Does everyone in the room understand FII?

Last week I attended the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference in Mumbai. I was there as a marketer looking to learn something new. It was a fantastic conference in two ways; as a marketer I did learn new stuff and as a presenter I saw some great presentations.

It was a day long conference with a series of presentations on diverse topics. I kept noting down the good and the bad stuff presenters did at the event. I wanted to share it all with you. I will be sharing these over the next week. Here is one such instance.

Mr. Ram Charan, the most influential consultant alive, gave an hour long talk. He is the consultant for some of the biggest names in the US and so you will expect him to throw a lot of jargon at young marketers like me. What happened was totally the reverse. Whenever he introduced a term like FDI or FII, he asked 'Does everyone in the room understand FDI / FII?

To me this was awesome.

One, it made everyone in the room comfortable. Many people in the audience would have said to themselves, "It is not so bad if I do not know what FDI means." He also gave a chance to the audience to understand the term before Ram Charan elaborated on his point.

Two, it means Mr. Ram Charan was thoughtful about his audience. He knew he was not talking to finance managers, CFOs or CEOs. "These 400 odd people are marketers. Let me check with them if they understand my jargon."

Next time, if you are forced to throw a jargon at our audience, can you please ask yourself "Does everyone in the room understand this?" Should I explain the jargon, even if some people in the audience might already know what it means.