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Part of the problem here is that there is a balance to be struck with these sorts of things: Cost, User experience, Mange-ability, and time spent shopping aroun

Part of the problem here is that there is a balance to be struck with these sorts of things: Cost, User experience, Mange-ability, and time spent shopping around rather than just going with the industry-default or one with the best sales-team. Responsible decision-makers have to make trade-offs. When you say > Reports...are roundly ignored That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost is a real problem. So what is the solution? 1. Understand the problem they're trying to solve. What are their real motives and pressures? 2. Understand where your needs align with theirs and where they diverge in reality. 3. Tell a compelling story of where your needs are in fact aligned. 3.1) Prepare Evidence If your case is "This tool is causes literal permanent eye injuries to our staff", then there should be written reports of those injuries. If your case is "This software package has multiple missing-affordances which present operational risks to the business", then you should be able to take screen recordings of that. 3.2) Start with why When turning evidence into a presentation, remember that people listen better when they know why they are listening. So start with: What is at stake? 3.3) Credible language If your words say "the UX for hundreds or thousands of others is 'the software literally shoots knives out of the monitor and gouges out your eyes'" but you can't actually back that up with the factual reality, you seem like you're exaggerating. If I think you are exaggerating, then I can't trust your words when I'm trying to understand magnitudes. If I can't trust your words about magnitudes, then how do I give you a voice in making a well-balanced trade-off? ------- Literally: (adverb) 1. In in a way of speaking that is completely accurate and unexaggerated. 2. In in a way of speaking that is exaggerated for emotional effect.

travisjungroth 7y ago
You’re giving advice on how to be persuasive, and it’s rare I find comments as off-putting as yours.
- pault 7y ago
  I found it thoughtful and of much greater effort than your dismissal.
- afarrell 7y ago
  I'm curious why, if you have any insights.
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    The person you replied to pointed out where leaders were failing them. Rather than empathizing, you skipped to pointing out what they should be doing instead. They made a hyperbolic comment (“literally shooting out knives”) and you’ve focused on dissecting it and accused them of using inaccurate language. Of course they’re just exaggerating when they said that even if people were losing eyes management wouldn’t care. You switched to first person (“how can I know...”) representing the boss. This not-so-subtly puts you above the person you’re responding to. Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic. Finally, no-one asked for an enumerated lecture on how they should be behaving.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      > rather than empathizing, you skipped hmmmm... I had tried to convey "hey, not being listened to really sucks" but now that I re-read "That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost is a real problem." that's a pretty damn sterile way to express that. Also you're right that it should come first before the "here is this other perspective you should consider" bit. > You switched to first person (“how can I know...”) representing the boss. This not-so-subtly puts you above the person you’re responding to. hmmmm... really I hadn't considered that. My goal had been to suggest seeing things from the leader's perspective because they have a goal of changing leader's mind. But now that you point this out, I can see how this also creates a pompous framing. Thank you, thats helpful to know to watch out for. -------- > enumerated lecture By this do you mean I was overly verbose? Or that having things in numbers comes off as...professorially pompous? Or both? > no-one asked for ... how they should be behaving. So I had interpreted the comment as a combination of an emotional vent but also a request for advice, particularly the "I'm unsure how to solve it. What do we do..." Is this unreasonable? --------- > They made a hyperbolic comment ("literally shooting knives") > Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic. > Of course they’re just exaggerating I... I guess I'm really struggling to cope with the loss of a word which is so dear to me and my ability to bridge gaps of understanding with my fellow human. Like, if the word "literally" no longer means.... _____ ...I don't even know how to express the concept without a verbose and phrase like "a way of speaking that is completely accurate and unexaggerated." that would overtax the patience of anyone. Take that away and...as far as I can see whole swaths of meaning about the world that I'd want to express are silenced. And I let the emotion of that get away with me. The word is dying. And if it affects me so deeply, I should not rage against the dying of its light but actually find a way to properly grieve it on its way.
DangitBobby 7y ago
Is it the report's job to bend over backwards to prepare a series of easily digestible info-graphics to convince the manager that the decisions they've made are bad? Or is it the manager's job to follow up on decisions they've made to see how they turn out, and to investigate to see if reports of eye-gouging are substantiated? In theory, the person whose eyeballs were affected by your decisions already have a litany of responsibilities that do not cease to exist when someone makes decisions that rock a company to it's very core. Maybe instead of shlepping the responsibility of identifying the consequences of their actions downstream, they should exhibit a little initiative and attempt to take a role in evaluating whether the decision they've made was the right one for the team.
- afarrell 7y ago
  Meta question: Why are we talking about people's eyeballs being literally stabbed out? I had assumed that this was an expression of some (unknown) level of difficulty, and that if we could shift the discussion to describing that realities of that difficulty and its impacts on business operations and morale, we could get some insight. But am I wrong? This is the first time I've heard about "literally shooting knives and...gouging out eyes" in an IT discussion. Is this actually a thing that results from IT procurement in a literal sense? By "literal" I mean the sense that would refer to a piece of material entering the eye-goo of another human being and causing actual pain and hospitalization. Does anyone else find it very difficult to understand situations when you are not sure at all how seriously to interpret someone? I'm aware I'm probably on the autistic spectrum...but since we're having a discussion about engineering or technology procurement, could I ask for a bit of specificity? Is it odd to find the idea of literal eye-gouging to be out-of-place here? That it seems really extreme and like a very black-and-white way to talk about problems? Or am I just losing my mind? Genuine question: Does my difficulty with understanding the role of literal eye-gouging in IT procurement and UX design signal that I'm becoming unhinged from reality?
  - DangitBobby 7y ago
    The eye gouging on this case is a metaphor to stand in for "doing awful things that the software should never, ever do" which allowed them to be less specific about the exact nature of the problem that the software was having. This is because the specific problem with the software is not a detail of interest. Rather, you are supposed to take for granted that the software problem is very serious and being ignored by the superior. People will commonly use exaggerations and ridiculous metaphors to gloss over something as an unimportant detail so you, the reader, know that isn't the point they are trying to make. I just rolled with it because it was GGP's example.

