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Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

ashley.rolfmore.com

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Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#61

Post by onion2k »

generic92034 wrote: post #55
onion2k wrote: post #17

You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinking The converse is also true. People saying something assume that people listening are understanding and thinking about the same thing. This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms. If you're in a meeting and someone puts up a slide deck with a 6 word bullet point that 'explains' what they want, that is a sig…

> This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms. While that might be a prerequisite for a deep shared understanding, I have made the experience in the last few years that the number of people really reading more than the starting sentence of any message/ticket/email is consistently decreasing. I often have to feed them the information in very small and easy to digest p…

People often don't, but AI always does. As we rely on AI more and more, having strong docs will become even more important.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#62

Post by cassianoleal »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #43
colechristensen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all are saying the same thing over and over with slightly different words proposing that the different way of saying it has a meaningful impact on the message. It doesn't. >"too many ineffective meetings, we should have less unnecessary meetings and a clearer, independent direction". >it's not too many meetings for communication but too many that are not achieving effective communication ^^ there's no meaningful di…

The distinction is explicit in the statements you quoted. One is advocating for lessening the number of meetings. One is saying that won't help, and instead advocating for increasing the quality of meetings.

Actually, it isn't.

The first is:

* Acknowledging that too many meetings are ineffective

* Suggesting reducing the number of inneffective meetings

* Saying there needs to be clearer, independent direction

The second is:

* Stating that there are not too many meetings in general (the first says nothing about this)

* Acknowledging that too many meetings are ineffective (same as bullet 1 of the first sentence)

* Not suggesting how to address either problem

I agree with GP. There is no meaningful distinction between the 2, but the first suggests 2 ways to solve the problem of ineffective meetings whereas the second simply acknowledges the existing of problems.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#63

Post by nlitened »

anilakar wrote: post #40
onion2k wrote: post #17

You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinking The converse is also true. People saying something assume that people listening are understanding and thinking about the same thing. This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms. If you're in a meeting and someone puts up a slide deck with a 6 word bullet point that 'explains' what they want, that is a sig…

What I say: This is not ready for production. What management hears: We can sell this to the customer for acceptance testing.

What you say: I don’t want to take responsibility.

What management hears: I want someone else to take responsibility for me.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#64

Post by nlitened »

faangguyindia wrote: post #18

Most of the problem is that talking to non technical people is frustrating, they often start like 1. Can u add X 2. Can u change Y Without understanding cost of doing all this. Yes, i can do all and everything you ask for, but each action has a cost, which you fail to understand. We cannot do everything if we need to launch a reliable product.

In these situations, the non-technical people don’t understand the costs, the technical people don’t understand the benefits. The communication from both sides is needed to find a good cost-to-benefit tradeoff

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#65

Post by atoav »

monegator wrote: post #48
onion2k wrote: post #17

You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinking The converse is also true. People saying something assume that people listening are understanding and thinking about the same thing. This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms. If you're in a meeting and someone puts up a slide deck with a 6 word bullet point that 'explains' what they want, that is a sig…

> about the same thing yes. I have to keep telling my colleagues "about what?" for about 4-5 times in a row, at least twice daily, until they finally realize they have to tell me which client, feature, product or whatever else they are referring to. Even if i know exactly what yhey are talking about.

If there is a tech-person problem it is this one. I constantly have to interrupt collegues when they try to explain a thing as their explaination attempts are usually way too low level or even bordering on being self-referential. So they explain the concept by using other concepts the listener won't understand either.

In my opinion it all boils down to a lack of ability to remember how one felt before understanding a certain concept. If you did you would have an empathic understanding of how word-salady a lot of the explainations are.

The first thing you need to tell a uninitiated person is simply where to generally put it and how they already know it. If you explain DNS for example you explain it via the domains they know and how it is like a contacts list for webservers so your browser knows where to look when looking for google.com.

Whenever you explain anything you might want to ask yourself why the other side should even begin to care and how it connects to their life and existing knowledge. What problem did it originally intend to solve?

Many tech people may start in a different

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#66

Post by jdthedisciple »

digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

> No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept.

Not sure it's ever good to assume this beforehand though. Most things are negotiable, if you know how to negotiate right.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#67

Post by nunez »

digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

Presales discovery in a nutshell. It’s truly an art.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#68

Post by 6P58r3MXJSLi »

digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

> To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state

if it's not two ways, stop trying, stand up and leave.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#69

Post by 6P58r3MXJSLi »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6
heyalexhsu wrote: post #5

Or maybe we're spending too much time on communicating. If too much time is allocated then its hard to stay focused and there's always the next time that can be used to clarify. Cut all the unnecessary meetings and only allocate the minimum viable time to communicate. Then everyone will be listening.

> Or maybe we're spending too much time on communicating. This is a phenomena I have yet to experience in the wild. > Cut all the unnecessary meetings and only allocate the minimum viable time to communicate. Most meetings are not about communication. They are usually prescriptive in form and dictatorial in nature. > Then everyone will be listening. Listening is a skill, one which is can be perfected if practiced. Ne…

> Listening is a skill, one which is can be perfected if practiced

communicating is also a skill

learning to communicate effectively can be perfected too

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#70

Post by grebc »

serial_dev wrote: post #59
generic92034 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms. While that might be a prerequisite for a deep shared understanding, I have made the experience in the last few years that the number of people really reading more than the starting sentence of any message/ticket/email is consistently decreasing. I often have to feed them the information in very small and easy to digest p…

Nobody reads the docs, tickets, or comments under a task, nobody really checks the code they are reviewing, and nowadays thanks to AI, some people don’t even read the code they “write”. People love to ask for documentation, as long as it doesn’t exist. It lets them off the hook, “oh I would have known what to do, I wish we had this documented”. Then you point it out that you have it documented with video walkthrough,…

I’ve been at it 18 years for different organisations and my experience and strategy is the same as yours.

No one bothers to read/understand anything until the very last minute, then they realise “oh shit this won’t work in this scenario, and it’s always a showstopper”…

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