Systems, Software and Solutions

What's Your Point of View?

We recently pruned the fruit trees in the backyard. I did it by myself the previous time, and the results were, well, interesting. So this time we did some research, planned the event and waited for a cool spell. Karol would do the directing, and I would do the pruning.

When the day arrived, we gathered the pruning gear and headed into the yard. We decked out in safety gear (including ear plugs) and approached the first tree. My first instruction was "Mmph what in the mumble, mumble." I put the chain saw down, walked over and said "What?" This time I heard, "Cut the limb in the back." I walked back to the tree, pointed to the branch in the back and looked at Karol.

She waved her hand, and pointed me to a different limb. It turns out we were looking at the tree from two different angles, about 90 degrees apart. Her "back limb" and my "back limb" were different because we had different view points.

And What's This Got To Do With Software?

Any piece of software has multiple view points.

• The user views the software from how it will be used.
• The developer sees the software from how it will be built.
• The tester looks at the software from how it can be tested.

Incorporating other view points into your mental model gives a better model for the final product.

Got a story about mis-aligned viewpoints? Send me an email: don@donaldegray.com

Intake: Abstracting and Represenational Systems

We take in information from our environment in discrete steps. We abstract from the continuous data streams (aka "The Real World") in the following order:

1. Something happens (Event)
2. We sense what happens (Object)
3. We recognize what happens (Description)
4. We generate meanings for what happens (Inferences)

This pattern was first published in 1933 in Korzybski's Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. From these abstractions we create the parallel experience in our mind that allows us to recreate the experience. Here is a review of the abstracting process.

We get information from the "real world" via our senses: hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling. As we experience our world, we tend to store the the event information in our memory in the same "sense" that we experienced. We can see what happened, we might hear a loved one's voice, or feel the chill in the air. I found this instrument a fun way to determine my preferred sensory intake channel. You can link to more information about Modalities and Representational Systems from the page. There are only 5 questions, so I wonder about how "accurate" the results are.

Like the MBTI, this way of looking at people's differences helps me understand myself more than tell me the "truth" about you.

What do you think? Drop me a note at don@donaldegray.com

Why Don't You Hear What I Mean? - The Satir Interaction Model

"Communication is a system of interaction. In some sense communication is always flawed because it is impossible simply to put one's thoughts and understandings directly into someone else's head." Bernard Mayer

Two recent events reminded me about the minefield called communication. A friend requested some feedback which I gladly provided. In fact, I thought I did a pretty good job! Based on the reply I received about the feedback, I knew what got heard, wasn't what I meant.

About the same time I was reviewing presentation material from a session I presented with Brian Pioreck at the AYE 2001 Conference titled "What’s Wrong With My Staff? How Management Style Affects Organization Potential." In it, we listed seven barriers to interpersonal communication. Since then I've added two more barriers. Right now the list contains the following items:

• Semantics
• Filtering
• Credibility of the sender
• Different frames of reference
• Value judgments
• Communications overload(ing)
• MBTI Type differences
• Intake modalities
• Bandwidth

So what happened in my feedback situation? First, the feedback happened via email, a very bandwidth constrained channel. I attempted humor anyway, which involved different reference frames. I know we have reasonably different MBTI preferences. Fortunately my credibility was sufficiently high that the other person chose not to ignore my feedback, but instead opened the opportunity for me to get some feedback on my feedback. We used the Satir Interaction Model to unravel the communication snarl.

The Satir Interaction Model

The Satir Interaction Model provides a framework to organize our thoughts about how communication occurs. The model looks like:



First, we take in information. This could be reading email, hearing words spoken, or any other activity where we notice something in our environment. Next we decide, "What does this mean?" Asking "What three different meanings could this have?" helps create a space so we have time to consider possible different meanings. And then "So what?" Is this of significance? If we feel the interaction is significant, we can choose to respond.

This simple representation suffices for most interactions. Jerry Weinberg covers the Satir Interaction Model in greater detail in Becoming A Technical Leader.

Got Something to Say?

How do you untangle messy communications?
What additional communication barriers can you think of?

Send me an email and let me know.