Yaro Starak got me thinking about meta-thinking. While he writes from the perspective of a web entrepreneur, there are a lot of points in common between the way he thinks about things and good information architecture/consulting practice.
Yaro thinks about the way people think - and this is a good thing. He says:
The entrepreneurs reading this will no doubt relate to the way of thinking I am talking about. I often look at a restaurant I’m having dinner or lunch in, or a retail outlet I’m shopping in or any business whatsoever, whether it’s a service provider or product producer and ask - I wonder how profitable this business is? Or I wonder where they source this product from and what the wholesale price is? Or I wonder whether this business model has been applied to another industry? I wonder why the business owner decided to put this here or price this much or offer this now? etc, etc.
I don’t know much about entrepreneurs, but I know that this is how I think. When see a poorly trained waiter in a restaurant, I don’t think “you idiot”, I think “what management process failure allowed you to be put in a position that you are not able to handle?”. I look behind the issue to not just the answer, but the potential solution. That was why my rant about EzyDVD didn’t attack the employees who were present at the time of the debacles mentioned, but questioned the motives of the business system that allowed the failure.
I think that meta-thinking is essential to practitioners of my trade - information architecture - look behind and beyond the obvious so as not to fall into the sin of best practices. More than this, whatever field of human endevour we follow, meta-thinking is essential for self-examination, which I believe is a necessary part of a life worth living.
“… but questioned the motives of the business system that allowed the failure.”
Business systems don’t have motives, but people do, sometimes. Worse times, most times, people have the motives of others imposed upon them.
A business system is nothing more than a tool for imposing methods on others; disguising this from yourself and from others by ascribing motives to such systems is anthropomorphism of the worst kind that leads your own thinking astray and inevitably causes confusion when you attempt to design your human-centric information systems.
The content of this site - and this item in particular - displays a disconnection between the affective language you’re using and the effective goals you’re espousing; you need to sort out that disconnection and harmonise words and thought so that you can speak much more directly to end users and customers.
A human-centric information system doesn’t focus on business systems, it focuses on human and business goals and attempts to reconcile their needs. Human-centric information systems allow for many different routes to shared and often transient or moving goals.
Hi Robert,
thank you for your comment.
I have to start (and sadly, end) by disagreeing - business systems are considered discrete entities in disciplines such as business process improvement and IT service management - I think you have similar practices in England. Ascribing motives to them is certainly anthropomorphism but not of the worst kind - they can be good and bad (read more/less efficient and fit for purpose) in and of themselves. In the end there is always a person at fault - my point was that it was head office at fault and not the minimum wage sales clerk who needed a good kicking - and that it would have been wrong for me to vent at the salesfolk in that instance.
Information systems and business systems cannot *ever* be considered in isolation unless you are designing an answer to a specific academic case study rather than a holistic real world solution.
Your wholesale denigration of the site leads me to wonder about your motives - what profit is there for you personally in running me down in this way? I’m curious, and would welcome the opportunity to learn more. I reserve the right to use emotive language whenever it so pleases me to do so, and if this offends you, so be it.
Best regards, Andrew
Andrew,
My point was deliberately expressed in an ironical circumlocution; it was a pastiche.
If you believe there’s an HQ and a person driving a business process in an incorrect, damaging, or bad way then you should have said just that, and said it much more directly than you did say it. Using the terms you used obscures the fundamentals you were seeking to address.
Similarly I didn’t denigrate the site or your motives for writing it; nor did I attack you personally. I denigrated your actual deployment [use] of language; how one uses language is at least as important as the subjects one is addressing. The language you used is more obscure and indirect than it needed to be and by being obscure and indirect it perpetuates the obscurity and air of mystery and confusion that surrounds this complex and increasingly important subject.
We have a saying here in the UK about attacks on people: play the ball and not the man. Which is to say that one should not descend into ad hominem attacks on the person - stick to the subject. A good and critical friendship can be made through, and will survive attacks on, thinking and message content, but will rarely if ever survive an attack on the person.
Incorrect thinking leads to incorrect action, and language IS action.
Information architectures have clear relationships to data architectures on the one hand and to knowledge architectures on the other. If the language used to express our thinking about information architectures is in any way fuzzy or obscure then we perpetuate and propagate errors throughout that hierarchy.
Use the same critical and analytical tools you are clearly able to apply to other people’s processes to examine your own thought processes. If one is saying things in an obscure manner then the critical question to be asking oneself is why?
Your use of emotive terms has nothing to do with this; be as emotive as you wish, but be clear and direct. Using emotive language won’t offend anyone who has any integrity - least of all me - so long as the language genuinely speaks directly to the subject. On the other hand woolly-minded or vague or imprecise language that obscures the subject or deflects the discussion will either put people off or offend them, regardless of any emotional content. This is the politician’s disease - failing to speak to the question or to the point.
You may, if you wish, see my commentary as a backhanded compliment: you’re doing good work - I’d like to see your work get better.
Robert