o, the frictionless sea!
Two people want the organization to do different things because they both have a sense, sometimes a deeply felt sense, that their preferred thing is attuned to “how people operate” or “how things (can only) go around here.” This attitude makes the opposing viewpoint feel silly or graceless or ignorant - hasn’t this person ever worked with people before? Can’t they see the smooth path ahead in my version and the trainwreck that awaits their own?
Those assumptions about “what people will (tend to) do in this scenario” are often Polaroids of What Happened at The Last Place I Worked or In The Sector I’m Most Familiar With.
It’s easy to cling to past experience when ambiguity looms. Back of hand to forehead, eyes to the horizon, I believe that without this go-to move - the one that worked out more or less in that other place I was before - I am in a sea of frictionless alternatives, each impossible to grasp.
To escape this overwrought defense of my own experience and ungenerous skepticism of others’ experiences, I find it helpful to do two things:
Figure out where your and others’ ideas are coming from - which past experience, which sector, which company? Make the assessment of the idea more of a historical (“when was this tried and what happened and why?) than a philosophical exercise (“what is the nature of the human mind? And of truth?”)
Refer to a short list of constraints and guides (this may take a little research). This can make the universe of options feel tractable instead of infinite. I think that list could include:
the law pertaining to this thing you want to do (it might actually be illegal! Especially if you employ someone in Holland or the state of California.)
What the top performers in your sector do (looking at examples with the same set of constraints)
What the top performers in other sectors do (looking at examples with a different set of constraints)
What someone designing this system / thing would do if they started from first principles (imagining examples with few, if any, constraints)
What social science research says, if anything, about your idea or your context (sometimes there actually is data on the question that is helpfully unbeholden to your bias and memory.)
-eric
