Hailing Frequencies Open
Jim Harris in Books, Data Quality tagged Best of 2009, Business-IT Collaboration, Philosophy Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:20PM “This is Captain James E. Harris of the Data Quality Starship Collaboration...”
Clearly, I am a Star Trek nerd – but I am also a people person. Although people, process, and technology are all important for successful data quality initiatives, without people, process and technology are useless.
Collaboration is essential. More than anything else, it requires effective communication – which begins with effective listening.
Seek First to Understand...Then to Be Understood
This is Habit 5 from Stephen Covey's excellent book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “We typically seek first to be understood,” explains Covey. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
We are all proud of our education, knowledge, understanding, and experience. Since it is commonly believed that experience is the path that separates knowledge from wisdom, we can't wait to share our wisdom with the world. However, as Covey cautions, our desire to be understood can make “our conversations become collective monologues.”
Covey explains that listening is an activity that can be practiced at one of the following five levels:
- Ignoring – we are not really listening at all.
- Pretending – we are only waiting for our turn to speak, constantly nodding and saying: “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.”
- Selective Listening – we are only hearing certain parts of the conversation, such as when we're listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child.
- Attentive Listening – we are paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said.
- Empathic Listening – we are actually listening with the intent to really try to understand the other person's frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.
“Empathy is not sympathy,” explains Covey. “Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgment. And it is sometimes the more appropriate response. But people often feed on sympathy. It makes them dependent. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.”
Vulcans
Some people balk at discussing the use of emotion in a professional setting, where typically it is believed that rational analysis must protect us from irrational emotions. To return to a Star Trek metaphor, these people model their professional behavior after the Vulcans.
Vulcans live according to the philosopher Surak's code of emotional self-control. Starting at a very young age, they are taught meditation and other techniques in order to suppress their emotions and live a life guided by reason and logic alone.
Be Truly Extraordinary
In all professions, it is fairly common to encounter rational and logically intelligent people.
Truly extraordinary people masterfully blend both kinds of intelligence – intellectual and emotional. A well-grounded sense of self-confidence, an empathetic personality, and excellent communication skills, exert a more powerfully positive influence than simply remarkable knowledge and expertise alone.
Your Away Mission
As a data quality consultant, when I begin an engagement with a new client, I often joke that I shouldn't be allowed to speak for the first two weeks. This is my way of explaining that I will be asking more questions than providing answers.
I am seeking first to understand the current environment from both the business and technical perspectives. Only after I have achieved this understanding, will I then seek to be understood regarding my extensive experience of the best practices that I have seen work on successful data quality initiatives.
As fellow Star Trek nerds know, the captain doesn't go on away missions. Therefore, your away mission is to try your best to practice empathic listening at your next data quality discussion – “Make It So!”
Data quality initiatives require a holistic approach involving people, process, and technology. You must consider the people factor first and foremost, because it will be the people involved, and not the process or the technology, that will truly allow your data quality initiative to “Live Long and Prosper.”
As always, hailing frequencies remain open to your comments. And yes, I am trying my best to practice empathic listening.
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Reader Comments (6)
Great post Jim,
I really resonate with this. For many years I got this wrong, I was so confident with my DQ skills and my desire "to get cracking" I would often push too hard for change too soon. The sponsors would love the quick progress but it was often tough to make the change stick, learned the hard way that technology must come way down the line from people and process. There is so much to be said for simply letting everyone, no matter their rank or role, have their say.
Listening is probably the mot powerful data quality consulting tool on the market, and it's free!
Hmmm...a post written by a guy in Iowa called Jim talking about Trek can only result in the response:
What colour jumper did you wear on your last Information Quality project? Was it a red one?
But seriously...you have hit the nail on the head with your points about listening and needing to understand what the problem is that needs to be solved. After all, it isn't your data quality problem. It is the customer's (be they an internal customer or the end customer of the organisation).
Pushing too hard for quality for quality's sake consigns you to a life of anonymous red jumper wearing on every project.
Damn it, Daragh! I'm a Data Quality Expert, not a...
But seriously...thanks for sharing your perspective.
Red is my favorite color, but not on away missions or Information Quality projects :-)
Best Regards...
Jim
Over on the SmartData Collective, Daniel Gent commented:
"In the beginning in any new endeavour I have lots of questions, after all the goal is to understand what is happening with the business, their mandates, objectives, what they do with the data, why they have the data, how they use the data, and the list goes on, an excellent analogy."
Great thoughts. Most IT initiatives including DQ are really business initiatives or business transformation activities. It is people that make decisions, run processes and use systems.
Time to think about "we do business transformation with some process and technology" not "we do technology implementations and by the way, we need to add in some people aspects/change management".
As Covey would say, First Things First, so Jim is right on the money on addressing the people issues first in the frame of business transformation and as a priority.
Regards...
AMcL.
From the LinkedIn Group for DAMA International, Lowell Fryman commented:
"Love the title, Hailing Frequencies Open, as a request to discuss collaboration and communications!
Your absolutely correct, the techniques of effective listening, communications and collaboration are critical to success of a quality program. In fact, I've always recommended that all enterprise information programs have four cornerstones: People, Process, Techniques, and Technology.
In the 3 cornerstone approach, Process, must include the techniques and methodology. However, I've found that most end up focusing on the methodology and minimizing or leaving out the standards and techniques. It is the standards and techniques that tell us (People) HOW (Techniques) to do the activities (Processes), or HOW to use the tools (Technology) that we have. Let's keep up the communications."