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>> Amy Draves: Good afternoon. My name is Amy Draves, and I'm here to
introduce Peter Jerkewitz joining us as part of the Microsoft Research Visiting
Speakers Series.
Analogies are a powerful, memorable way of understanding and communicating
complex ideas. Each of us can learn to understand the impact that group
dynamics have on the choices we make and how to improve both the decisions
and the interactions with those around us.
Peter Jerkewitz is a former Microsoftee which I think many of you know. He's
worked in dynamics, release management and Windows, DEV DIV setup IE
sustained engineering and the natural languages group.
Peter is currently the founder and CEO of Novus Works. Please join me in giving
him a very warm welcome.
[applause]
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Thank you. So first thank you guys for taking time out of
what I know is a busy schedule to be here and to the folks that I know are online.
Thank you for being here as well.
Just wanted to set ground rules for today. So two things I want to talk about.
One is I'm going to pull a couple of analogies out of the book so that we can
explore them a little bit more detail and talk about them just kind of explore some
of the messaging in them, but also to help support the second point, which is I
wanted to share a little bit with you guys as to why using analogies works in
leading people and in kind of managing yourself, right? At least why in my
journey it's worked for me.
As Amy just told you guys, why many a former Microsoft person as well. I was
here for going on 19 years. Left a couple of years ago to pursue the passion that
is more around improving business operations and focusing on developing and
growing people.
And that's what Novus Works is really all about. As part of that, I took what
turned out to be a natural side effect of the way I did my job when I was here,
which was in mentoring people and growing teams, I discovered that I kind of
have this talent of making up analogies.
And in that journey we took some of those analogies and put them to press.
Right?
So all of these analogies that are in the book were invented in the heat of a
moment of me trying to explain something to somebody.
So all of them -- that's where they all came from. So as we go through this today,
feel free to ask questions. I'm going try to keep us moving because I know some
people have a tighter schedule.
But if things come up along the way feel free to interrupt and ask. So with that,
let's talk about digging holes. First one is the analogy is called digging the
perfect hole in the wrong place.
And if you start off thinking about the work we do day to day, we're all involved in
doing a project. We're all doing a task. We're all trying to make something
happen.
And to me that's digging a hole. And we're all working on it. And we all put great
passion into digging a hole. We put great passion into making sure it's a perfect
hole.
All of us have studied different aspects of life. Engineering, computer science, et
cetera. We bring all of those things into digging that hole to where we end up
with a perfect hole. The issue is -- I'm sorry, we're not digging just any hole.
We're just digging perfect holes. We're digging holes that take hours, sometimes
days, sometimes weeks to dig, and, of course, they took substantial professional
skills. So put yourself now in the it's time to be evaluated for this hole. Right?
You're in the project review. You're in your annual review maybe. And it's time
to understand exactly what it is that's going on with this hole.
Here's the rub. Is the business is going to look at this hole differently than we do.
Right? So the business -- we're going to look at the hole first by looking at the
effort that it took to dig it. We're going to look at exactly how quality it is and
lastly we think about the value of it. Right? It turns out the business is going to
look at it very, very differently. So the business is going to look at what is the
value of the hole, right, you see these two swapped.
It's going to look at what is the value of the hole. Then it's going to look at what
is the quality of the hole. And then it's going to decide how much effort it took to
dig it.
So when you think about annual reviews and all of us want to get great big
bonuses. Bonuses get paid if you did something that's valuable that's at quality
and oh, by the way, if it was really, really hard, the bonus may get picked for it.
The promotion might get recognized for it. But it doesn't come with effort first.
It's the other way around.
And one of the things that I sum it up with is this notion that the business would
rather have a rough chip in the right place than it would to have a perfect hole in
the wrong place.
And some of you guys may have actually experienced that when you dig a
perfect hole in the wrong place, sometimes to the business, to your team, this is
actually -- it's a huge loss. Because not only is the opportunity cost you weren't
over here digging, or you shouldn't have been digging, but the business has
actually got to stop and put dirt in this crazy hole that's now in this place that we
don't want to hole, it's actually a net loss.
