Unstructured meetings waste time and energy. Recent articles, like this one in the Wall Street Journal, document the growing popularity of "stand-up" meetings as a way to avoid the wasteful meetings of old. Just standing up, however, isn't the answer. Better meetings require better structure. Stand-up meetings offer some structural innovations that can help improve our workplace interactions. But meeting formats become even more powerful when they are combined with discussion formats that also … [Read more...]
Groups and Teams
Creating a community of practice
Learning any set of skills requires sharing our experiences, ideally with others who are also using the skills. Precision Q+A teaches sophisticated cognitive skills that grow over time and through practice. We can deliberately enhance our capabilities by participating in communities with others who are practicing as well—what cognitive anthropologists call "communities of practice." These communities help knowledge workers in domains ranging from managers to surgeons and engineers to artists. … [Read more...]
Slippery Terms: Do you and I mean the same thing?
In the field of informal logic, "slippery terms" are words that mean one thing to one person and something different to another. They produce a consensus that is often an illusion, and therefore likely to fall apart. With long-time colleagues, the depth of shared context or background is usually enough to keep our meanings aligned. But when we work with people we don't know well, and we add differences in expertise, language, and culture, slippery terms create errors, misunderstandings, and … [Read more...]
The Power of Go/NoGo Questions
When meetings go wrong, the grumbling begins. The leader didn't have an agenda. The goals of the meeting weren't clear. One person monopolized the discussion. Key participants were unprepared. There were too many useless tangents. So whose job is it to fix broken meetings? … [Read more...]
The art of the follow-up question
As a student of Precision Questioning and Answering you have probably noticed that inquiry deepens conversations, sometimes in unexpected ways. This month we had lunch with an executive from a semiconductor company, we'll call him Ted. In the middle of our Moroccan chicken salads, Ted asked a direct, and very precise, question: "What class of problems does Precision Q+A help solve?" … [Read more...]
How to soften impact without losing precision
Suppose we are meeting with a customer to understand their requirements for a solution to a complex problem we are trying to solve for them. As Precision Questioners, going into the situation we know two things: once we understand the big picture, most of our questions will need to be precise, and we will often need to ask follow-ups. In a situation like this, there's a third parameter. When a working relationship isn't firmly established, it's also important to preserve rapport and perhaps even … [Read more...]