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You’d be surprised of how much of management, consulting, teaching, senior ICing, etc is: “I want to X.” “Have you written down a plausible plan to get to X with steps listed in order?” “No.” “Alright let’s sketch it. OK step one: are you going to do it?” “Why would I do that?” https://t.co/EnPmugz8Zk
Generally the person doesn’t sound that silly or pathologically helpless in the meeting. Sometimes they are a committee of extremely intelligent people, because only a large and well-resourced organization acting in concert can reach the heights of no-agency-exists-anywhere.
I have scheduled a performance review for the director of hiring people who manage people that do feasibility studies into best practices for doing step one! I deserve a promotion! Again, doesn’t sound quite that silly when you’re spending literally tens of millions doing it.
While I’m on the subject of questions not asked. “How do you plan to X?” “I don’t know.” “Have you read how to X?” “Nothing responsive on Google.” “Has anyone ever Xed before?” “Probably yes.” “Have you talked to them about X?” “Talked to who?” “Seriously name one person any…”
“Well I suppose this team at this company might have Xed.” “Great who leads that team go talk to them.” “I don’t know who leads that team.” “And you searched LinkedIn and Twitter before telling me that because of course you would.” “LOL what.” “OK in future that is a thing.”
“But today OK let’s navigate that org by starting with one well-placed person inside of it. Literally anyone works.” “Can you intro me to them?” “Quite plausibly but this is a really important skill can you find one person who works there.” “Uhh I could email customer service.”
“Wow I am impressed that is actually the tiniest possible spark of greatness. But could you start somewhere more efficient than going through CS like say a staff engineer.” “I don’t know any.” “Does GitHub or YouTube or any conference speaker list or…”
“OK supposing I can name someone then what.” “Send an email.” “What should that email say?” “It can say so many things, but two important ones are your name and that you want to talk about their experiences with X.” “Will they want to talk about X.” “Likely; we will read reply.”
This is devolving into Kids Get Off My Lawn and I don’t want to be overly cynical so let me underline: * the tiniest measurable amounts of agency are surprisingly rare * you need to budget far more effort than you expect for teaching people basic professional skills
“If people who have no greater connection to the field other than living in the same country and reading the NYT cannot name them, then they read their own email and reply to lots of it.” is a useful lesson to internalize. (Also true of many people who are well-known.)