Right? So kind of the core of this analogy says, hey, keep your passion and
focus on digging great holes, right? That's not the problem. The effort that it
takes to make it right is right.
The fact that sometimes we have to work a little longer to get the thing to be
correct, that's not a problem. The problem is we need to ensure that we're
always digging in the right place. That means that for each of us as individual
contributors, we need to be validating ourselves with our managers, with the
other leads, with the team that we're working with. Is this the right hole in the
right place? Right? Which means first off think it through for yourself as a
professional. Is it the right thing for the business?
The second one is seek validation. Right? But do remember that even after you
seek validation and you're digging in the right place, sometimes the definition of
right changes. Right? That features need to be changed. Schedules put things
under constraint. Customers suddenly ask for things that we didn't know they
were going to ask for.
The definition of right can and often does change. It's up to us to keep an eye on
it.
Right? And remember that the business ultimately decides the definition of right.
Right?
And what I mean by that is as individuals we don't get to decide, this is the
correct answer, I can't help that the business isn't that right enough to understand
that.
That's not a fair response, right? Because the business ultimately is the definer.
It's up to us to validate with it. It doesn't mean we may not try to convince the
business to convince our team to convince our manager, et cetera, that I think I
understand something that maybe the business doesn't. Absolutely we want to
do that. But we can't just go do what we think is right and assume everybody's
going to see the brilliance of it.
But then for the business, for those of us that are leaders in the room, we can
look at this from that angle, too, and say, hey, first thing, two things that a leader
must know is where should your team be digging? Do you have an opinion? Do
you know where the hole should be being put from your team?
And the second one is do you know where your team is digging? Although the
individual has skin in the game to make sure that they're digging in the right
place, so does the manager. The manager's got skin in the game to make sure
that they've not only said where it is right, but they know where their team is
digging.
So if you're a manager, and you're surprised that somebody's digging someplace
that you didn't know they were digging, that's a shame on you. Right? That's
you not -- that's not you paying attention.
Make sense? Second thing, why analogies work real quick. This is from my
experience, the way I kind of developed this as I went. First, three things, one is
analogies allow us to depersonalize messages.
Right? And this one you may have heard of, but it's the notion that says if
somebody is digging in the wrong place, instead of saying you're working on stuff
that nobody's going to value, you have a depersonalized way of saying how do
we know we're digging in the right place?
And because of the indirect language, because we can stop and have this
indirect conversation before we have the direct conversation of the value, it
actually makes it easier for people to hear it.
And this phenomenon is where all of the analogies came from for me. Right? It
was -- we could actually stop and explore relatively complex things and then
apply them back to work. Right? Which is why I say it's a depersonalized
discussion with a personal message. Right? Because ultimately if we stop and
we visit with somebody about how do you know you're digging in the right place?
Right? How do you know that it's got the right quality and you start having those
conversations, what you're really doing is setting up to bring it back to reality of
let's talk about the specific task you're working on. Let's talk about the specific
set of test cases you're writing, let's talk about the specific set of bugs that you're
choosing to fix, et cetera.
Make sense? So the second one, and this is the one that like -- this is where I
describe what goes on in my head as I develop these really. And it really comes
down to I think about it as the big pause button.
What it means for me is two things. One is I think about there's -- you're on the
game field. So you're literally in the situation room having the conversation over
triaging bugs or you're having a hard conversation over managing schedule.
You're having the hard conversation over we're going to change the team and do
a reorg. You're having a hard conversation over a feature list, what's in, what's
out, so it's literally in the game.
But the second thing you can do is realize there is this observatory. And to my
mind's eye, what you can do is you can push pause and you can stand back, and
you can look at what's going on and figure out like what's the real play that's
going on here?
Right? So literally where digging the perfect hole came from was me as a
manager -- sorry. Me as a manager in the review process with somebody in my
office who worked really hard but they didn't actually do the right work.
Me explaining to them that we valued the work but not at the level they did.
Because it was in the wrong place. And it was me using an analogy to really get
them to understand where we dig is more important than how we dig. Right?
