In Your Face

My friend Derrick had a Note on facebook about being challenged by someone else. He said that there are only two results when someone disagrees with our ideas: Either we realize we were wrong about something and change, or we confirm our ideas and we're encouraged.

I quite agree, those are the intended results. One of the best ways to refine our ideas, to review our thoughts, to grow and to change is to allow other people to question us and really make us think. Unfortunately, this is not what usually happens because of these kinds of conversations.

More often, we become offended. We equate our ideas to ourselves, and if someone attacks our idea than they are attacking us. (I think that Mike might call this our imago?) We have ourselves wrapped up so tightly with our ideas that it's tough to step back and re-evaluate. So instead, we opt to either defend our ideas valiantly or we counter-attack. In any case, we help ensure that people won't attack our ideas again and we gain some feeling of security.

On the flip side, people become trained to not question, doubt and challenge the ideas of other people. Parents give commands "because I said so." Teachers give assignments and feed you answers and you get a poor mark if you disagree with their assessment of Jung typology. Religious leaders easily lay the theological smack down if you aren't quite right about some obscure aspect of faith.

In the end, we're trained not to attack authority figures or anyone else. We opt for a "live and let live" approach. And if we do get bold about it then we're labeled as not being team players, or we're rebellious, or we're egotistical or we're crazy. It keeps us all nicely in line.

At my initial glance, I attribute some of this to two factors in North American society: Individualism and authority. We don't want people to attack our sovereignty, this little kingdom of ours, this world view that we have so carefully constructed. And we acquiesce to our boss or whomever because they demanded it.

From my experience as a project manager and software designer for many years, this pattern was actually quite a hindrance. Time and again, we as programmers would build some new piece of software just as the boss requested, because the boss said so. After all, the boss has more experience than we do. And if nothing else, they sign our paycheque so we don't really have much choice in the matter.

The problem is, we had a habit of creating flawed software whenever we allowed this blind obediance to happen. It became a rather obvious issue for us since it effected the bottom line of finances. We realized that we really needed the programmer to question their given instructions. Get more information, clarify the requirements, suggest alternatives, explain why something won't work. We actually had to work very hard to make programmers understand that the software that they code is their own creation, within their own field of expertise, and it is their personal responsibility ultimately.

For new programmers coming in, I often pointed to Microsoft as the extreme example. Microsoft was well-known for stories like this. As a designer, you come with your plan for the new software. You make a presentation before twenty other people, each of whom is probably smarter than you. They pick at every little notion, point out every problem and doubt every decision. If you can come out of the meeting with your idea adequately intact, it was a success. Your proposal was strong enough to stand on its own and you would be commended for it. And if your proposal failed, then that was good as well since you learned a lot and the software would be better when you presented your new proposal.

In my experience, junior programmers coming straight out of university were especially prone to this problem. As much as university's like to say that they "teach students how to think," the system also rests on the decisions of teachers. Teachers always knew more than the students, always had every answer for the tests, always had detailed plans for the assignments and always decided the final grade. I don't know if other subjects, like philosophy, trained students in this way but I saw this from numerous university grads that joined us.

So when new programmers joined our staff, I went far out of my way to break this thought process. I had to explain that doubts, questions and challenges were both encouraged and rewarded. Requesting a meeting to discuss instructions and design details would never be punished. We wanted - we expected - people to disagree with their boss, to disagree with me. If they didn't do that then they weren't doing their jobs properly. And I couldn't just sat this stuff, I had to prove it repeatedly.

I tell you, some people were positively shocked to hear such things coming out of my mouth. It was so completely foreign to them. Some people reacted with gusto and relished the chance to be involved creatively and to have their voices heard. Some people shrunk back at the thought of it and had to be coaxed and brought along to that place of politely challenging other people. In the end, though, I think that we left an excellent legacy for the programming department at my old company and it runs very well to this day.

So to come back to the original point, challenging each other is an incredibly useful trait. Challenging systems of thought or institutions is valuable. Each one of us can benefit from this in both our personal lives and in our public lives. It's not exactly easy to do and there will be plenty of resistance but I say that it's a beautiful thing when we allow others to speak into our lives and when we're allowed to speak to others in the same way.