Dialing things down

It’s a subject that comes up from time to time: In a recent set of exchanges far too lengthy to reproduce here in detail, a correspondent complained about such unethical practices as used car salesmen knowingly selling lemons at inflated prices, politicians “stealing our wages” and wasting them on boondoggles, and IT using service level measures to deceive the business as to its true performance.

As I responded it occurred to me just how many of our conversations are turned into arguments through the use of value-laden terms that aren’t justified by the speaker’s knowledge of the situation, or that are only justified by the speaker’s personal position in a transaction.

So: A used car salesman knowingly sells lemons at inflated prices. True, or does the saleman sell a car at a negotiated price, to a buyer who hasn’t properly prepared for the negotiation? I’d guess the used car salesman believes strongly in the responsibility of the buyer to ask for an independent mechanical evaluation, and to research Blue Book value before dickering over the price.

Politicians make a convenient target. Shame on them, doing exactly what the voters they represent want them to do. How dare they! And … “steal” our wages? I don’t think so. We’re the owners of government, not its customers, and it’s past time for us to recognize our responsibility as owners and live up to it.

Not that I’m a huge fan of how Congress operates. I still have to acknowledge that it’s faced with a very difficult task. Pretend for a moment that every single member of Congress honestly wanted to do what’s best for the United States of America. What would happen that’s different? Very little, because with more than 400 members, each elected by a different regional electorate and each with a different set of life experiences, “what’s best for the U.S.A.” won’t be a simple consensus to reach.

Even with the best of intentions, the members of Congress would still disagree about nearly everything. Having to find a path forward regardless, they would still make the same sorts of difficult and messy compromises they do right now.

Do some of those compromises squander our money? It depends what you mean by squander – in the end, most of that money goes to employing people. Do they steal our money? Of course not. Stealing is, by definition, illegal. Taxation is, by definition, both legal and necessary in any society not governed by anarchy.

So discussions about how much taxation is optimal and where government intervention is most appropriate are made impossible by loaded language.

Which leaves service levels and IT’s use of them to lie to the corporation. Having known any number of IT managers, I’ve yet to meet any who come to work every day asking themselves, “What new and innovative way will I discover today to fool the corporation?”

Many are unsure of their priorities – perhaps because management doesn’t make their priorities clear; perhaps because they have too small a staff chasing too many problems; perhaps because they aren’t qualified to hold their jobs.

That’s different.

So here’s today’s challenge, from the old Advice-meister: For the next week, every time you find yourself in a conversation about nearly anything that starts to get heated, listen to everyone involved – starting with yourself – and identify the loaded language that distorts honest communication.

Then, actively replace it with an unloaded alternative and suggest it as a better way to think about the subject.

You’ll be surprised at how productive it can make even the most initially dysfunctional discussion.

– Bob

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