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OtherBig

Seeing the Other Person's Big Picture >---> OtherBig?

Jerry Weinberg October 8, 2000

You're entering a new situation, and you're ready to gather the Big Picture of the other people involved. Which others' Big Pictures? Well, who will the significant others be? Anybody I omit from this survey will potentially appear on stage at a critical juncture and spoil my best-laid plans.

Or do I have some kind of lightning rod that makes people react to my writings that way? {Ohhh, wait, yours are spoken, face to face, body language and all, while mine are written and don't even have a tone of voice that I choose. That could matter.} -- Dick Karpinski

I assure you that what you say and how you say it are inextricably intertwined.

Jerry's questions come from the world of therapy (Virginia Satir's Conjoint Family Therapy). I remember reading something written by Virginia Satir that stated that she was intensely curious and interested in people. She considered finding out about people to be a worthy discipline. People know their own history and can communicate it verbally. (Dogs and horses communicate as well, but they don't have words.)

Jerry applies this search to the world of information systems, where people are still an integral part of the problem space. I think that it's important to remember that people can fill in the gaps of what happened (how they came to be here), how it feels and what they want to have happen. The answers are relevant and influence how we apply our expertise on problem solving. The answers are the reason that we need to enter their world at all, rather than applying our skills from some distance.

Their answers make them an expert on their world, and our expertise makes us an expert on applying things from outside their world.

Both areas of expertise require respect. Otherwise, the intervention fails.

Does this help your analysis? Sharon Marsh Roberts