Imagine that you’re filing a tax return, changing a tire, planting a vegetable garden, or giving a haircut to a friend. Or maybe you’re thinking about how two countries resolve a border dispute, how Major League Baseball owners and the players’ union negotiate the baseball salary cap for each team, or how marriages are arranged in a particular culture.

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Each of these is a process—a series of steps or stages that lead to a particular outcome. You can detect processes at the level of something localized and simple (such as how to change a tire) and at a much broader level (such as how changes in labor and immigration laws and trade policies affect the cost of automobiles, including tires, in different countries and markets). Thus, we sometimes suggest that processes can be seen at both the micro level (the view of a process from fifty feet) and the macro level (the view from five thousand feet). Many of the informative presentations in a speech class will involve the micro level (which is easier to explain and grasp), but that shouldn’t discourage you from trying a macro-level topic (such as the ways in which global warming occurs). When presented as a process, even large topics can be digestible for most audiences.

Remember that some topics (such as how changes in the tax code will affect the alternative minimum tax) do not lend themselves well to a discussion of process because they are highly technical. Does this mean you should avoid a technical topic? No, but it does mean that if you select a topic because it is process oriented, you should focus on subject matter that is within your audience’s level of understanding, break down the topic into smaller parts, and only then show how those parts work together as part of a larger process.

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When you deliver an informative speech about a process, you probably will want to walk your listeners through the steps that make up that process, explaining how each is carried out and in what order.

Depending on your goal, use a variety of techniques to inform your audience about a particular process. For example, if you want listeners to understand how a specific object is made or how it works, you might use explanation to clarify what each step is and how it leads to the creation of the object.

By contrast, if your goal is to teach audience members how to perform the process themselves, combine both explanation and demonstration— that is, verbally and physically model the steps of the process.

To illustrate, suppose you’re giving a presentation on cake decorating. You’d probably want to explain what tools are needed and what kinds of icings are appropriate for particular styles of decoration. You also might demonstrate by showing the actual techniques used to produce a certain decoration—for example, a basket-weave design—through enlarged photographs or a video. If you are in a relatively intimate environment, you might even decorate an actual cake as part of your presentation.

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In deciding which process to focus on in an informative speech, take care to avoid overused topics (such as how to make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich) and topics related to alcohol (such as how to make Jell-O shots or brew beer at home). Instead, think about processes that would be interesting and fresh for your listeners. Also, consider how you might discuss the effects of an important process. For instance, suppose you’re informing your audience about how the baseball farm system works. In this case, you could add interest to the topic by using a narrative to convey how the process changes young players’ lives by giving them a shot at the big leagues.