How to Tell Somebody What They Don't Know

A professional acquiantence just wrote an article about new web technologies. i like Dion a lot -- he seems like he's got a lot going on and has his hand in a lot of new technologies. I just think he missed a big section in his article. So I wrote him an email and asked him to consider another option. I'm not sure, but I think he blew me off!

A few years ago I was consulting for a major financial services company. I remember clearly talking to a SVP about some of the processes that were broken. Fixing them could save the company millions. She just sat there and smiled at me. I was not getting through.

A few years before that, a VP of another company sat down and told me what was wrong with the current software development division. He went on for about an hour. I had spent a few weeks assessing the situation, and I offered some small bits of advice that I thought could make a big difference. He acknowledged my comment, then went on for another half hour in his rant against inefficiencies. I was not getting through.

A large government agency brought me in to show them how to run software development teams. I demonstrated use cases and modeling. This was part of a live project that was to be deployed in a few months. I was the teacher and the lead. While I was showing these concepts, I could see some of the people rolling their eyes at me. "Oh no! Not more paperwork!" I was not getting through.

I spoke to a person at a venture capital firm a few weeks ago. I wasn't calling to pitch my company -- I wanted some contact names and ideas in the VC community and he had offered to provide them. Instead, I ended up sending him a white paper about what I was up to. Never heard from the guy again. Not getting through.

The problem, as Socrates noted thousands of years ago, is not people who are ignorant. Ignorant people want to learn more. The problem is with people who think they already know stuff. Those are the real obstacles in any change. Thinking you know something is the biggest barrier in improving yourself! You have to be open-minded enough to listen to others.

Note that most of these consulting stories were situations where people were paying me money -- sometimes a lot of it -- to hear things that they were unable to accept! Is life ironic or what?!? In most of these cases, I found ways to make a difference, but I was nowhere near as effective as I could have been if they had simply let me do the job they were paying me for. Strange world.

So I try to be an idiot. (Ask my teenage boys. They'll tell you how well I'm doing.) I'm always trying to learn from others, even when I think I already know the answer. That's why I NEVER say things in a meeting like "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" because it might not be them. It might be me that is closed-minded to new ideas. Instead I usually try to say "help me to understand." Sure it sounds like a weasel consulting word, but there is a lot of truth behind it.

You don't know what you don't know. That's a hard lesson for most of us to learn.

UPDATE: My professional friend (Dion) just emailed me back and assured me he wasn't blowing me off.

Thanks for reading the blog, Dion! I should probably add a few things.

I don't want to sound like I'm always right. Far from it. I'm wrong a lot. Maybe more so than most people. But there are times when I get lucky -- I have some idea or concept that might be useful to other people. In those cases, it's important to be able to communicate it clearly. That's why I always try to take the role of an idiot (and sometimes I do a pretty good job!) Even if I'm right, it doesn't matter unless I can effectively share with the other person.

I guess the point I'm making is that it's not just being smart. That's the smallest part of it. Colleges are full of a lot of people a lot smarter than me. It's sharing, it's humility. I'm not too good at all of this -- sometimes I can be too blunt. That's something I'm working on.

Part of the unique problem of being a consultant is that you do not form long-term trusting relationships. Each year I'm off doing 1,2, 3, 4, or fifteen different assignments. No matter what you know, or whether you are right or wrong, it is very, very difficult to walk into a place and offer anything constructive. You simply have not built up the emotional captial that is required to be trusted.

This is also ironic because it drives the clients nuts. Yes, the same clients who are not listening to you. They wonder why things are taking so long! I try to tell people that it's not a matter of having somebody really smart walk in and tell you everything you need to fix. It's a matter of gaining trust, changing people's attitudes, and moving the organization. That stuff takes time.

But we technical guys don't want to hear that. For us, I guess, we want the organizaiton and the people to act like the tools. We want to logically deduce the "truth" and then we are surprised when nobody pays attention to us! Gee, if we could just get people where we could program them better, life would be a lot easier. (grin)