Dobson's Laws (Part 1)

I've been practicing my skills as an aphorist through daily tweets since last August, and I'm grateful for the many insightful responses I've received here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Herewith a collection of the first 123 of Dobson's Laws, presented in two parts.

Dobson's Laws are copyright © 2010 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Career Management and Personal Growth

Your strength in one situation can be a weakness elsewhere. You must know when you're operating out of your vulnerabilities and biases.

Never say it can't be done in a first meeting, no matter how sure you are. People tend to think you aren't even trying.

Sweat key small stuff. There's often something that makes the customer disproportionately happy, and you can always use more good will.

There is no situation so bad that you cannot make it worse.

Your attitude changes the world around you. If you look at the world through rose-colored glasses, it's amazing how often you get roses.

Research shows pessimists see the world more clearly than optimists, but optimists make more money and live longer. Take your pick.

Things are what they are, but that doesn't make you helpless. The world is filled with both opportunity and danger.

Failure can sometimes be turned into success. If Pisa's tower didn't lean, no one would visit it.

Fight the temptation to take on interesting projects that exceed your performance bandwidth.

If you age your work properly, lots of it will turn out to be unnecessary or irrelevant. This is the great secret of time management.

Most of us are not-so-good Samaritans. But being a good neighbor is in your best interest, too. Someday you might be the one in the ditch.

How often do you describe your workplace as a war zone? Taking flak, being shot down, or out for blood...pay attention to violent metaphors.

Faking can be dishonest, but it can also be a form of practice. I've faked liking people so long that now I actually do.

We correlate age with wisdom, but that's wrong. Age provides experience; wisdom is learning from it.

Communications, Cognitive Bias, Perception, Influence

Realism isn't cynicism. A cynic is disappointed that things are what they are. Realists accept the facts and go from there.

When people rate their own decisions as "95% certain," research shows they're wrong approximately 40% of the time.

You have three kinds of blind spots: ones you don't know you have, ones you embrace or accept, and ones you try to overcome.

The fundamental flaw of almost all management thinking is the assumption that we are all rational.

You want someone to know something, to do something, or to feel something - there are no other reasons to communicate.

In English, gratitude and ingratitude are opposites, but flammable and inflammable are synonyms. Language is a leading cause of fires.

When there aren't standards for empirical proof, our common ground turns into scorched earth.

Telling people it's going to be OK often influences the likelihood it will be. That's not lying; it's premature truth-telling.

The customer is always right only at the end of the project, when they decide if they're happy and want to pay you.

Say back to them what they said to you before arguing. Until they hear their words in your mouth, they don't believe you listened.

A customer only needs two qualifications: a need, and the wherewithal to pay for it. You have to figure out the rest and then supply it.

Every communications medium has some special virtue nothing else can replace. After 6,000 years, we still chisel some messages into stone.

In the South, an honest politician is one who stays bought. But real politicians are always dependable. Their word is their stock in trade.

Seminars on dealing with difficult people are mostly filled with difficult people. Try looking in the mirror.

Jokes reveal pain and offer insight. Read the cartoons people tape to cubicle walls. They're often cries for help.

Creative Thinking, Problem Solving, Decision-Making

What do you know now that you wish you had known earlier? You can't replay the past, but the lesson might be useful in the future?

Failure is essential to all creative endeavors. Learn to fail early, fail often, and fail cheaply.

What's half of thirteen? A mathematician would say 6.5, but a graphic designer might say "thir" or "teen." The answer depends on the goal.

There's always a question that will illuminate key problems if asked early enough. Try on lots of questions to find the right one.

Fortunately, doing the right thing and the smart thing are usually the same thing. Ethics and self-interest often go hand-in-hand.

An often overlooked way to overcome procrastination: delegation. Is there some way you can get someone else to do it for you?

You are not there to do what the customer (or your boss) says. You're there to do what your he or she *wants.* They aren't always identical.

Real life seldom conforms to the clean, crisp edges of a model. Models are useful, but don't confuse the map with the territory.

Always identify the "good enough" point, even if you don't settle for it. How can you exceed expectations if you don't know what they are?

There are two ways to learn from experience: Have an experience, learn. Or find someone else who's had the experience and learn from that.

SideWise Thinkers know that reality is nuanced and complex. Beware the person who claims to explain it all in 140 characters.

"Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns." Rumsfeld missed one: unknown knowns, things to which our perceptual biases blind us.

You don't procrastinate because you're a "procrastinator," you procrastinate for a reason. Knowing why is essential to overcoming the block.