So by being able to push the pause button and step up to the observatory, we
can look at the game field and you can actually begin to understand what's at
play. And here in a minute I'll walk us through the same thing that's really the
notion about thinking about what's in play and you can come back and push the
play button again and you're back in the game.
But you now have this perspective. And you have this language that you can use
to actually influence the game now.
The third one is using the analogy almost like a tag line in everyday language, so
to be able to say to somebody how do you know you're digging in the right place
is a really, really important aspect because it can show up in conversation and
you can pack a whole lot of message in a small set of words.
If you look in the book, there's nine analogies in there. And the titles of those
analogies are intentionally geared to become part of language. Because the
more people that knew the titles, you'd be able to insert this entire chapter of
content into those three little words to go influence a conversation, a situation.
So are you digging in the right spot? Here in a moment we'll talk about handling
that ball of energy. But to give you an idea that there's some other ones that you
guys have probably heard of, right? Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
It's a very indirect way of saying we're trying to solve a problem now that we don't
have right now.
I agree we'll probably have it. But let's take care of it when it gets here. Right?
The new guy's green. There's a whole lot of pack in that that says if you hear
this in a leadership conversation, what you're probably hearing somebody say is
let's be careful how much we rely on this person? Let's make sure they're
supported. Let's make sure that we're putting the challenge on that they're ready
to take on.
It's all packed up inside this one little line. You guys have all heard of Murphy's
law. It might be called the demo rule, right? That says something is going to go
wrong, beware. Right? But you could say beware of Murphy's law which is a
whole lot better than saying be very careful, your crap is going to break, which is
obviously going to be more aggressive and not going to be heard quite the same
way, make sense?
So then our friend, the ball of energy. So the ball of energy is a challenge that
says have you guys ever been in a place where you've gotten some big news
where the big news came at a really inopportune time. Maybe you heard that
your reorg and your position is going to change and you heard about it at the
coffee machine.
You heard about it in a really indirect seemingly cold way, right, which is to say
that the person that gave it to you didn't seem to really understand how big this
thing was, right?
It was bad for you, right? Big deal for you. And the person that's delivering the
message to you almost seemed happy about it. And what you'll see in a minute
what they really were wasn't happy but they were relieved. But they seemed
happy. And that certainly would seem inappropriate as you're getting it.
Again, on the leadership side if you ever delivered big news, where you were
surprised that when you put the news out on the table the person actually had a
much bigger reaction to it than you thought they were going to have.
Or news that kept you up all night, right, if any of you have ever had the
unpleasant task of terminating somebody, right, that keeps you up all night long
the night before because it's really, really big news to deliver. And it's a lot of
anxiety.
You dread delivering it. Right? So this ball of energy is all about communicating,
right? At work it's about communicating things like reorgs. It's about
communicating things like somebody's going to take on a new position or a
position may have been cut or an entire project is cut.
Right? It is review scores. Sometimes the good ones and the bad ones. Right?
Tough feedback on ideas. We've all had the challenge of how you tell somebody
this idea needs to change a little bit. But you know they're going to be resistant
to it.
And how you go deliver that. On the home side, just to show you that the
analogies aren't just work, is it could be that you're moving cities. And it could be
that you and your spouse or partner, you actually want to move the city. But it's
still a big deal to come home and say, hey, I got the job and we're actually
moving. Right?
It's a change in plans. And keep in mind, change in plans, it could be that you
need to tell one of your kids that the movie that I promised you we were going to
go see tonight we can't go see it, which is a big deal to the kid, right?
Could be you're breaking up with somebody. Damaged somebody's car. So the
ball of energy mentally represents the size and impact of what this big news is.
To my mind's eye, it's actually -- and I looked long and hard to try to find a picture
of a ball of energy. Turns out they're hard to photograph.
But mentally, just picture just a seething ball of energy that represents what this
big news is. And what's about to happen is you're about to go hand it to
somebody. Right? So the ball of energy is it's passed from one party to another,
right? And I can't not pass it. I can't tell you that you have a review score that's
different than what I know I think you got without passing this ball of energy.
