Schlagwort-Archive: Language

Learning from our own experience

We learn through observation, from teachers or others, and from the experiences we make ourselves. In this case, everything happens in our minds – in each individual. The lessons are conveyed through oral transmission and appropriate carrier media – e.g., tools, instruments, sculptures, visualizations, and multimedia. When you lack contemporary witnesses, past experiences only become visible through objects. From historical findings, we derive the insights of earlier people. Oral traditions, such as those of the Aborigines, who have passed on past events and experiences from generation to generation since time immemorial, are not regarded by traditional media as confirmed evidence. Therefore, for instance, Wikipedia rules do not accept posts handed down by mouth to mouth. Thus, much of our knowledge lies in the darkness of the undocumented. The presentable know-how is limited to the artifacts that have been found – hand axes from 1.75 million years ago; over 40,000 years old flutes; cave paintings and sculptures that are over 30,000 years old. For all the objects’ physicality, the meaning and associated thoughts and skills remain out of reach.

Through appropriate interpretation, insights, such as knowledge about forgotten medical agents, can be brought back to life. A decisive role in reuse is played by the language, the transmission medium, and the context. These aspects are also valid of the flood of peer-reviewed, scientific publications (more than 2.5 million articles in 2018). What should we consider when we want to learn from past experiences?

  • Language reveals – though not everything
    We live with the illusion that convictions can be comprehensibly put into a linguistic form. This way, we oversee the fact that the expression formats cannot fully convey the actual meaning (see meta-model of language).
    This is especially true for the signs and words used and the varying vocabulary of languages (jargons and translations) – for example, when the understanding of short, medium, and long term is shortened from one to ten years to one month to three years, it results in different effects. In the first case, the future can be jointly designed. In the second case, the workforce is always running after new directions without having any chance to participate.
    Historical statements can only be used by making assumptions. Although we can read the word’s string, we do not know what was initially meant. Ancient Greeks distinguished project-like business activity for earning a living and financing leisure from physical slave labor. This no longer corresponds to our current view, which focuses on work-life balance. Today, the incentive to work (the work) arises intrinsically from the urge for recognition and self-affirmation and extrinsically from pecuniary and other monetary benefits. The longing for work-life balance is the attempt to replace the labor stresses with leisure activities (the life), not ease of mind. The inconveniences of work, the dependencies, external regulations, and incapacitations are supposed to compensate for these disadvantages of work with an exuberant calendar of spare time activities.
    The concepts of work and non-work have shifted repeatedly over the centuries – even in recent years with the agilization. Despite this, companies continue to adhere to the vertical and horizontal division of labor. With their outdated approaches, companies fail to introduce new leadership styles for the agile VUCA world.
  • The medium conveys – though not forever
    The longevity and availability of a medium determine whether conceptions stay visible. Inaccessible and protected from light, dry cave walls have preserved signs and images over forty thousand years – ceramic tablets last 5,000 years; books and manuscripts experience several centuries; films dissolve after 40 to 150 years. Just as most artifacts from the past have disappeared, our current media will disintegrate – optical storage media last five, 100, and in professional cases, 1000 years; hard drives and flash memory survive up to ten years. The lack of oral history means that most of the experiences disappeared due to the media’s short shelf life. Even if they survive a long time, they must first be found and readable. Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered after almost two thousand years.
    Additionally, the undocumented pieces of the puzzle are missing for a better understanding – the experiences that were not recorded and the lack of understanding of their creation context.
    Handbooks provide general principles, but it would go beyond their scope to describe the related environment. Thus, the application with changing tasks is a mental transfer performance that is only possible with a lot of overhead. One example is the elaborate BPM of the eighties, which no longer fits today’s rapidly changing activities.
  • The context supports – although not everywhere
    Experiences always arise in a specific environment. The authors always presuppose the understanding of the accompanying circumstances. Subsequently, they forget essential explanations of the context. As a result, the elaborated impressions remain misleading. Let us consider the rule of the people, the democracy, i.e., the population’s participation in political resolutions. In ancient Greece, only so-called full citizens were involved in decisions – 10-20% of the inhabitants (i.e., Athenians who could fight, but no women, slaves, or foreigners). Today we understand democracy as the participation of the whole population, equal rights, majority decisions, etc. – at least in principle.
    The context is composed of different scopes (local, regional, continental, and global). The resulting mix is challenging to grasp – the New Yorker Manhattanite differs from the Californian San Franciscan, and at the same time, they share the American dream.
    The corresponding contexts are not provided and get lost over time. Today we try to establish this context with cultural studies, which is difficult because these contents are rarely described, and contemporaries can no longer be asked. Let us think about the design of processes according to the principles of Taylorism: there is one, best way; place and time are fixed; detailed structured tasks are pursued; one-way communication; small-scale targets without reference to corporate goals; third-party quality assurance. In the fast-moving world of VUCA, these demands can no longer be realized due to the zero-latency reaction time.

