8 ms·

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of colleagues don't know how to give good situation reports. One common error, especially amongst engineers, is to start f

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of colleagues don't know how to give good situation reports. One common error, especially amongst engineers, is to start from first observations and work towards a conclusion. This is exactly how one should think about technical problems, but it's not a very effective way of communicating, especially when you're trying to relay information up a chain of command. Here's how I learned to give a situation report during my brief stint in the armed forces: 1. "I am" (identify yourself & other parties involved; give location where appilcable) 2. "I see" (What is on your radar? What's the problem? What situation is developing? Which milestone have you reached?) 3. "I'm doing" (How are you responding to what you see?) 4. "I want" (How can your interlocutor help? What resources do you need?) The mnemonic for this is rather funny: "I'm lost. I can't see shit. I'm doing fuck all. I want to go home." I think it works rather well in civilian life, too: "I'm working on $FEATURE. I'm noticing that page load times have doubled. I'm caching the results to try to reduce that a bit. Could Bob have a look at the database indexes?"

jkingsbery 4y ago
This seems like good advice. This is pretty close to the "STAR" framework I've seen used(Situation, Task, Action, Result) - explain the context briefly, what you're doing, what you're doing to accomplish the thing you're trying to do, and what the end result of it all is. > a lot of colleagues don't know how to give good situation reports. Another thing that can help, both written and in face-to-face communication, is using the Inverted Pyramid. Let's say the person in your 1-1 has an emergency and you have to cut it short after 5 minutes. In those first 5 minutes you want to get the most important information across. In the next 10 minutes, you give supporting details, and in the final 15 you can geek-out on the nitty-gritty.
routerl 4y ago
I like the analogy of math proofs. It isn't an account of the discovery process; no reader of a math journal is after an account of the author's inspiration and thought process, save that for your bio. The proof is the finished product of all that work. Execs only care about the proof. They're not asking out of curiosity.
theptip 4y ago
Summarizing up-front is hard because it works the opposite of how many peoples’ brain works; if you don’t have a summary drafted, one good way is to run through everything verbally and then summarize at the end. This also plays into the natural narrative-creating tendencies. So it’s good to recognize that this is a cognitive habit and it might require practicing a different approach, or preparation. Another military term I’ve heard for written comms is “Bottom Line Up Front” (BLUF) which translates to a proactive TLDR. Similarly, this is a very useful tool for helping people consume your written comms; it allows readers to figure out if the content is something they need to deeply engage with or skim, rather than forcing them to skim the whole thing to figure that out for themselves. The common theme here is that there is lots of value in providing a concise summary, so that recipients have to do the minimum amount of work to extract the first level of detail of information. This allows the first level of detail to travel further in the org and means the org is going to be better equipped to make good decisions.
- omginternets 4y ago
  >Another military term I’ve heard for written comms is “Bottom Line Up Front” (BLUF) Yup! I've also heard this phrased as "start with the punchline, then explain the joke".
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  It works fine for written communication. In case of a long email, write a tl;dr and cut-paste it to the very top. That's what I do.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    100% this. And if your email includes an ask of any sort from the recipient, be sure to make the ask in the very first line (and summarize it in the subject line). Then spend the rest of the email with the details around the ask.
JStanton617 4y ago
I was taught basically this same method as the "Princess Bride" plan: Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya (who I am) You killed my father (why I'm reaching out) Prepare to die (my ask / expectation)
- omginternets 4y ago
  Ha! This is very good.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Nobody cares who you are. The better approach is: 1. prepare to die (gets their attention) 2. because you killed my father (explanation) 3. I am Inigo Montoya (background info) Beware of things that "work" in movies. I've been led astray by that too many times. BTW, ever wonder why movies start out with an action sequence that often has little to do with the rest of the movie? It's to get your attention. Let's face it, you and I watch the first couple minutes of a movie to decide if we want to invest more time in it or click to the next Netflix movie. (Do we care who the director is? Nope.) Much in life works the same way.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    I think you may be missing the point. It's a mnemonic, not a rationale.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Mnemonics almost always imply an order. My point is the order is backwards, even though people naturally assume that the first step is introducing oneself. They naturally assume that their name is the most important thing because it is the most important thing to them. But for other people, one's name is the least important thing, because of course what it most important to them is what affects them. Once one realizes this principle, you'll see it in action everywhere.
      - omginternets 4y ago
yardie 4y ago
I volunteer as a CERT (community emergency responder, green helmets) and this is how we're trained to relay information to the incident commander. It's been eye opening to see how much you can do with just a weekend of training. And how it fits into everyday life.
- msaharia 4y ago
  Would you tell us more how that training translates in business/management? Are there good training materials we could look at online?
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Now do an OPORD brief
curiousllama 4y ago
Saw this an hour ago, just used it with my skip-level, worked well. +1 lol
- omginternets 4y ago
  I'm so glad to hear it! Enjoy your new powers! :)
cptcobalt 4y ago
Agree. But in my experience, you have to bring the ask/need/most important detail to the first line. 1. Greeting, of course 2. The ask or most important detail, standing on its own line. (The exec can rapidly say yes or offer feedback if they agree on the face of it, or read on for more detail.) 3. Then do the I see, I'm doing, I want, etc in more detail. I think execs managing a tremendous workload appreciate if you can invert to this "thesis first before anything else" style—it took me a while to learn this, and I also appreciate it when partner teams who send stuff to me for review follow this style. I think boils down to time management, triage, and giving rapid yes/nos, but you still need to show your work, but if you make your email harder to action it'll get delayed in processing or even forgotten. Of course, relationship management matters too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- omginternets 4y ago
  I think we're in agreement. To be clear, there is no expectation that these items arrive in any particular order. What is important is that they all be present. Ordering is situation-dependent. So to your point, yes, this is typically how I would write an email. In fact, the "I am" part of an email is often adequately covered by the 'From' address. On the radio, in contrast, I would explicitly say something like "This is four-two, actual" before proceeding with the rest.

