minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Archive for December, 2009
Three tips to shut people up
Dec 16th
Three tips to shut people up
It’s all very well getting people talking – but what if they won’t shut up?
If you listen well, people will talk. They’ll open up and reveal all kinds of interesting information. You’ll hear the things they didn’t think to say before, and even help them discover and explore things they didn’t know they knew.
I was speaking recently to an experienced programme manager who described the initial discovery phase of a project or sub-project as opening things up, like opening a series of nested boxes. He likes to challenge and explore each major requirement, to find out what it’s wanted for – because there might be a better way of meeting the real requirements.
It’s in that kind of exploration that the skills I teach are most useful, to discover the customers’ real requirements, including tacit and unconscious requirements. It’s like the old marketing idea that customers don’t want a quarter-inch drill bit, they want a quarter-inch hole.
“But what next?” my friend asked. “What if you get them talking – and they won’t shut up? There are deadlines to meet, deliverables to deliver, and they’re just wittering on about something irrelevant.”
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