The sun sets on another day…
I watched the sun set and smiled once more. I sat with pepper alone, and the skies shimmered like the edge of tomorrow. A few moments and night closed in, but the sky was spectacular.
For a lot of you were born or when a lot of you were watching TV in the 70s we had schoolhouse rock. Inside of that imaginative masterpiece were a few subsets including grammar rock and a couple of others that focused on particular areas and how all of us could understand things a little better.
In grammar rock we had the description of nouns and in that we had the idea that a noun is a person place or thing. Guess what, you are a noun and believe it or not I am too. This common ground gives us something fun to think about as we are nouns floating around the world trying to deal with the complex simplicity of our lives. We are surrounded by adverbs and adjectives that define us and for the most part those adverbs and adjectives are applied by none other than other nouns.
Why don’t we define ourselves with our adjectives and adverbs? Why do we let others define what we know better than anyone else?
I was having a discussion with a spectacular individual recently about how people fill in the blanks about each other. In the grand scope of everything we learn about 1/10 of 1/10 of 1/10 of a percent of what another person is thinking. You have an advantage over me. If you wander through the rather significant number of posts on 29,000 sunsets, short story site, andrewallensmith.com, or even ask AI about me you will get a clearer picture about me then I will have about you. Still you have not walked in my shoes and I have not walked in years. And we have not walked in anyone else’s.
I have talked to this person before about the Michael Crichton effect, where since we don’t have a complete picture of the DNA we fill it in with our own. We can fill it in with our positives and powerful platitudes or we can fill it in with our negatives, insecurities, and horrible horrendous heaving ickytudes. It is a choice that we make when we are talking to someone, and I find that silence builds that more than anything else.
In my discussion I continually tried to reinforce the idea of not filling up remind with what we think others are thinking. If we do we are merely creating a shadowy mirror and not taking the time to understand the people around us. It’s easy, and it creates a sense of accomplishment to put together those ideas and make them mean something even though they may be completely inaccurate.
Over the past three weeks I have add to deal with a number of observations about other people. I try to consistently work in the world of the objective even though I write in the world of this subject and it is very difficult to stay objective when emotion is involved. I’d like to think I succeeded.
In my discussion about this I feel that the person I was talking to has succeeded as well. There is a process for understanding other people and it is called communication. I just wrote about it in a new book that I’m working on. No, I did not need another project but somehow I got one. I’m going to share a small piece of this simply because I am in a high thinking mode right now and considering communication.
Three questions can guide the IT professional: What does this person need to know? How will they best understand it? And what information should not be shared?
First, communicate what is necessary to solve the problem or support the decision. Whether the person is a senior executive or the newest employee, there is a legitimate business need behind the interaction. Listen carefully enough to understand that need, then explain the action, expectations, limitations, and next steps in terms that are useful to the recipient.
Second, select the channel that works for the audience and the urgency. Some people prefer a conversation in person or by telephone; others prefer text, chat, or a concise written update. Generational habits can influence those preferences, but they should not be treated as rigid rules. Ask when necessary. An urgent outage may demand a call, while a complex technical decision may require a written record. Communication succeeds when the recipient understands the message, not merely when the sender transmits it.
Third, confirm understanding. A message delivered is not necessarily a message received. A brief restatement of the request, confirmation of the agreed action, or a ticket updated with the next step can prevent days of rework. ITSM and ticketing systems help because they provide a shared record, but a ticket cannot replace a conversation when the conversation is needed.
(From My current writing: “The 10 Commandments of IT Ethics”, to be finished eventually.)
If that makes you run screaming from the room, oops, but I hope it shows the communication is a process and covers just about every walk of life and every group that interacts.
Don’t let the nouns define you, communicate effectively, be that person that is honest and forthright even in strange situations. And to my friend, don’t fill in the blanks.
So as the sun sets on another day, what a weird post. What a weird 3 weeks. Life is sometimes trying to constantly challenge us, and as nouns, let’s find a way to define our own adjectives. We should be walking merrily merrily merrily, because life is but a dream, no matter what.
Sleep sweet, love life, and I can’t stop singing this song in my head…