willowbl00Folks who have had to learn to navigate ambiguity, who see complexity in most things, can you tell me about your approach and what skills helped you do this? #management
Thank you all so much for your responses! I'm compiling them to go through with a report of mine, probably next month. We might have follow-on questions after that.
eighteyes@willowbl00 Being complexity attuned, I lived in ambiguity and weaponized it. Here's how to deal with it.
1) Ambiguity thrives in the darkness of 'maybe', force clarity in your conversations. Learn to watch for "indeterminate" language, from yourself and others.
2) Fuzziness is an opportunity to discover a path, because we're all just guessing until it's done and has contact with the external world. Especially in software.
3) Recognize that ambiguity can be deployed strategically to hide information, root that shit out.
Fundamentally, I approach ambiguity from an information and communication lens. Most of the time, nobody knows and we need to find out via work and feedback. Sometimes, someone does know and is using vague language to hide the bodies.
💥meta physical deflationist💥@eighteyes @willowbl00 just always remember its an adversariel environment
manipulators love complexity and truth seekers, easier to bog down and make look unreasonable. if thats your situation learn to forget truth or move on.
@glassresistor @willowbl00 "it's just me and my world of enemies" i tend to self-select myself out of situations where i have to play power/social games to survive instead of work. that being said, we're born manipulators, we don't know how to get our needs met unless we scream our heads off. some folks never moved past that, they just got more subtle.
joncamfield@willowbl00 I cannot turn off my “it depends…” brain, so I embrace it by allowing it to run free with the complexities in a first draft, a notes doc, or in huge spreadsheets where there are lots of data points to balance. i then use those to start making small decisions to reduce the complexity. From there I try to summarize don to only a few sentences to go “outside” with. Knowing I’ve documented the complexity and have comfort in speaking to how I reduced down goes me a lot of comfort.
Looking for explanations…‘I cannot turn off my “it depends…” brain’… Thanks for naming this.
bBuck@willowbl00 I found not having Presidents with fascist tendencies willing to rip apart economic, social and world order institutions extremely helpful.
RM@willowbl00 I teach interns on how to handle complex, ambiguous projects in tech as part of their internship.
You can see the slides that I refer to here - https://figshare.com/articles/presentation/WEHI_RCP_Internship_Program_Welcome/28503338
WEHI RCP Internship Program Welcome
The Research Computing Platform (RCP) is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary lab that supports and advocates for researchers and their computational research needs at WEHI.RCP has established a student internship program with subjects provided at the University of Melbourne. We did this to leverage the experience we have in the RCP of working with student software interns by collaborating with labs.This is the generic introduction presentation to explain the culture and expectations.Internal designation RCP#0026
@willowbl00 I also gave a talk about this - https://figshare.com/articles/presentation/Three_Common_Mistakes_in_Managing_Complex_New_Projects/23639565
Three Common Mistakes in Managing Complex New Projects
Starting new projects on the right track is vital for their ultimate success. This is especially the case for librarians working on complex projects such as Research Data Management. It can be easy to divert important resources to target so-called “important” areas that are relatively unimportant. This can lead to a situation where, months or years later, the project is delivered but not utilised by key stakeholders. This presentation sheds light on three common errors: Establishing a team unsuited for the project, Being unable to connect with complex stakeholders, and Failing to reveal complexity at an early stage. By being aware of these mistakes, project managers can significantly improve project outcomes and increase the chances of utilisation by the key stakeholders. The pptx powerpoint version is more accessible than the pdf version.
@rowlandm The first thing for interns is closer to what I'm looking for; but this is for a more senior person who has done well with exploring complexity but struggles to find a path through it. Thank you for the resources and for teaching things forward!
Mia@rowlandm @willowbl00 great approach - thanks for sharing!
Kyle R. Conway@willowbl00 coming from the world of theater, I've always taken comfort in the fact that "something" is going to go up on that stage for the play that we've sold tickets for.
By the time opening night comes around there are already people sitting in the audience.
