Re:Stop Speaking in Bullshit
by mahmud on Thursday October 14, 2010 @01:32AM
(#1789918)
There is no incentive for people to speak clearly[1] when their careers, environment and everyday interactions are highly hierarchical, and they're paid, and indeed retain their positions, by being obscure, in an attempt to sound "big". Sometimes they don't even mean it.
Getting clear answers from the Enterprise types is akin to the Socratic method, if not psycho-analysis. You would have to repeat the same question over and over again, until you can illicit the root answer from layers of vague reasons and non-goals. If you're a contractor, a good way is to not make eye-contact, and "delve" deeper into thinking as you listen to their answers (you're not really thinking, you're just encouraging them to think, by mimicking you.)
Of all the W-questions, "Why" is the most important. Keep asking why, why, why, until you hit a logical tera firma, something closest to reality, further down from their tower of froth, and woolly ideas.
--
[1] I was gonna say "clear spoken", O'oh! Then I remembered my Strunk & White.
Getting clear answers from the Enterprise types is akin to the Socratic method, if not psycho-analysis. You would have to repeat the same question over and over again, until you can illicit the root answer from layers of vague reasons and non-goals. If you're a contractor, a good way is to not make eye-contact, and "delve" deeper into thinking as you listen to their answers (you're not really thinking, you're just encouraging them to think, by mimicking you.)
Of all the W-questions, "Why" is the most important. Keep asking why, why, why, until you hit a logical tera firma, something closest to reality, further down from their tower of froth, and woolly ideas.
--
[1] I was gonna say "clear spoken", O'oh! Then I remembered my Strunk & White.