Cross-Functional Translation Practice
Translate your function into the logic and language other leaders can use.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
Treat the ability to explain a function to outsiders as a foundational leadership skill. Begin with a customer problem or business outcome the audience already understands, then show how the function’s work changes that outcome. Adapt the explanation to the listener: an engineering leader, sales leader, and CEO may need different simplifications, examples, or visualizations. Avoid using specialist terminology as a substitute for logic. Improve through repeated attempts and feedback rather than expecting one universal story to work. Staying close to customers strengthens the explanation because the leader can connect strategy to real needs, objections, and behavior rather than relying solely on internal dashboards.
Origin
Brian Balfour reflected on learning this skill at HubSpot, and Kieran Flanagan connected it to internal marketing storytelling on Marketing Against The Grain.
Core principles
- 01Functional expertise is incomplete until others can understand its value.
- 02Different leaders require different explanations and representations.
- 03Customer problems provide shared cross-functional language.
- 04Translation improves through repeated attempts, feedback, and simplification.
- 05Customer proximity makes internal storytelling more credible.
How to run it
- 1
Profile the audience
Identify what the listener knows, values, and needs to decide.
Pro tip Consider how their function frames risk, evidence, and value.
Watch out Do not reuse an unchanged specialist presentation for every audience.
- 2
Find shared ground
Anchor the explanation in a customer problem or company outcome that crosses functional boundaries.
Pro tip Use recent customer conversations to make the problem concrete.
Watch out A function-centered explanation can sound self-serving.
- 3
Translate the mechanism
Explain how the function’s work changes the shared problem using plain causal logic.
Pro tip Use a simple visualization or artifact when words alone are insufficient.
Watch out Simplification should remove jargon, not essential constraints.
- 4
Test comprehension
Ask the audience to restate the mechanism or identify what remains unclear.
Pro tip Treat confusion as feedback on the explanation rather than proof the audience does not understand the function.
Watch out Agreement does not necessarily mean understanding.
- 5
Build repetitions
Refine the explanation across different audiences, formats, and decisions.
Pro tip Keep a library of explanations that worked for specific functional audiences.
Watch out Do not retreat to working only with leaders who already agree with you.
In the wild
A marketing leader avoids abstract claims about brand equity. She shows that low awareness leaves too few qualified buyers for measurable acquisition channels, then explains how a specific campaign expands that pool and which leading indicators will demonstrate progress.
→ The founder can evaluate the proposal through customer and system logic rather than marketing jargon.
Common mistakes
Choosing only marketing-native founders
Avoiding leaders who need translation limits opportunities and evades a core leadership responsibility.
Presenting one universal explanation
Different functions interpret evidence and value differently, so a single framing often fails.
Losing customer contact
Leaders who rely only on aggregate data struggle to tell a credible story about customer problems.
Is it for you?
Best for
Marketing and other functional leaders presenting strategy to founders, executives, and cross-functional peers.
Not ideal for
Situations where technical precision cannot safely be simplified for the intended decision.
From the transcript
“one of the key skill sets to learn as any type of leader is how do you explain your function and the work of your…”
“you've got to get a lot of different reps at it of like just kind of like poking at it from different directions, different simplifications,…”
“the closer you are to the customer, usually the better you can tell that story.”
From the episode
Brian Balfour Reveals How To Build An A+ Marketing Team From Scratch (#183)
Brian Balfour