!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> Streamline Training & Documentation: You've Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

Thursday, May 04, 2006

You've Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

I'm sure there are people who don't love "I Love Lucy," but I suspect the number is tiny. For instance, judging from the current popularity of Ricky's line, "Lucy, you've got some 'splainin' to do!" the sitcom is alive and well in the popular imagination. (Oddly, cognoscenti say that Ricky's 'splainin' line is apocryphal, but that doesn't matter since what we're dealing with here is how people of today are talking to each other.)

Usually, the call to "do some 'splainin'" has a more or less jocular tinge of accusation. I want to talk about more neutral situations in which people in a business setting share their opinions without 'splainin' why they believe their opinions are sensible.

What I'm thinking of are group situations, such as team meetings, in which, all too often assertions are made with no sort of accompanying rationale. Unless the other people in the room prompt the person making an assertion to explain why she thinks what she has said is true and relevant, the discussion can quickly deteriorate into an unproductive argument. The odds of reaching a poor decision or no decision at all go way up.

I've seen this "naked assertion" phenomenon repeatedly in a management simulation I've been helping facilitate off and on for over ten years. In fact, one of the key reasons the simulation teams have facilitators is to encourage them to get into the habit of explaining their thinking.

Of course, we all know that business and busyness are pretty much inseparable. Therefore, decision-making involves triage — only decisions with significant impact require careful identification of options and reasoned examination of each option's pros and cons.

Bottom line: Leave unsupported claims and assertions for talk radio. Instead, help the team by explaining how you view the available information, and encourage others to do the same, so that collective wisdom can actually emerge.

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