I can't come home and tell you that I lost my position without passing you this ball
of energy. I can't tell you you didn't get the promotion. I can't tell you that we're
going to take on a new challenge and this is the role that I need you to take.
I can't deliver any of these without handing over this ball of energy. Right? Do
keep in mind it can be good news. It can be good news. It is impactful to the
recipient. Right? Because if you're about to hand something to somebody and it
doesn't matter to them, then the ball of energy from their vantage point is going to
be tiny. Doesn't really matter, right?
It has impact. And in fact in many, many cases the ball of energy is a very
different size for both parties that are involved.
So think about -- go back to you're telling one of the kids in your family that we
don't get to go to the movie. To the seven-year-old child, the movie that
everybody gets to see this week I suddenly don't. This is a big, big deal to them.
To you, you weren't really necessarily that excited about the movie to begin with,
and we're going to see it next Tuesday. The world's going to be okay. By the
time they graduate high school they won't remember this. You know it. But to
them it's actually a really, really big deal. Right?
So think about the experiences here. To the sender, when you are going to hand
off this ball of energy, right, typically you're stressed over how you're going to tell.
And the sensation that you're feeling here is certainly not pleasant. Because you
know you're about to hand over this ball of energy. Typically you're anxious to be
done, which I might add makes you trigger happy, because all you want to do is
get rid of this thing. And quite frankly how I get rid of it is not as interesting as
actually getting rid of it.
Right? Oftentimes we overreact to initial reactions. When we hand off the ball of
energy. So when you hand this ball of energy to somebody and they react,
oftentimes we overreact because we're kind of keyed up ourselves. Doesn't
always get the good news. Isn't obvious part is really saying so in the book, the
scenario is this, is the easiest way for me to describe this, is there's a -- in the
book the scenario is there's a senior leader that has to eliminate a person from a
position, right? The character in the book isn't meeting the needs of the position.
So she's going to be eliminated out of it. Need to get somebody else in it. But
what they do in the middle of the night one night is figure out, wait a minute, I
could create a position. And if I create a position that looked like this, this
character would be perfect for it.
So instead of this person losing a job, we're going to put her in this other position.
This is fantastic news. Right? But to her when she receives the news it's not
good news because what she sees is I just lost my position from her vantage
point, right?
So oftentimes we deliver stuff that to the sender it appears good because they've
been on this journey of crafting it. But to the receiver they're not there yet. And
then always -- remember that the sender doesn't always get to choose not to
send the news. Right? Because if we're going to move buildings, right, I don't
get to choose to not tell the team, I don't get to choose to tell you we're not going
to move buildings and this is where we're moving, even though I know, for you,
the commute is going to get worse and it's not a good news thing for you.
I don't get to not tell you, right? To the receiver, they're typically hit out of the
blue. Right? For them, they're starting a journey and they go from zero to 60s
instantly. So if we stay with the example of we're about to move buildings and I
know the commute is going to be worse for you, I've been thinking about this for
days, if not weeks, this journey I've been on.
Because we don't move buildings around here, it may seem like we do it
suddenly. But it doesn't happen that way, right? So I've been thinking about this
for a long time, but at the point you tell the person you finally put it on the table,
they are instantly in a rapidly moving scenario, right? The very quick
conversation usually happens because this person's just trying to get rid of the
ball, right? All they're trying to do is hand it off.
The other thing to remember is that to the receiver, the journey is unique. Right?
And probably if we go, if we stay with the somebody's losing their job, the person
that says you're losing their job is in a very, very different scenario than the
person that actually lost their job.
The person that needs to say you didn't get the promotion is in a very different
situation than the person that didn't actually get the promotion. Right?
Or I want to work on a feature team or, or, or. They're very different. It's
confusing and scary. Oftentimes you're expected to be back to normal very
quickly, which is the notion that says again, because the sender is oftentimes
trying to get back to normal, they're trying to get back to I don't have this ball of
energy anymore. This energy that I don't like, this not pleasant part I want it
over.