jkingsbery 4y ago

This seems like good advice. This is pretty close to the "STAR" framework I've seen used(Situation, Task, Action, Result) - explain the context briefly, what you're doing, what you're doing to accomplish the thing you're trying to do, and what the end result of it all is. > a lot of colleagues don't know how to give good situation reports. Another thing that can help, both written and in face-to-face communication, is using the Inverted Pyramid. Let's say the person in your 1-1 has an emergency and you have to cut it short after 5 minutes. In those first 5 minutes you want to get the most important information across. In the next 10 minutes, you give supporting details, and in the final 15 you can geek-out on the nitty-gritty.

routerl 4y ago

I like the analogy of math proofs. It isn't an account of the discovery process; no reader of a math journal is after an account of the author's inspiration and thought process, save that for your bio. The proof is the finished product of all that work. Execs only care about the proof. They're not asking out of curiosity.

theptip 4y ago

Summarizing up-front is hard because it works the opposite of how many peoples’ brain works; if you don’t have a summary drafted, one good way is to run through everything verbally and then summarize at the end. This also plays into the natural narrative-creating tendencies. So it’s good to recognize that this is a cognitive habit and it might require practicing a different approach, or preparation. Another military term I’ve heard for written comms is “Bottom Line Up Front” (BLUF) which translates to a proactive TLDR. Similarly, this is a very useful tool for helping people consume your written comms; it allows readers to figure out if the content is something they need to deeply engage with or skim, rather than forcing them to skim the whole thing to figure that out for themselves. The common theme here is that there is lots of value in providing a concise summary, so that recipients have to do the minimum amount of work to extract the first level of detail of information. This allows the first level of detail to travel further in the org and means the org is going to be better equipped to make good decisions.

omginternets 4y ago
>Another military term I’ve heard for written comms is “Bottom Line Up Front” (BLUF) Yup! I've also heard this phrased as "start with the punchline, then explain the joke".
8ytecoder 4y ago
It works fine for written communication. In case of a long email, write a tl;dr and cut-paste it to the very top. That's what I do.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  100% this. And if your email includes an ask of any sort from the recipient, be sure to make the ask in the very first line (and summarize it in the subject line). Then spend the rest of the email with the details around the ask.

JStanton617 4y ago

I was taught basically this same method as the "Princess Bride" plan: Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya (who I am) You killed my father (why I'm reaching out) Prepare to die (my ask / expectation)

omginternets 4y ago
Ha! This is very good.
WalterBright 4y ago
Nobody cares who you are. The better approach is: 1. prepare to die (gets their attention) 2. because you killed my father (explanation) 3. I am Inigo Montoya (background info) Beware of things that "work" in movies. I've been led astray by that too many times. BTW, ever wonder why movies start out with an action sequence that often has little to do with the rest of the movie? It's to get your attention. Let's face it, you and I watch the first couple minutes of a movie to decide if we want to invest more time in it or click to the next Netflix movie. (Do we care who the director is? Nope.) Much in life works the same way.
- omginternets 4y ago
  I think you may be missing the point. It's a mnemonic, not a rationale.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Mnemonics almost always imply an order. My point is the order is backwards, even though people naturally assume that the first step is introducing oneself. They naturally assume that their name is the most important thing because it is the most important thing to them. But for other people, one's name is the least important thing, because of course what it most important to them is what affects them. Once one realizes this principle, you'll see it in action everywhere.
    - omginternets 4y ago

yardie 4y ago

I volunteer as a CERT (community emergency responder, green helmets) and this is how we're trained to relay information to the incident commander. It's been eye opening to see how much you can do with just a weekend of training. And how it fits into everyday life.

msaharia 4y ago
Would you tell us more how that training translates in business/management? Are there good training materials we could look at online?

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

Now do an OPORD brief

curiousllama 4y ago

Saw this an hour ago, just used it with my skip-level, worked well. +1 lol

omginternets 4y ago
I'm so glad to hear it! Enjoy your new powers! :)

cptcobalt 4y ago

Agree. But in my experience, you have to bring the ask/need/most important detail to the first line. 1. Greeting, of course 2. The ask or most important detail, standing on its own line. (The exec can rapidly say yes or offer feedback if they agree on the face of it, or read on for more detail.) 3. Then do the I see, I'm doing, I want, etc in more detail. I think execs managing a tremendous workload appreciate if you can invert to this "thesis first before anything else" style—it took me a while to learn this, and I also appreciate it when partner teams who send stuff to me for review follow this style. I think boils down to time management, triage, and giving rapid yes/nos, but you still need to show your work, but if you make your email harder to action it'll get delayed in processing or even forgotten. Of course, relationship management matters too.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 4y ago
I think we're in agreement. To be clear, there is no expectation that these items arrive in any particular order. What is important is that they all be present. Ordering is situation-dependent. So to your point, yes, this is typically how I would write an email. In fact, the "I am" part of an email is often adequately covered by the 'From' address. On the radio, in contrast, I would explicitly say something like "This is four-two, actual" before proceeding with the rest.