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Willingness to look stupid

danluu.com

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Re: Willingness to look stupid

#621

Post by philosopher1234 »

hunterb123 wrote: post #576
philosopher1234 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a robust and well researched opinion you have there.

He's not wrong, many cities defunded their police and then quickly reversed that decision, many adding more funds to their departments. It was a pretty big event so I know we all remember it as long as you follow current events, but it's easy to find articles mentioning it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-reverse-defunding-the-po... https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2021/february/minneapolis-re... https://www.washi…

Have you evaluated, or even bothered to seek out, the literature that disagrees with you?

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#622

Post by catach »

whatshisface wrote: post #532
ValentineC wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like the Socratic method [1], just used for making sure everyone is aligned with the fundamental goals. As someone who's recently been put in a position to make sure everyone's aligned (and failing quite a bit at it), it sounds like genius, in my opinion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

The Socratic method is where they eventually realize the answer, not one where you make them all feel frustrated before finally revealing it.

I assume frustration levels for both come down to the soft skills used to run the process.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#623

Post by Kinrany »

ryantgtg wrote: post #582
genghisjahn wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever new people join the team, I always say, "Please ask stupid questions. I mean questions so stupid that you might think we would question why we hired you, because you think we think you should already know. Ask those types of really stupid basic questions. It will educated you, make us think, and I'm certain at least one other person already on the team doesn't know either."

I usually say, "please ask stupid questions, because if you don't then you'll run off in the wrong direction and work on the wrong thing for a week before the next review, and you'll have wasted a lot of project budget." At my work, there's a bad combo of senior folks who whip off vague instructions in a single sentence, and junior folks who are afraid to ask questions. I'm in the middle, and I try hard to demonstrat…

> I usually say, "please ask stupid questions, because if you don't then you'll run off in the wrong direction and work on the wrong thing for a week before the next review, and you'll have wasted a lot of project budget."

Does it help?

This sounds like they are expected not to waste time, so it might get even harder to ask a stupid question a minute too late, and especially to ask something tomorrow.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#624

Post by indymike »

Zababa wrote: post #527
dinkleberg wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you learn in sales is the value of open-ended questions. Until you consciously look at it, it's hard to realize how bad the questions we tend to ask are. Yes/no questions are the worst. But even questions like "What did you do?" aren't great because the answers can often be rather short. A better question is often posed like "Tell me about X" or "Describe how you did Y". Of course this isn't universally tru…

That depends. Yes/no questions are great when you want to quickly validate something. Open-ended questions are great when you want to get a lot of information. Yes/no are for confirmation, open-ended for exploration. Different goals.

Hmm. Often times, an open ended question results in a much more accurate answer. Humans tend to approximate or even lie to force an answer to fit a limited choice question. Example: you want to know if water is falling out the sky. You ask: Is it raining? Response is no. You walk out the door and are rendered unconscious by golf-ball size hail.

Better to have asked, "what's it like outside?" or, "what's the weather right now?"

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#625

Post by ryantgtg »

Kinrany wrote: post #623
ryantgtg wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually say, "please ask stupid questions, because if you don't then you'll run off in the wrong direction and work on the wrong thing for a week before the next review, and you'll have wasted a lot of project budget." At my work, there's a bad combo of senior folks who whip off vague instructions in a single sentence, and junior folks who are afraid to ask questions. I'm in the middle, and I try hard to demonstrat…

> I usually say, "please ask stupid questions, because if you don't then you'll run off in the wrong direction and work on the wrong thing for a week before the next review, and you'll have wasted a lot of project budget." Does it help? This sounds like they are expected not to waste time, so it might get even harder to ask a stupid question a minute too late, and especially to ask something tomorrow.

So far it completely depends on the person.

But you’re right that it might not be the best technique. I understand the hesitancy to ask questions after a certain amount of time has passed.

I work as a consultant and our time has to be billed to projects. The onboarding stinks, so the new hires often have no concept of billability/utilization nor project budgets. So I’m trying to drill in those concepts, too.