And the quicker I can get it back to normal, the better. So they often put a lot of
pressure on it that says let's get back to normal quicker. This person's journey
may or may not allow them to do that.
And this ask for agreement it's related to this, right? It says I'm asking you to tell
me we're back to normal. So then the ball of energy. So when you're going to
hand off one of these balls of energy, it's very important that you think about a
few things. One of them is the timing and the space, right?
Is it the right day and time for the receiver to receive it. When should you tell this
person this news? Some of us, when you get challenging news, you need to go
for a walk and you need to get back to work. That's the way you process this
thing.
Some of us would rather have the weekend to go think about it. Some of us -- so
you need to think about when you're going to hand off this ball of energy, what is
the best way for this person to process this? And do they have room to react,
and of course don't jump the gun on delivery, because remember as a sender we
oftentimes, all we want to do is get rid of this ball of energy. Right?
Size of the change is remember that the news that you're handing off may be of a
very different size than the news the person is receiving. Right? And it's very,
very important for you to think about how big is this news to this other party. To
where you can actually help them manage their experience.
And then, of course, remember that they were just launched into a journey, and
they may have been launched quite abruptly from their point of view, right? Even
though it's midstream for you. So the notion of we're about to go take on a new
project or a project has been cancelled or, et cetera, you want to think about how
you can help them support this notion of them -- what their exact scenario is and
make sure you recognize it's not yours.
The don't allow yourself to get defensive and don't overreact is really saying that
when you hand off a ball of energy to somebody, if from their vantage point it's
really large, they might actually say things that they don't mean, right? They
might actually have an emotional outburst and say things that are maybe
potentially hateful, maybe potentially not nice, right? And it's very, very important
for you to not not remember these words for the first three minutes, right,
because they probably don't mean them.
And we want to give them the space to react. And then, of course, there's
follow-up that says you need to help them get back right? So you don't deliver,
for example, for most people you don't deliver challenging news on a Friday as a
leader. It's a bad plan. And the reason for that is that you actually want to see
these people tomorrow. I want to know that you're okay.
And I also want to know what are you thinking about right now so that I can help
make sure that what you're thinking matches where I think we are. If we're not
on the same page, let's get on the same page.
So you have to think about how you give them space to absorb it their way but
equally make sure that you're getting follow-up and connect back to them. Does
that make sense?
And it's actually going much quicker than I thought it was going to go. So a few
things. Analogies are really, really powerful, right? Which is these are useful
tools to view situations and communicate. And when you think about the
personalized communication and using the pause button where you actually can
stop and look at a situation to figure out how to react to it as opposed to just
letting reaction happen, it really increases the power of your ability to both
understand and influence situations.
Have fun with analogies. There's a whole bunch of them. As I was looking at
other analogies that are in the world and certainly those that are in the book,
there's a great deal of them, but you do have to make sure that when you're
using them, have fun with it, but don't use them to the point that people don't
understand what you're talking about, which is easy to do.
Make sure you're actually communicating. But use the indirect language for the
power that it has. And then, of course, lastly is there's nine analogies in choose
not to fail. And they span different scenarios. Some of them more personal than
others.
But one of the things that I want to make sure you realize is that in the book and
in the analogies I do not give an answer to a question. So I'm not going to tell
you how you should react. I'm going to tell you here's things to think about so
that you can actually react consciously. And, of course, don't dig perfect holes in
the wrong place.
That's a bad thing. And don't vaporize others with this ball of energy as you
throw it around. Thoughts, questions?
>>: Online question is do analogies work better for visual learners than verbal?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Do they work better for visual learners? Interestingly
enough I've had good luck with both but to the extent you need to stop and talk
about the analogy might be a little bit different.
Interesting, I've had a lot of people when you speak language too quickly and you
don't stop and describe the analogy, people can get lost in the you're not
communicating, you're using a bunch of words that don't make sense.
But if you stop and actually explore the analogy to where people understand it,
the indirect language turns out to be powerful. Other questions?
>>: What led you to write this book?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: What led me to write it? So the set of analogies that are in
the book are analogies that I ended up using a lot as I worked with different
teams and different people.
