# Talk about the problem before you talk about yourself
Understanding · practice · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/04-10-talk-about-the-problem-before-you-talk-about-yourself.html

## The starting point

A presentation opens with the organisation's history, its team and its tools. The person receiving it is still looking for what it might change for them.

## The move

Open with a situation your recipient recognises, then explain your proposal, its limits, and the reasons to trust you.

## Why it works

Nobody reads your story before knowing whether you are talking about their problem. "Every evening you retype the orders that came in by message into a spreadsheet" stops the reader. "Optimise your operations" lets them scroll past. The person concerned recognises themselves in three seconds.

That sentence only works if it is true. Write it from what you saw or heard from the people you are aiming at. An invented situation is spotted as fast as a real one.

Then show you can solve the problem: a result, a demonstration, a trial they could run. Say clearly what is proven and what is expected.

The team, the references and the technical detail come after. They do not replace the opening.

## Try this

Choose a page, a quote or a presentation. Rewrite its opening: a situation, a proposal, a limit. An AI can give you ten versions in a minute; keep the one closest to what you actually heard.

Show it to someone affected. Ask what they understand and who they think it is for. Fix the misunderstanding.

The move holds for documentation: open with the use, the detail after. And for a job ad: open with the work and its conditions, the company's history after.

## To discuss

Which lived situation does the first sentence of our presentation describe?