Re: Re: "I've tried it" doesn't instill interest

=So said  Dale Emery <[email protected]>  on  2003-01-10 --------------------

>Hi JB,
>
>> > Your responses to these "reverse" situations may help you to
>> > understand:
>> >
>> >"I finally married my girlfriend and it makes life so much easier."
>> <snip />
>> 
>> Understood; however, if we stick within the much narrower context of
>> trying to build a specific piece of software for specific people,
>> then the correlation between my ability to succeed and the team's
>> ability to succeed is much higher, don't you think?
>
>Yes.
>
>> Assuming you agree, then perhaps my expectations aren't so
>> unreasonable.
>
>Maybe.  Given that people are behaving differently than you expect,
>what makes the reasonableness of your expectations important to you? 
>What would be different depending on whether you judged your
>expectations to be reasonable?

If my expectations are unreasonable, then I have no right to them, so there is virtually no chance that my expectations be met.

If I judged my expectations to be unreasonable, I would be silly to complain about their not being met.

Since I think my expectations are reasonable, the fact that they are not met is vexing. It ought not to be that way.

>> I will concede this point: generally the other person must *want* to
>> improve or succeed in order for any of this to be effective. I
>> prefer not to deal with the situation where they don't, because I
>> already know that I can't do anything about that. I refuse to
>> believe that only a handful of the people I have ever worked with
>> want to succeed or improve.
>
>I figure that everybody wants to succeed and improve.  But they may
>not want to succeed or improve at the same things *I* want to succeed
>or improve at, or that I want *them* to succeed or improve at.
>
>Of the three factors I mentioned that affect motivation (expectations
>about ability, cause-and-effect beliefs, and values), values are the
>ones people are least likely to change at someone else's urging.
>
>But sometimes you can wiggle someone's values by wiggling their
>cause-and-effect beliefs.  Think of values as nodes in a tree (or
>maybe a DAG), with the most important values near the root, and the
>least important as leaves.  The nodes are linked by cause-and-effect
>beliefs.  If Wilbur values BDUF, he values it *because* he believes it
>leads to something that he values even more deeply: clean design.  If
>you can influence Wilbur's belief that BDUF leads to clean design, you
>have influence how much he values BDUF.
>
>One general approach is to walk up Wilbur's tree until you arrive at a
>value you share -- clean design, for example.  If Wilbur trusts that
>you share that value, he may be more willing to explore his
>cause-and-effect beliefs.

Now this is very good. I have to think about this one. To rephrase, if I can identify the place where I agree with my audience, then I can begin to show my audience an alternate route to the same Good Thing. That might make them more receptive to the idea. Very good.

>> As a post script, some of the reverse situations you mentioned are
>> so wonderfully strange that I'd want to pursue them, particularly
>> the one about giving up TV, car, and so on. Wouldn't that be great?!
>
>If you try it, let me know how it goes... ;-)

I have no car, and it's great. I save nearly $10k/year. (Note: that's Cdn$, but it's still a good amount of money.)


J. B. Rainsberger,
President, Diaspar Software Services
Let's write software that people understand.
http://www.diasparsoftware.com/
telephone: +1 416 791-8603
All correspondence (c) 2002 Diaspar Software Services.
If you want to use it, just ask; don't steal.


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