Bottom line: Due to the language limitations, the rarely available and problematic to understand evidence, and the lack of context, the prior experience can only be reused with great effort. Previous experiences are often used to get the target group to agree through the authority bias (i.e., the tendency to accept an authority’s statement, regardless of its content, although one has a different opinion). Even Goethe proclaimed in Faust, “For what one has in black and white. One can carry home in comfort.” With the flood of sources, experiences, and fake news, there are too many approaches that an objective choice of the “right” approach becomes impossible. For this reason, we have to make our own experiences – err, bearing mistakes, and try again until it works.

Order blur

Whenever someone is not satisfied with the results of a measure, the abyss of order blur opens. Clients actually strive to formulate their wishes as comprehensibly as possible. Often the goals are even smartified with the participants or OKRs are worked out. The fulfillers are also ready for the job – actually, this is their business. The tasks are construed in the team and, if necessary, questions are asked in order to sharpen the request. Nevertheless, there are misunderstandings that lead to discord between the two parties.

The difficulties begin with the unspeakability of certain task elements and go to the impossibility to understand what has been said. As a result, the interpretations of an assignment do not match what was requested. If all participants were aware of the following difficulties and would stay in talk, there would be less frustration.

  • When not everything can be expressed
    In the beginning, there is the client with its ideas and feelings, which cannot be completely translated into words and certainly not into a one-hundred percent requirement. Thus, the descriptions of the task disappear behind vague terms – e.g. as always, good result, usual quality, according to the standards. Additional explanations increase the likelihood of being understood.
  • When further expectations hide behind the objectives
    Even if the objectives are increasingly smartified, i.e. results are specifically determined, measurable, adequately achievable with the available resources and relevant to the business, and progress can be tested, expectations remain in the dark – What should be done? What should be the results? What are the expected consequences? The expectations should be explicitly exchanged.
  • When the wrong language is used
    Many clients speak only in their own language and are surprised, when they are not understood. In the first step, of course, you should list your wishes in your own language. In the second step, however, the content must then be translated into the language of the project team; otherwise they CANNOT understand the assignment. It should become clear, what a mission means for the individual – for example, when globalizing, it does not affect the locals for the time being: Unless you take into account their fear of losing their jobs to foreign countries’. As soon as the effects become clear to the individual, the fears and worries and thus the resistance diminish.
  • When the order goes unheard
    The assignment is often placed through the narrow channel of the project order, when it is handed over to the project manager and the core team. As a result, the remaining participants often lack the original wording and the actual tasks go unheard. What remains is the Chinese whisper, when the project manager paraphrases, what he has heard and understood. Ensure that you can be heard personally.
  • When interest is missing
    The management style has a great influence on how motivating an assignment is formulated. More directive managers do not expect questions or objections, but immediate fulfilment of the duties. Cooperative bosses not only deliver the assignment, but also take the time to explain the task and address the team’s concerns. The order blur increases, if you ignore the employees’ point of view. It is not only a question of the fact that the day-to-day business is already fully utilizing their capacities and therefore there is no time for additional tasks. It is about taking into account knowledge, experiences and objections, but also about personal interests, such as family, friends or the upcoming holiday, which nip any commitment in the bud. Mostly, the requirements can be adapted to the needs of the employees.
  • When everything is understood differently
    In the best case, everything is heard and the project team assumes that everything has been understood. Even then, the goals striven for by the client and the contractor can differ dramatically. Since not the actual meaning is exchanged, but words and perhaps numbers, the recipients decide on the contents of the request. According to the Sender-Receiver model and the Meta-model of Language, each job passes through a variety of filters that result in a changing task. If you talk about it regularly, both parties gradually adapt to each other and the result suits at the end both.

Without a regular exchange between the client and the contractor, the previous points lead to the fact that the deviations are only noticed at the end. For this reason, the agile approaches, which enable regular coordination at short intervals along the sprints as well as short distances for inquiries, are ideal.

Bottom line: Order blur lies in the nature of the thing – the communications. For this reason, special attention should be paid to the various stages, in which contracts are distorted and blurred. On the one hand, contracting authorities should assume that they cannot express all aspects of their project in such an exact way that they will be clearly understood and should therefore patiently take into account the inquiry of the contractors. On the other hand, contractors should not humbly accept the requirements and interpret them as they see fit, but rather ask questions and raise concerns. This mutual exchange ultimately leads to a common understanding that the order blur gets as low as possible.