travisjungroth 7y ago

You’re giving advice on how to be persuasive, and it’s rare I find comments as off-putting as yours.

pault 7y ago
I found it thoughtful and of much greater effort than your dismissal.
afarrell 7y ago
I'm curious why, if you have any insights.
- travisjungroth 7y ago
  The person you replied to pointed out where leaders were failing them. Rather than empathizing, you skipped to pointing out what they should be doing instead. They made a hyperbolic comment (“literally shooting out knives”) and you’ve focused on dissecting it and accused them of using inaccurate language. Of course they’re just exaggerating when they said that even if people were losing eyes management wouldn’t care. You switched to first person (“how can I know...”) representing the boss. This not-so-subtly puts you above the person you’re responding to. Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic. Finally, no-one asked for an enumerated lecture on how they should be behaving.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    > rather than empathizing, you skipped hmmmm... I had tried to convey "hey, not being listened to really sucks" but now that I re-read "That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost is a real problem." that's a pretty damn sterile way to express that. Also you're right that it should come first before the "here is this other perspective you should consider" bit. > You switched to first person (“how can I know...”) representing the boss. This not-so-subtly puts you above the person you’re responding to. hmmmm... really I hadn't considered that. My goal had been to suggest seeing things from the leader's perspective because they have a goal of changing leader's mind. But now that you point this out, I can see how this also creates a pompous framing. Thank you, thats helpful to know to watch out for. -------- > enumerated lecture By this do you mean I was overly verbose? Or that having things in numbers comes off as...professorially pompous? Or both? > no-one asked for ... how they should be behaving. So I had interpreted the comment as a combination of an emotional vent but also a request for advice, particularly the "I'm unsure how to solve it. What do we do..." Is this unreasonable? --------- > They made a hyperbolic comment ("literally shooting knives") > Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic. > Of course they’re just exaggerating I... I guess I'm really struggling to cope with the loss of a word which is so dear to me and my ability to bridge gaps of understanding with my fellow human. Like, if the word "literally" no longer means.... _____ ...I don't even know how to express the concept without a verbose and phrase like "a way of speaking that is completely accurate and unexaggerated." that would overtax the patience of anyone. Take that away and...as far as I can see whole swaths of meaning about the world that I'd want to express are silenced. And I let the emotion of that get away with me. The word is dying. And if it affects me so deeply, I should not rage against the dying of its light but actually find a way to properly grieve it on its way.

DangitBobby 7y ago

Is it the report's job to bend over backwards to prepare a series of easily digestible info-graphics to convince the manager that the decisions they've made are bad? Or is it the manager's job to follow up on decisions they've made to see how they turn out, and to investigate to see if reports of eye-gouging are substantiated? In theory, the person whose eyeballs were affected by your decisions already have a litany of responsibilities that do not cease to exist when someone makes decisions that rock a company to it's very core. Maybe instead of shlepping the responsibility of identifying the consequences of their actions downstream, they should exhibit a little initiative and attempt to take a role in evaluating whether the decision they've made was the right one for the team.

afarrell 7y ago
Meta question: Why are we talking about people's eyeballs being literally stabbed out? I had assumed that this was an expression of some (unknown) level of difficulty, and that if we could shift the discussion to describing that realities of that difficulty and its impacts on business operations and morale, we could get some insight. But am I wrong? This is the first time I've heard about "literally shooting knives and...gouging out eyes" in an IT discussion. Is this actually a thing that results from IT procurement in a literal sense? By "literal" I mean the sense that would refer to a piece of material entering the eye-goo of another human being and causing actual pain and hospitalization. Does anyone else find it very difficult to understand situations when you are not sure at all how seriously to interpret someone? I'm aware I'm probably on the autistic spectrum...but since we're having a discussion about engineering or technology procurement, could I ask for a bit of specificity? Is it odd to find the idea of literal eye-gouging to be out-of-place here? That it seems really extreme and like a very black-and-white way to talk about problems? Or am I just losing my mind? Genuine question: Does my difficulty with understanding the role of literal eye-gouging in IT procurement and UX design signal that I'm becoming unhinged from reality?
- DangitBobby 7y ago
  The eye gouging on this case is a metaphor to stand in for "doing awful things that the software should never, ever do" which allowed them to be less specific about the exact nature of the problem that the software was having. This is because the specific problem with the software is not a detail of interest. Rather, you are supposed to take for granted that the software problem is very serious and being ignored by the superior. People will commonly use exaggerations and ridiculous metaphors to gloss over something as an unimportant detail so you, the reader, know that isn't the point they are trying to make. I just rolled with it because it was GGP's example.