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How to filter out the nonsense at work
Constantly asking "Why?" might not make you Mr. Popular around the office. But it will help you clearly understand the rationale behind your company's goals.
When I first drafted this post, I tentatively called it how to get fired.
That might not be entirely true, but if you follow the advice below, you might quickly find yourself with more time on your hands. Nothing gets you uninvited to meetings quicker than being labeled a troublemaker.
With that warning, try these ideas the next time you are in a meeting.
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In the process you'll expose some assumptions that should be explicit and visible.
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Over the years, I've found that simply asking why and listening to the quality of the response is the best BS filter. If answers come back in cliches and generalizations, that's an indication that more thinking is needed.
Define success.
What does success look like? The second thing is to simply ask people to define success in clear and unambiguous terms before something gets underway.
If you're taking on a new project or starting a new service, you clearly expect some outcome, right? So it should be somewhat logical that you'll be able to say we expect X, Y, and Z to happen, and if they don't then this will be considered a failure.
Simply asking what success looks like in specifics tells you a lot. I think you'd be surprised at the number of people who prefer to throw a dart at the wall and then draw a bullseye around it. Or, then again, maybe you wouldn't.
Now watch. If X, Y, and Z are reported for a few weeks and then somehow disappear, something is probably amiss. Dig deeper.
Another simple idea is to simply ask people to explain the best case against their own argument.
Of course none of this is going to get you promoted. There are other ways to do that.
Shane Parrish is a Canadian writer, blogger, and coffee lover living in Ottawa, Ontario. He is known for his blog, Farnam Street, which features writing on decision making, culture, and other subjects.
