Here's how you can articulate your logical reasoning process to stakeholders and team members.

Strategy: Clearly define key terms and concepts to ensure everyone has a common understanding. Example: “Before we dive into the solution, let's define some key terms. By ‘user engagement,’ I mean the frequency and duration of user interactions with our application. By ‘conversion rate,’ I’m referring to the percentage of users who complete a desired action, like making a purchase.”

If possible I would strive to avoid technical jargon altogether where it can be replaced with words your audience is already familiar with. Critical concepts that must be communicated in technical terms should be signposted and clearly explained. If you met the audience halfway, and spoke to them in their own language beforehand, they will be willing to take the journey into their unknown with you.

This is also about knowing your audience. Find out what is important to them and frame the problem in that context. If you can demonstrate how the problem impacts them and/or how your proposal will generate a positive outcome for them, they will be asking "how can we make this work?" instead of "how could this go wrong?"

Strategy: Provide background information and context to frame the discussion. Example: “In the past quarter, we’ve noticed a decline in user engagement. This trend started after we rolled out the new interface update. Understanding this context will help us identify the root causes and potential solutions more effectively.”

A good way to see this is that you're telling the story of how your proposal came to be. By being open and honest about each step of the process you are inviting your audience to collaborate with you in bringing your vision to reality. Just be cautious about too much technical details and be prepared to be flexible and incorporate feedback.

Strategy: Lay out the steps you took to arrive at your conclusion in a logical sequence. Example: “To address the decline in engagement, we followed these steps: -Analyzed user behavior data from before and after the update. -Conducted user surveys to gather qualitative feedback. -Compared engagement metrics with industry benchmarks. -Identified patterns and anomalies in the data.”

Evidence is crucial in weighing the pros and cons of a decision. Be as precise as you can reasonably be, but be aware of the cost of your gathering data as well. Put numbers to the biggest benefits and the biggest risks. "99% of our users will see a 10x performance improvement while the remaining 1% will see performance decrease by 5%" sells a lot better than "most of our users will see increased speeds but a minority will see a slowdown". Just be sure you can back up your numbers with research or benchmarks or be clear that you need resources to do the work to calculate a number.

Strategy: Use data, examples, and case studies to support your conclusions. Example: “Our data analysis showed that time on site decreased by 20% after the update. Additionally, 60% of surveyed users reported that the new interface was less intuitive. Compared to industry benchmarks, our engagement metrics are now 15% below average. These pieces of evidence suggest that the interface change negatively impacted user experience.”

Strategy: Consider and discuss alternative explanations and solutions. Example: “While the interface update appears to be a major factor, we also considered other potential causes, such as increased competition and changes in user behavior due to seasonality. However, our analysis showed that these factors had minimal impact compared to the interface change.”

Strategy: Encourage input and questions from stakeholders and team members. Example: “I’d love to hear your thoughts on this analysis. Do you think there are other factors we should consider? Are there additional data points we should examine to validate our findings?”

Add diagrams and schemes to the explanation. Complex topics involve tens of items to be considered, these are hard hold in memory and read quickly from text. For instance, you are discussing how to get from point A to B. How quickly can you reach the conclusion if you have a map in front of you?

Strategy: Provide additional considerations or next steps to ensure comprehensive coverage and plan for action. Example: “Moving forward, we should consider conducting usability tests to pinpoint specific issues with the new interface. Additionally, A/B testing different interface designs could help us identify improvements that could restore and enhance user engagement. Finally, continuous monitoring of user feedback will be crucial to ensure we’re meeting user expectations.”

While all advice in this article is correct, it might lead to failure, though. In addition, it's crucial to gently descend into details. If you start defining 20 terms, then explain the context and after 30 minutes you reach to the first logical reason, then no stakeholder will have followed. Explain the brought picture first. Define few terms, explain the context on high level. Your explanation has to have some overlap on what the audience already knows. This first part must be understandable by itself and it must bring insight by itself. Allow questions, to assure that everybody has same understanding. Afterwards you can descend into specific details. Re-iterate terminology, context, problem definition and so on. Repeat as needed.