Know Yourself - Understand your context
Once you have determined who you are and what you stand for, the next big challenge is determining the landscape in which you operate. This can be tricky in the ever-evolving technology-driven workplace. What brought you success yesterday has no guarantee of predicting performance today. That is why treating “users” as “customers” is so important. Customers have names, faces, hobbies and families. You may know when their birthday is, or what they drink when socializing. Can you list any of these things for your users? Would it be different if they were customers?
Context is critically important. I am sure you have worked on an IT project that, while exactly meeting the technical requirements of the customer, has failed when delivered. One potential reason is that the context in which the system was designed either changed or was not fully understood by IT. For example, we frequently cater lunch for our internal partners; normally it runs around $10-15 a head, so an informal meeting for four to five people ranges from $50-75. One of the coordinators from another department decided that she would like to make sure there were plenty of leftovers and ordered, on the IT account, enough food for eight to ten people. Needless to say, the bill was significantly more than IT expected. Now, in her context she was feeding her colleagues; everyone loves a free lunch; what a good idea! To IT, however, the idea of sandwiches for four people topping $100 is not so hot.
While context is important, it is also extremely easy to get wrong. In today’s complex organizations, the landscape we work in is constantly changing; therefore, to fully understand your customers, both internal and external, you must resist the temptation to focus on the tactical and day to day activities. Rather than looking down at your feet, you must train yourself to periodically look out toward the horizon, and try to pick up on the weak signals that may indicate change is coming. I am a software developer by trade, and when I am having a rough day or week it is not uncommon to find me devising ways to ignore my more challenging, pressing and strategic tasks to dive into a little development work. Why? Because I feel comfortable, safe and confident in familiar surroundings, and while this makes me feel good, it does not serve either me or my clients over the long haul. People will always drift toward where they are most comfortable, and that is normally the familiar; therefore, you must challenge yourself to keep focusing on your existing context, and how it may be changing, and resist retreating back into your seemingly safe place.
Context is critical, not just in dealing with your customers, but also your bosses and management. Just because you believe your number one priority project is the greatest thing since sliced bread, does not mean your boss thinks so. If it does not align with your boss’s objectives, you have misjudged the context in which your project exists. Therefore, you need to talk to people regularly; guard against making assumptions; and most important to picking up nuance in communication, you must LISTEN!
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