Creativity trainers mostly teach you how to generate ideas. Useful, but inspiration's only 1%. The rest (the hard part) is follow through.

The Godzilla Principle: Baby monsters are easier to kill than the full-grown variety. Some solutions come with expiration dates.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. That's why we practice what we care about: we start bad, then work up.

Models aren't true or false; they're useful or not useful. A map of Chicago may well be accurate, but in New York City it's not very useful.

Inertia, friction, and entropy are universal: they affect people and organizations as well as physical objects.

Think "both-and" instead of "either-or." People want seemingly opposite things all the time. Often, they achieve them.

Friends and Enemies

Map the political environment around you by identifying allies, opponents, neutrals, fellow travelers, and enemies.

Two factors determine how people treat you: (a) the quality of the relationship and (b) the degree of common interest.

Allies have common interests and a good relationship, so they tend to win when you win. Use them wisely.

Opponents have conflicting interests, but a good relationship. They're valuable; always treat them with respect and fairness.

Fellow travelers have a common interest but a poor relationship. Trust them only as far as their own self-interest takes them.

Enemies have conflicting interests and a poor relationship. Negotiate interests in the short term; build relationships over time.

Neutrals shade in all four directions. Some are best left on the fence; others need to be lured into the game.

Do, Know, Feel: The Goals of Communication

Why do we communicate? The simple reason is because we don’t do the Vulcan Mind Meld very well. We cannot know directly the thoughts in someone else’s head, nor transmit our thoughts to them. As a result, we have to go through a fairly complex process to get our messages across.

• Encoding is the process of turning our thoughts into something that can be transmitted. Language is an obvious way to encode messages, but we also add information (consciously or subconsciously) by our tone of voice and our body language. Notice this is the first — but definitely not the last — chance you’ll have to get it wrong.

• Broadcasting is the process of transmission itself. Whether it’s face-to-face or over email, whether it’s synchronous (real-time) communication or asynchronous (a Facebook conversation), there’s always a physical transmission that accompanies the movement of information from Point A to Point B.

• Noise and distortion normally occurs during broadcasting, and can take the form of a distraction that keeps the listener from receiving the message, or it can result from a message that isn’t delivered.

• Decoding takes place in the mind of the listener. The transmitted message (which may be distorted or corrupted) gets turned back into thought. This is a very complicated process.

Dr. Albert Mehrabian, in his groundbreaking book Silent Messages (1971), concluded that tone of voice and facial expression are how feelings and attitudes get communicated (often cited as the 7% word/38% voice/55% expression rule). When the tone of voice or facial expression is in conflict (“This soup is really delicious,” said with a sour look on your face), people tend to believe tonality and facial expression conveys the deeper truth.

Added to the problem of decoding is stereotyping and prejudice. If you have a preexisting idea about an individual or a group, you naturally tend to use that idea as a filter. Race, religion, ethnicity, accent, political orientation, sexual orientation, career — any difference that people notice affects out they interpret what you say.

Because communication is an artificial process, it’s not a good idea to assume your message has gotten across unless you’ve done it right. That means you need a measure of success. How do you know if you’ve communicated effectively?

Well, in project management, success gets benchmarked against your goal. Did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish, and did the underlying problem or issue get solved? These aren’t automatically the same thing, as we all know. Sometimes we communicate our hurt feelings and anger with remarkable effectiveness — but the ultimate outcome may not be to our liking.

The way to think about communication, therefore, is to start with the goal and work backward to the technique. With that in mind, here's the key question: Why are you communicating? On inspection, there turn out to be three goals.

• We want somebody to do something (Take action)

• We want somebody to know something (Convey information)

• We want somebody to feel or believe something (Persuade)

Do. Know. Feel. That’s it. That’s why we communicate. These three goals often interact, of course — the process of getting someone to take some action may sometimes involve conveying information along with persuasion.

Start every communication by thinking about the outcome. What is it that you want to happen with the other person – do, know, feel?

Often, simply thinking clearly about what you want is enough all by itself to show you the way. And when it isn’t, then you know it’s clearly worth some effort to map out a plan. There are great tools available — if you know you've got a problem.

You're Not Being Reasonable!

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been getting myself into more online arguments about politics and religion lately, and I’m not happy with either my own behavior or others. All the cognitive biases are on display, and hardly anyone actually speaks to the other side. Unreasonableness is rampant.

The problem is that what’s reasonable tends to be subjective. Obviously, I’m going to be biased toward thinking people who agree with me are more reasonable than those lunkheads who don’t. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t objective standards for being reasonable.