So we're going to do the work to figure out what works and explore and push it as close as we can towards "right", but there will be a time when it is done.
The simple answer is "trust the process"... while also being open to the process itself changing on every project.
For the most part, this was learned by just trusting that I could nudge something along towards "better" over and over and over again until it gets to done. And I have. Now I trust that I can.
Lyall@willowbl00 my top tip for planning is to understand which decisions are hard or easy to reverse.
Easy to reverse? Don't sweat it. You can implement something immediately and ask for feedback.
Hard to reverse? Contact all your stakeholders and make sure your ass is covered. Understand the cost of rework and who will bear it.
@willowbl00 check out @RuthMalan 's resource on technical decisionmaking!
Dawn Ahukanna@willowbl00
1. What’s the bullseye target/goal- indicate very clearly as there’s infinite number of viable ways to get there & that makes project complicated.
2. Maintain 2 buckets of tasks:
2.1 what’s known & done before by someone on your team, these estimates have some objective inputs
2.2 what’s unknown & never been done before by someone on your team, any estimates for these treat as unstable dynamite that may randomly explode
3. Figure out critical path from start point to target & flex
1. What’s the bullseye target/goal- indicate very clearly as there’s infinite number of viable ways to get there & that makes project complicated.
2. Maintain 2 buckets of tasks:
2.1 what’s known & done before by someone on your team, these estimates have some objective inputs
2.2 what’s unknown & never been done before by someone on your team, any estimates for these treat as unstable dynamite that may randomly explode
3. Figure out critical path from start point to target & flex
pelavarre> sees complexity, navigates it
Most unthinking crowds lean into their gut fascination with stories about sunk costs. They blow all their attention on who was the bad guy, how sharp was the injury, what’s the news today
These are low impact choices
They’ll pick a bad guy to shame, make the bad guy fear shunning & exile, and shout the lie that they’ve made progress
Yea no. What matters more is opposite in every dimension =>
✨How will we, together, go wrong in a new way, tomorrow ✨
Until you salute their lying delusions, peer pressure will rise. You must compromise. They will require you to waste appreciable time on low impact thinking
But you can also make time to think about what’s only important and not urgent
“Chart the Course”™️ is Linda Beren’s pitch of this truth
Hein Ragas@willowbl00 I always ask questions. Also the ones that "everybody" knows the answer to -- there might be someone in the room that didn't know. Increasing the shared knowledge is very valuable.
I am aware that my privilege of assumed competency as a middle-aged white dude helps me do this -- other demographics have to navigate this more carefully. I try to use my privilege to normalize asking questions in the groups I find myself in.
1/
@willowbl00 Then when I get the answer, I rephrase it back to the person who answered, usually something like "So if I understand correctly, then..."
This allows the group to catch any misunderstandings.
And then I draw a conclusion and take that to the extreme, usually phrased as "So it NEVER happens that..." I am fond of seeking edge cases, and words like 'never' and 'always' are very useful.
This allows the group to catch any weird edge cases where the stated rule _doesn't_ work.
2/
@willowbl00 If you progress from there, you can usually make the pertinent knowledge explicit, for all to inspect and learn from.
Of course, this requires having an expert in the group. If nobody knows, then the first order of business is to find who _does_ know. Gathering information is always worthwhile.
(And when I say "the group" I also mean "myself" because there are a lot of things I don't understand but I am very inquisitive. Being inquisitive helps.)
3/3
Deb Chachra@willowbl00 I’m really struck by how most of the responses are about how to narrow the ambiguity down to clarity (which is…not how I interpreted your query?)
Potentially related: Justin Pickard just published this, about holding space open for uncertainty: https://anarchive.fo.am/silver/crafting_at_the_threshold_of_knowing/
@debcha Thank you, Deb. Your ability to read into my questions continues to be a thing I'm grateful to you for. Will check out Justin's piece.
dr_a@willowbl00 writing things down, and being adamant that anything passed by word of mouth only doesn't really exist. I like to make my compromises explicit and documented.