefings helped senior Ministry of Defence officials understand a capability you ‘cannot google’, and one briefing led to the sign-off of a major new strand of the programme: https://canny-comms.co.uk/case-studies/land-intelligence-and-targeting-programme  

This is a new way of thinking for most scientists and engineers. However, it is an exceptionally useful skill, and fairly easy to learn once you are conscious of it. 

If you need to communicate technical information in an impactful way, why not attend our Reputation Lab on Technical Storytelling: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cannycomms/2421158