One of the common issues I see with disagreements in general is people jumping prematurely to the third diagram before spending time getting to the second one.
Jumping to the third diagram is especially bad if you are trying to coach or help someone with their problems. One heuristic that I’ve found very useful (when I have the patience to remember to follow it) is that if someone asks me for help, the very first thing to do before making any suggestions is to get an understanding of their model of what the problem is and why they haven’t solved it yet. Otherwise, I’m just going to waste a lot of time and frustrate both of us by making suggestions which will feel obviously useless to them.
(And in the best case, asking them questions and trying to figure out the solution together leads to the other person figuring out a possible solution themselves, without me even needing to suggest anything.)
This resonates with my experience. Often, the only thing I do when helping someone solve a problem, is try to make their implicit model explicit. “Why does this thing happen, exactly?” “What happens between these two points?” “What do you predict happens if this part changes?” This typically creates a conversation where the other person has enough space to work through the implications (and make good suggestions) themselves.
It has the advantage that, if a solution comes up, they fully understand what generated it, and so they’re not likely to forget it later. This is in contrast to a situation where I say “Oh, x totally will work” and they don’t *really* get why I think it works.
(I’ve been trying a bunch of more advanced moves very recently, but getting this basic skill has been my main practice and cause of success in this domain in the past few years.)
Jumping to the third diagram is especially bad if you are trying to coach or help someone with their problems. One heuristic that I’ve found very useful (when I have the patience to remember to follow it) is that if someone asks me for help, the very first thing to do before making any suggestions is to get an understanding of their model of what the problem is and why they haven’t solved it yet. Otherwise, I’m just going to waste a lot of time and frustrate both of us by making suggestions which will feel obviously useless to them.
(And in the best case, asking them questions and trying to figure out the solution together leads to the other person figuring out a possible solution themselves, without me even needing to suggest anything.)
This resonates with my experience. Often, the only thing I do when helping someone solve a problem, is try to make their implicit model explicit. “Why does this thing happen, exactly?” “What happens between these two points?” “What do you predict happens if this part changes?” This typically creates a conversation where the other person has enough space to work through the implications (and make good suggestions) themselves.
It has the advantage that, if a solution comes up, they fully understand what generated it, and so they’re not likely to forget it later. This is in contrast to a situation where I say “Oh, x totally will work” and they don’t *really* get why I think it works.
(I’ve been trying a bunch of more advanced moves very recently, but getting this basic skill has been my main practice and cause of success in this domain in the past few years.)