Make the implicit, explicit
Of the lessons I've learned over my career, of those that are nearly universally helpful advice, if I were to distil them into principles, one would be, 'Make the implicit explicit.'
As a leader, coach, and now consultant, I tend to look for implicit information that may be contributing to people's friction.
Examples of Implicit Information Causing Friction
It can take many forms. For instance, any sufficiently experienced person in the Information Technology sphere knows to ask, “What problem are we trying to solve?” when a group of people are locked in a debate over solutions.
Often, situations occur where the problem is known, but there’s still friction around assessing options and selecting a solution to try because the overall goal is not clear.
Sometimes, the goal may be clear, but other goals that need to be satisfied are not. For instance, the security requirements, some compliance conditions, or other qualitative aspects.
“Who is this for?” is another classic question experienced people ask when it becomes clear there may be multiple audiences in mind or a nebulous, ill-defined audience.
Why Implicit Information Causes Friction
There are so many variations of this that it has become almost always useful to have part of what I am looking for as evidence of any implicit information that people who are trying to make decisions are operating with. Often, the different participants in a decision may have very different assumptions and perspectives over what this information is, which influences their perspective on the decision.
Operating on a more similar set of inputs to a decision won’t guarantee a preference for the exact solutions, but it can reduce the distance between positions and increase the chance for alignment or, at the very least, understanding.
How To Make the Implicit, Explicit
Several strategies can help you move from implicit to explicit information. Most of them intersect with the practice of asking questions. From the basics, such as ensuring we know the following:
What problem we are solving
Who are we solving it for?
What are the constraints we are operating under?
What does a good fix look like?
What will it look like if we are successful?
Why do we think this will be successful? (our rationale)
Why are we best placed to solve this?
Why would we do this now over other opportunities?
There are also various frameworks, canvases, mapping tools and more that can help tease out previously implicit information to be explicit and thus reduce debates that are the result of a group of people operating off different sets of assumptions. These tools are structures that help us to ask the right questions.
Do you have any principles that are close to universally useful for you? What are they? Could you share your examples in the comments?