Time and time again in cybersecurity, effective communication is the obstacle to technical and non-technical teams being able to truly collaborate. Diverse working groups, while essential for coming up with effective cybersecurity strategies and ideas, can be brought to a standstill when communication isn’t rooted in trust. At this year’s RSAC Conference, husband and wife duo Rebecca Grapsy and Kevin Grapsy are set to deliver a talk on this subject. And for them, it’s personal.
Technical Brilliance Doesn’t Equal Clear Communication
Rebecca, a communications professional, and Kevin, with a deep technical background, have experienced firsthand the friction that can arise when technical brilliance meets the need for clear, actionable communication. Their collaboration isn’t just corporate theory but a personal matter that draws from lived experiences.
“[Kevin is] one of those people who has this really unique or rare ability to talk really succinctly about technical items,” says Rebecca. “There are a lot of people who are technically brilliant but aren’t necessarily good at translating that.”
With that in mind, an idea was born to share their combined expertise and knowledge and talk about the gap between technical and nontechnical teams.
For Kevin, knowing how to effectively and clearly communicate, especially with leadership, can prove to be the biggest payoff in someone’s career.
“You have to be able to tell them essentials of what’s happening on the factory floor,” he says, referring to what it means to discuss cybersecurity problems with leadership. “They don’t care about the firewall; they care about the factory floor.”
Building Bridges Through Shared Goals
To meet their audience, who likely experience these workplace communication issues themselves, where they’re at, the duo came up with what they refer to as “The Five Points of Friction Framework.”
One of the points the pair identifies is misaligned goals. Friction comes from the separate goals of the technical team and the non-technical team.
In this situation, Rebecca says they ask everyone to find a shared North Star, meaning at least one goal that everyone can align with. This goal should be in plain language. “It shouldn’t be hard to explain,” she says. “I should be able to call my dad and explain it to him on the phone. It should make sense to everyone involved.”
This, in turn, is what creates a joint sense of accomplishment and creates opportunities for these teams of varying backgrounds and purpose to celebrate together.
Another one of the five points of friction is trust. This means setting boundaries and establishing a safe environment to communicate without opening others to risk.
This can involve setting up a baseline of expressing that people can speak openly with one another without trusted information being shared elsewhere. And within the technical or intelligence sphere, this can also mean answering with a simple “I don’t know,” which, according to Kevin, is a perfectly valid answer.
Ultimately the purpose of sharing these likely sticking points is to show people how they can address friction in their own careers to build trust and communication with different stakeholders and their own teams. And effectively communicating and overcoming this friction can further a career, protect an organization, and ensure technical work continues to have lasting impact.
“When you can’t translate those really cool technical ideas, or that technical knowledge to the people who are making decisions, to leadership, to the boardroom, it can kind of get lost,” says Rachel. “And that’s what we’re trying to avoid here. We’re trying to build a bridge.”