One of the additional lessons here is “the boss doesn’t always know what they’re talking about.” And that’s another hard one for them to accept. Question authority! If the instructions aren’t clear, then they might be nonsense. Have the guts to challenge the boss. And sometimes the challenge can come in the form of a million stupid questions.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#626

Post by caned »

roenxi wrote: post #4

In my experience, there is a slight nuance in the frame here. It isn't just that Mr. Luu is "willing to look stupid", it is that he has confidence that his decision making process will on average turn out better decisions than the go-to default strategy that most people employ ("copy the crowd"). Most people, if they rely on their own research and decision making, will do poorly. And even moderately clever people gen…

> Most people, if they rely on their own research and decision making, will do poorly.

That's an interesting assertion. I would have guessed the opposite is true.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#627

Post by gitgud »

perl4ever wrote: post #572
gitgud wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, admitting that you "might have a stupid question" is not disingenuous, it's a form of self-depreciation that disarms people and relaxes the room. It's important to treat yourself with respect, but people also respect when you admit that you don't know something simple.

It's "self deprecation", depreciation is something different. I'm not sure what kind of audience you think it works on. I tend to get (particularly from people under 40) one of two inappropriate reactions to reflexive self deprecation - either exaggerated sympathy for my plight, or treating it as an exposed weakness to attack.

Whoops, yes I meant self-deprecation (I added an 'i' by accident)

Yes, some people will pity you, or treat it as a weakness. But having the courage to admit when you don't know something is a valuable trait that most people (in my experience) respect.

Also if you demonstrate your knowledge in other areas and contribute value to the meeting, people tend to forgive a few stupid questions in another area.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#628

Post by indymike »

nzealand wrote: post #446
sharkweek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP in my org does this, and it really disarms the room. She’s big on that exact phrase of “this could be a really stupid question, but…” She’s also really good about making sure other people are rewarded for doing the same by reassuring someone asking what might be a dumb question as, “that’s a a great question and I’m sure others were wondering the same…” before responding. Great leadership, IMO.

An EVP of Ops of a fortune 500 did this to an entire room of functional experts. We were there to discuss a technical implementation. She kicked it off by saying "Let me start by asking a simple question, why do we do this function?" I am now considered a domain expert. I love this question. It surprises me at how few people start with the why, or even can articulate the why. The room of experts, were assembled to ro…

There is an interrogation technique called Five Whys. I believe it was created by S. Toyoda, and was and very is effective in root cause analysis. The basic idea was to ask a question and follow up with "Why?" until an answer contained an alterable behavior... that answer would usually come with the fifth why. Once in a while I use it in a business meetings, and as long as the person who is being questioned doesn't get defensive or hostile, it is surprisingly effective.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#629

Post by RattleyCooper »

This is also why a lot of people who are actually ignorant get really aggressive when someone points out a mistake. Because they care A LOT about appearances. They don't actually care about improving or actually being correct, so long as people think they're smart. Or really, as long as they think that other people think they're smart.

I'm very much like the author, in that I just ask questions and don't worry about looking stupid (what a silly thing to worry about), but I think my friend is the polar opposite, and this article really helped me understand the dynamic between the 2 of us a little bit better. I always wondered why he would get super defensive if I correct him on anything, but it makes sense if he thinks I'm stupid and is getting corrected by the stupid guy lol

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#630

Post by indymike »

chefandy wrote: post #280
Zababa wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, he doesn't spend much time talking about the case that could have him die or the one that could have him go blind. If something like that happened to me, I would probably have a position like the author. There are also a few cases (COVID, air filtration) where people disagreeing with him had relatively serious health consequences.

While this guy is clearly smart, and willingness to ask simple questions is a worthy quality that many people possess, this is an article about what happens when decent intelligence and a good instinct is accompanied by narcissism and delusions of grandeur. Being right about something feels even better if other people thought you were wrong about it. With his COVID action— people disagreeing with him, at first, wasn'…

I read the article as the author sharing how he was trying to be intelligent instead of appear intelligent. There are a surprising number of people who desire, above all, to be seen as the smartest person in the room.
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