Reputation Lab: Technical Storytelling (virtual)
Reputation Lab: Explain your technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it
Make the complex clear. Make the brilliant visible.
Your technology is probably being described in the same words as the products it outperforms. The engineering is a generation ahead, but the story is not. So the people who buy it, fund it and back it never find out what it can do, and the money you have already put into development takes longer to pay back. In defence and security, those people are military users, policymakers, investors and prime programme managers, and each of them reads a pitch differently.
This is the Lab where you learn to translate. It runs as four two-hour sessions online, with work between sessions so your story moves forward every week.
What you'll work on
You'll bring one real product, service or technology from your own organisation and build the story around it, moving from specification to a narrative that lands with people who don't share your technical background. You'll test it with peers, adapt it for each audience that matters to you, and get direct expert input on your hardest challenge. Between sessions, you'll apply the frameworks to your own material, so each week starts from your latest draft. You'll leave with a messaging framework you can put to work straight away.
When
Four Thursdays in November, 14:00 to 16:00, on Teams: 5, 12, 19 and 26 November 2026.
How it works
Week 1 — Briefing: Why brilliant technology stays invisible
Why so much good technology never wins the backing it needs, and why companies so often describe what they make in the customer's least useful words. The gap between technical truth and what the audience actually hears. Frameworks for translating complexity into clarity without dumbing it down, with case studies from defence and security of what works and what fails. Then you start on one real product, service or technology from your own organisation, and write the first draft of its story.
Between sessions: refine your draft narrative using the frameworks, and submit it before Week 2.
Week 2 — Discovery: Find the story inside your specification
Your draft goes in front of a small group of peers who don't share your specialism. If they can't repeat it back, it isn't ready. You'll get structured feedback and iterate on the draft. Then you'll pressure-test it against a non-technical audience, with expert guidance throughout.
Between sessions: adapt your narrative for one audience: military end user, policymaker, investor or prime contractor.
Week 3 — Application: One story, four audiences
Build your messaging framework. How the same technology has to be explained differently to a user, a policymaker, a funder and a prime, and what stays constant across all four. Then the harder problem: getting the whole organisation to tell the story the same way, including the engineers who would rather not.
Between sessions: draft your team communication guide, covering key messages, language to use (and avoid), and how to brief colleagues who aren't natural communicators.
Week 4 — The Clinic and your Lab Report
Bring the thing that still isn't landing. Work it through in breakout rooms with direct expert input and peer perspectives. Then finalise your Lab Report: your tested narrative, messaging framework, team guide and rollout plan. A group debrief closes the programme.
What you leave with
- A tested narrative for one product, service or technology
- A full messaging framework, with your narrative adapted for four audiences
- A team communication guide for consistent messaging across your organisation
- Direct expert input on your hardest translation challenge
- Peer and expert feedback every week
- Lab kit: storytelling frameworks, templates and worked examples
- Lab check-in call (group Q&A, two weeks after the final session)
- 10 CIPR CPD points
Who it's for
Founders and MDs of technical SMEs. CTOs, chief engineers and technical leads. Bid and BD leads who have to explain the technology to win. Communications and marketing leads, including those new to defence. In short, anyone who has to explain what their organisation makes to people who don't share their technical background. Built for defence and security, and equally relevant for MOD communicators explaining what the military is fielding, and why, to public and political audiences.
Eight hours over four weeks, one real product, and work you take straight back into the business.
Who signs it off
Tell your approver: "Over four afternoons, I'll build a tested narrative for [our product], a messaging framework for every audience we deal with, and a guide to get the whole team telling the same story, ready before the next bid, show or funding round."
Who trains you
Helena Holden, Operations Director & Senior Advisor
Before Canny, Helena was Campaign Manager in the Army Communications Branch. As its Innovation lead, she explained why Army modernisation mattered, from writing the strategy through to planning the products that carried it. Her Innovation Campaign earned her Army Communicator of the Year in 2022 and a commendation from the Deputy Chief of the General Staff.
Working on Army Warfighting Experiment, DSEI and Defence Cyber Marvel gave her a close view of how the MOD and industry work together. She gets to grips quickly with new technology and what it will do in the field. At Canny, she builds the processes that get compelling work out on time.
Lindsay Compton, Founder & CEO
Lindsay helps engineers and scientists explain their technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it. She studied maths and started in a technical role. She then spent twenty years at Roke, BAE Systems and AirTanker, among others, so she knows what a technical brief looks like from the inside.
She founded Canny in 2019 out of a simple frustration: too much good technology never reaches the front line, because the people who could have backed it didn't understand it. Her Executive MBA research at Warwick Business School found that defence innovation is held back less by technology than by translation. That is the problem this Lab exists to fix.
Lindsay founded Reputation Masterclass, the annual gathering for people who communicate defence and security. She hosts Canny Chats, where the customers, funders and editors Canny's clients want to reach explain what they need to hear. She also launched She's the Expert, which helps women in STEM be heard in rooms where they are often still the minority. She sits on the Make UK Defence advisory board, and holds a BSc in Business Statistics and a CIPR diploma in crisis communications.
Alex Griffiths, Client Strategy Director
Alex helps organisations communicate with clarity and credibility in complex information environments, drawing on a background in journalism and years in defence and government communications. Before Canny, Alex was a founding member and Head of Content at BFBS Creative, the strategic communications agency for defence. There, as Executive Producer, Alex led a team of video producers, designers and resource managers and oversaw all creative output.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Alex launched UK Defence Intelligence's social media presence. Its regular updates led the news agenda at a critical moment for global security. Alex has advised the MOD, Cabinet Office, NATO and government partners across Europe, and helped reshape NATO's strategic communications approach. Alex has also delivered training and mentoring to defence and government teams around the world, including in Ukraine, and is a trusted voice on tackling misinformation and disinformation.
About the organisers
Reputation Labs are run by Canny Comms. We help engineers and scientists explain their technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it. Our team includes scientists, engineers and former operators, so we understand both the technology and the people it is for.
That work is proven in defence and security. We repositioned the HYDRA-400 as the first ultra heavy-lift UAV and took Fering from known by nobody to enquiries most days. For the British Army's Land ISTAR programme, we wrote the communications strategy and messaging that got Army, MOD and industry stakeholders behind an integrated sensor, software and data architecture. For Project ZODIAC, we explained a faster sense, decide, effect chain to allies and primes at Project Convergence.
Digitised battlefield, AI-enabled decision support and deep tech that only makes sense once you understand the science: this is the work we do every week, and it is what we teach.
www.canny-comms.co.uk/reputation-labs
Rather do this in-house?
If you'd prefer to work on this privately with your own team, we can run the Lab inside your organisation. Or if you'd rather we did the work for you and brought your stakeholders with you, we can take it on ourselves. Book a call and we'll talk you through the options.