While emptying my feed reader, I came across a 3 parts post on Venture Hacks by Eric Ries, co-founder of IMVU on how to analyze and solve problems for your startup. He calls it the 5 Whys (part one / two / three).
Eric says that when facing a problem in a startup, we tend to see it as a crisis and look for someone to blame. Instead of that, one should have the discipline of asking why 5 times and get down to the heart of the problem. Doing that, you not only understand where the problem comes from, but you also create a to do list of how to solve it in short term and prevent it from happening again in the long term.
This is a lesson that you can actually learn for any project, and even any situation. De-dramatize any situation by taking a deep breath, and looking for the reasons of this situation. This works particularly well with people. There is a reason for any action, a reason for every reaction, there is a why for any feeling. Acknowledging and accepting this makes it much easier to stay “at peace” with your entourage.
In a startup project, because of the intensity of the work, the tense challenges and the passion that you put in your ideas, especially at an organic (early) stage, fights are common, even with friends. When working on SubMate, I am not sure that a single day passed without an intense discussion on a subject. And to understand a counter argument, besides understanding the argument itself, understanding where it comes from is much more useful - and powerful.
Ask yourself why someone says this, why someone asks that, how someone sees a situation, where someone comes from, assess their intellectual path to an idea, understand their personal or professional context, the known and unknown history and experiences that explain their behavior.
There are thousands of things that we take for granted. Postulates if you want. When explaining, presenting, debating, … something, we tend to think that those postulates are granted for anyone. Imagine the situation where people have different unstated and contradictory postulates and argue on a subject: it leads to a complete incompatibility of ideas.
The 5 Whys is a great concept that can be applied to many areas, and relationships is one of them. I have always tried to understand the fact behind a situation, and move aside from passionate reaction. Over the last few years, it avoided a lot of drama !
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
0 Responses to “The unstated contradictory postulate”