Testing the Thinking
View CommentsIt’s a fact.
You cannot test the thinking, if you participated in developing it. If you were a participant, you know the process and the decisions that underly the thinking. You cannot unknow what you know. You are no longer qualified to test the value of the decisions and assumptions, because of your participation. End of story on that point.
If you stand outside the thinking, you can come to the solution as a naive listener. You can hear the argument, without the details and assumptions that built it. That leaves you free to bring your own thinking to the question, to look for hidden assumptions, possible pitfalls of the proposed action, alternative solutions, and missed opportunities.
In most team scenarios, the strongest configuration is to ask the conceptual thinkers to develop the broadbrush plan, to have them delineate the basic steps, then to have the the detail mavens evealuate the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed action.
At those times, if you have stayed outside the development of the thinking. you have an opportunity to add value. John Dodds describes how you might expand the thinking by bringing a fresh mindset.
Reframe your mindset from one of relative expertise to one of how you feel as user in areas in which you are non-expert and, by implication, at the mercy of the supplier.
Focus, as you would in those situations, in terms of the feelings that need to be met, the fears that need to be assuaged – then you will truly be in user mode and that is where the real insights lie.
Three set of thinking to one plan development.
That should bring some strong results.
Liz Strauss