To find out what those standards are, I needed to compensate for my bias, so I identified three groups of people to study.

• I looked for people I agreed with whom I thought unreasonable

• I looked for people I disagreed with whom I thought were reasonable

• I looked for people arguing about stuff I didn’t care about and picked which ones sounded more reasonable

In addition, I looked at some of the classical standards for reason, and also reviewed some of the basic communications concepts we use in business.

I learned some of the following through observation, and most of it through the contrary experience of doing it wrong. You’ve heard some of the advice elsewhere, but a reminder every once in a while comes in handy.

1. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t construct your arguments using reason.

Classical argument operates by rules. There is a proper structure for proof. Some proofs are invalid, riddled with structural errors. Failure to follow the rules of reason is, by definition, unreasonable. A good description of classical rules for arguments and a list of common fallacies can be found here.

2. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t acknowledge your own biases and blind spots.

Before you deal with the mote in your brother’s eye, deal with the plank in your own. The problem with that advice is that it’s hard, by definition, to see a blind spot. Because some biases are universal, you can at least acknowledge that you have those.

Remember too that because a decision is biased doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong. I have a bias toward trusting people. I don’t think that’s a fundamental error; it is, however, a risk. I don’t want to get rid of the bias; I simply want to be aware of it so I can correct my own observations.

3. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t take the time to find out what the other person really means.

If there’s a misunderstanding about what they mean, remember that it is they — not you — who are the official judge of that issue. It’s fair they should acknowledge that their initials statement may have been infelicitous, but they’re entitled to revise their thoughts for greater clarity and accuracy. You have to let the old phrasing go after they change it.

In addition, reasonable people take the time to find out why their arguments are rejected, and in the future either use a different argument or at least address the identified deficiency. If you keep repeating the same argument, and fail to adjust it when you find out other people aren’t buying it, eventually you stop being reasonable. (Trying an argument a few times to work out the kinks is completely different. A failed argument can be an opportunity to do a better job next time.)

4. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t take the time to figure out why the other side believes what they believe.

While it’s instructive to define what are our differences, it’s fundamental to probe the underlying reasons why we believe it. If the difference between us is a fundamental value, it’s not subject to contrary proof by logical argument. Acknowledge the difference, and move on to the next phase, which may be walking away or getting ready to rumble.

If, on the other hand, our fight is between which of two roads is the best way to our shared destination, there’s no need to get hostile about it. One or more of us might in fact be wrong, but all have the same desire.

5. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t separate emotional outbursts from logical reasoning.

If the matter is serious enough, emotions are going to break through. It’s not practical to regard such lapses as evidence of moral failure. What does constitute failure to be reasonable is failing to curb the outbursts before they get out of hand, and failing to apologize (or failing to accept an apology, even a grudging one) when you’ve stepped over the line of good manners.

Labeling an emotional outburst an emotional outburst helps, but doesn’t undo all the potential consequences, any more than labeling a bomb “BOMB” constitutes an acceptable safety program.

6. You’re not being reasonable if you only expose yourself to one type of information.

Always read at least one news source that strongly contradicts your worldview, and make sure you understand what they actually believe and why they believe it. If you have no idea why they think what they think in the first place, what makes you believe you can come up with a persuasive argument to change their minds?

7. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t acknowledge your mistakes and apologize generously.

Factual errors, misrepresentations of the other side’s opinions, violations of good manners — people who own up quickly and generously are considered a lot more reasonable than those who don’t.

An accusation that you’ve done something wrong isn’t automatically proof that you have done so. Or maybe you did and still believe you’re justified. If there’s doubt, a good judge is someone known to be reasonable who leans toward the other side. If that person thinks you’re out of line, maybe you should listen. If a reasonable person on the other side thinks you’re being reasonable, that’s a fairly encouraging sign.

If the situation’s mixed, you can apologize for your fair share (err on the side of generosity) without having to own all the blame. If the other person tries to shove it down your throat, understand that other reasonable people will be more inclined toward you if you don’t return the aggression.

8. You're not being reasonable if you don't separate what you know from what you believe.

You don't know it if you can't prove it by empirical, external means. Facts can generally be proved to the satisfaction of someone else. Beliefs aren't necessarily subject to the need for external proof, but you can't demand someone accept your belief the same way you can demand someone accept a demonstrable fact.

9. You’re not being reasonable if you don’t stay out of fights that aren’t any of your business.

‘Nuff said.

And yes, I’ve been guilty of violating many of these rules myself. Hypocrisie est un homage que la vice rend á la vertu.

Which rules of reasonableness have I missed?