Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people
I spend a lot of time negotiating this in the software world:
And if you're wondering why this happens, it's normally because:
- people aren't talking to people
- people aren't listening
So lots of designers and product people have leapt onto 1, basically trying to turn talking to people into terms engineering people find more cuddly. Like "framework". Or "system". Or even that term that's in vogue, socio-technical system.
Stop. The problem isn't that you need a better system. The problem is you're avoiding doing the work.
The problem is, 2 is much harder than 1. So how do you listen to people?
The most common pitfalls:
- Listening is not the same as just doing what someone tells you they want
Tonnes of frameworks around this concept, so I won't repeat what others have done decently already. Jobs To Be Done, Outcome Driven Innovation, and in the UX camp, empathy mapping.
- You underestimate the specialism effect on your own worldview
You spend so long learning a subject but a specific set of "surely they know this?!". It can even be an area that the person is an expert in! Well, no, they don't. They know other things instead. You need to understand more about what they know to be able to listen properly.
- You assume "technical" is one thing
Such a common pitfall for software developers. Technical is a whole heterogenous beautiful spectrum of knowledge areas, and it's not "exactly the knowledge I gained as a software developer with the exact jobs I had". If you are still thinking of people with the binary of "technical" and "non-technical", you definitely will be missing insights and most likely, you're not listening properly.
- You assume everyone has the same resources as you
The same energy, the same skills, etc. So maybe you have a health condition, and you manage it a certain way, but when you chat with someone else with the same health condition, they just can't do the things you do, or vice versa. Some people are great at maths. Some people are great at other things. Some people have less money or reserves and act more risk averse. Some people don't. And so on.
- You assume that because you met one person with one characteristic, that the rest will be like that.
See also: assuming older people don't understand computers. Some don't. Some do. Not every woman is your mother or daughter.
- You assume people (and organisations) remain static
On the macro level - personalities change over time.
On the micro level - work personas are different to people at home, judgement alters when things are stressful or when certain situations arise.
This is fundamentally why a "fixed" project management just doesn't work for making software. You set the requirements up front. People change in the interim. It comes out. At the very very best, it matches what was requested at the start. But it's not what is wanted anymore. And people load in their own expectations, often not articulated, as they wait for The Thing and the reality never matches all of that.
- You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinking
Some people say what they mean. Some don't. A lot of people say they say what they mean but actually aren't doing that.
- You judge people
Yeah. I said it. Stop hating or dismissing people for misunderstanding the thing you documented badly. Stop assuming they are bad at their job or their lives.
If you're dismissive of someone, you are extremely unlikely to be able to listen to them properly.
- You assume 80 people are the same as 1 x 80 individuals.
Turns out, B2B is more human than B2C - all those messy relationships, dynamics, soft power vs org chart, and so on. Group dynamics add more here.
The Consequences
If you can't listen to them, then you're gonna be missing the juiciest stuff that's gonna make you the most money, and steam you ahead of the competitors, and even, weirdly, help minimise some sources of tech debt too - turns out every misunderstanding adds a new thing in the code you gotta work with later.
Hopefully, this will give a little clue for when we fall into not listening... so we can all listen better.
