3 ms·

Maybe just be nice to your friends.

• DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  I was. We were nice to each other. He's a dear friend. I don't think either one of us were being unkind to the other. I stayed on the call as long as I could. I wanted to help him out. He was just trying to scope down the conversation at the wrong time. I understand his motivations and reasons, but it was premature. I worked with a really smart leader of a large agency many years ago. Not only a nice guy, he was also brilliant and on top of everything. I could see several projects he had were going off-the-rails. Why?. Because he kept asking technical questions and getting technical answers. The questions were fine but context-free. The answers were good but context-free. There was no X. He kept asking Y questions and getting really smart, detailed answers. It was a terrible mess. If you have no context for a technical answer, the only thing an answer is going to do is confuse you. It's like the old joke about the guys getting lost in a hot air balloon. As they passed over a building, they saw some people on the ground. "Where are we?" "In a hot air balloon!" Now that's a joke, but it hides a truth: without context and a shared language you can get answers all day long to questions and not be any better off at the end than when you started. Probably worse off.