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This works very well, especially in Sales situations. Once you can put things into someone else's words, they know you understand their point. Two challenges

This works very well, especially in Sales situations. Once you can put things into someone else's words, they know you understand their point. Two challenges to this approach: 1) It takes time. Lots of time. Sometimes decisions need to be made quicker. 2) If there is an unequal power distribution, sometimes you don't need them to consent. ("I know you disagree with the approach, we aren't equals. You wouldn't get the contract without our blessing. You have to do it our way even if you don't agree.")

smacktoward 13y ago
On #2, it's true that when power is unevenly distributed you can save time by just bypassing getting the other party to buy in. But in the same way that taking shortcuts in your code is thought of as accruing technical debt, I'd argue that doing this accrues "social debt" -- you save time now, but at the cost of storing up potential trouble in the future if the power distribution ever changes. Flatten someone like a steamroller too many times, and the first thing they're going to think of when they actually get some power is how they can use it to screw over that guy who's always screwing them over. And just like with technical debt, it can be valuable to go back and pay down your social debt from time to time too -- by doing favors for those people you've rolled over in the past, to help reduce the ill will that generated.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Very true. It's important to invest in strategic relationships, but sometimes you have to lay down the law. For example, many companies shirk their customer support duties, even on high ticket items. You wind up spending a disproportionate amount of time as a customer trying to mathematically prove that what you found is a defect, and not some undocumented bug. At some point, rather than seeing the world from their eyes, you have to say, "I need this fixed or I'm pulling the plug." These are outlier case though, and to your point, there is social debt every time you have to pull rank.

smacktoward 13y ago

On #2, it's true that when power is unevenly distributed you can save time by just bypassing getting the other party to buy in. But in the same way that taking shortcuts in your code is thought of as accruing technical debt, I'd argue that doing this accrues "social debt" -- you save time now, but at the cost of storing up potential trouble in the future if the power distribution ever changes. Flatten someone like a steamroller too many times, and the first thing they're going to think of when they actually get some power is how they can use it to screw over that guy who's always screwing them over. And just like with technical debt, it can be valuable to go back and pay down your social debt from time to time too -- by doing favors for those people you've rolled over in the past, to help reduce the ill will that generated.

mathattack 13y ago
Very true. It's important to invest in strategic relationships, but sometimes you have to lay down the law. For example, many companies shirk their customer support duties, even on high ticket items. You wind up spending a disproportionate amount of time as a customer trying to mathematically prove that what you found is a defect, and not some undocumented bug. At some point, rather than seeing the world from their eyes, you have to say, "I need this fixed or I'm pulling the plug." These are outlier case though, and to your point, there is social debt every time you have to pull rank.