What is Mark's saying about "solving problems by starting with concentric circles around your own desk"? I've butchered it enough that I need to get it right!
Submitted by Kevin Picton on Tuesday April 29th, 2014 8:25 pm
Mark means that if you can't see the problem, you probably haven't looked hard enough at your own contribution to the problem.
A great example would be the situation where you are complaining that your team aren't contributing enough ideas. What are you doing that is dampening their input? Are you stomping on their ideas for being 'stupid' or 'never going to work' before they even get discussed? Do you thank them for their ideas? Do you give them feedback on how often they contribute new ideas? etc.
Concentric circles around your own desk means the problem may well be centred on you. Look there first.
Hope that helps
Kevin
Submitted by Leanne Phillips on Wednesday April 30th, 2014 9:14 am
The way he says it, I think, is:
When things go wrong in your organization, start looking for the reason in increasingly larger concentric circles around your own desk.
If you google for 'concentric circles around your own desk' you come up with a reference to Gen. Bruce C. Clarke, who used a slightly different phrasing - 'command' instead of 'organization', for instance.
It's one of my favorite quotes. I should start using it for software developers too. (We have this tendency to blame anything but our own code for our code not working. It's the server, the network, the database...sometimes that's true, but in my experience, it's true at most 5% of the time. I'm considered a really good troubleshooter by my team; a large part of that is because I assume the trouble is in the code. I usually don't bother to troubleshoot the other possibilities until I'm satisfied it's not actually the code *and* think I can prove so to the SAs and DBAs who are rightfully skeptical of our assertion that it's something on their end.)
you are probably the problem
Hi,
Mark means that if you can't see the problem, you probably haven't looked hard enough at your own contribution to the problem.
A great example would be the situation where you are complaining that your team aren't contributing enough ideas. What are you doing that is dampening their input? Are you stomping on their ideas for being 'stupid' or 'never going to work' before they even get discussed? Do you thank them for their ideas? Do you give them feedback on how often they contribute new ideas? etc.
Concentric circles around your own desk means the problem may well be centred on you. Look there first.
Hope that helps
Kevin
The way he says it, I think,
The way he says it, I think, is:
When things go wrong in your organization, start looking for the reason in increasingly larger concentric circles around your own desk.
If you google for 'concentric circles around your own desk' you come up with a reference to Gen. Bruce C. Clarke, who used a slightly different phrasing - 'command' instead of 'organization', for instance.
It's one of my favorite quotes. I should start using it for software developers too. (We have this tendency to blame anything but our own code for our code not working. It's the server, the network, the database...sometimes that's true, but in my experience, it's true at most 5% of the time. I'm considered a really good troubleshooter by my team; a large part of that is because I assume the trouble is in the code. I usually don't bother to troubleshoot the other possibilities until I'm satisfied it's not actually the code *and* think I can prove so to the SAs and DBAs who are rightfully skeptical of our assertion that it's something on their end.)