And literally the thing that was the catalyst for writing it was my sister moved into
a management position. And when she would come home and describe what
was going on in her life, in her professional role, I started using the analogies
there, and her team started asking her what book she was reading.
So we decided maybe there ought to be a book. And it turns out that as I wrote
them and then started sharing the write-up with people, even the write-up of it, I
think appeals to a lot of people. And I can tell you if you read the book, I think
what you will experience is a couple of the analogies will probably speak to you
profoundly.
A couple of them won't and it really comes down to where you are in your
journey, right?
>>: So you gave examples of the ball of energy. And communicating some
things entailed in that as you're passing this along. Seems like there's ways to
say, include people in the planning process, you kind of dissipate the ball of
energy so you're not passing it.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: That's a really good point. I would agree with that. If I
paraphrase that back, I think you're right. Certainly there should be a line item
that says hey if something turned out to be a huge ball of energy to a receiver, for
you to think about how you could have made the ball of energy smaller by doing
better and more thoughtful planning. I absolutely agree with that.
>>: Are there ways for like the review -- are there ways to say like the review
process, deliver a negative review, there's ways to soft pedal it where the other
person can be kind of going, okay, the bad news is coming, can you just give it to
me, please? Do you talk about that at all in the book how to mitigate some of
these things but not appear disingenuine?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: So that point directly is not. What I would say to that is I
would -- you want to be direct, and you want to get the thing on the table, but
what you also want to do is make sure that you're thinking about how is this
person apt to react to this. Let's make sure when I put this on the table I'm
actually thinking more about them than me. Right? Because there's a lot of
people that when we hand off the ball of energy, we are so excited to get rid of
this thing that we lose sight of the fact of what the abruptness of this journey is
going to be on this other person and how to actually say you know what I'm not
going to think about me for a minute, I'm going to think about you, and how do we
put this on the table that makes sense to you, et cetera, so that you, your journey
is minimized, if you will, does that make sense?
>>: Had a follow-up question. Is the book about learning, applying these nine
analogies or giving examples that we need to learn to develop analogies?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: It's more about the nine. It's more about the nine. And -yeah.
>>: Almost a continuation question. I'm guessing if I'm the receiver of the ball of
energy, you're saying I can try to use the analogy to help the person sending the
message, make it clear or easier for that person to give me whatever the
message is, right?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: If you're the receiver of the ball of energy, if you have this
notion in your head now, and I'm going to assume you do now, is if somebody
suddenly gave you news that was shocking to you, for you to realize I just
received a ball of energy and this is the way I typically react here -- so this is
what I'm going to do go do. I'm going to tell them thanks for the news, I'm going
to go for a walk and come back and talk to you because I know I need to process
this thing before we can move to the next steps.
And if you're conscious with yourself what is the way I react here and what is the
way I want to react when this happens, because all of us in our journey hand off
balls of energy and receive them as a matter of course, right? The point of the
analogy is to make us both conscious in the way we're handing them off and in
the way we receive them, right?
The analogy is not going to make it to where everybody that gives you a ball of
energy is going to do it in a nice way. Right? But I can choose the way I react
and I can know what is the best way for me to process this thing? Does that
make sense?
>>: Yes.
>>: I'm struggling to phrase my question. But I look back -- so I totally relate to
your talk, your messages. But I look back when I received some of these balls of
energy, and when the sender actually used the analogies, you're very right, it's
[inaudible] of the situation at the time, but looking back a day or month later I find
the analogy sometimes disingenuous. I find it disappointing, sort of regretted
that.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: You find it disingenuous and disappointing?
>>: Yeah. I felt like we avoided communication by using this analogy.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: That's interesting. I would love to chat about an example of
that. I absolutely wouldn't support replacing solid communication and sincerity
with an analogy, right?
The place that I use them myself is to actually make sure that we are
communicating but always bring it back to the message of this is -- we need to
apply this now, and when you apply it in the real world, this is why we had this
analogous conversation.
But the application's gotta come back. Because if you don't bring it back in, if
you are talking about digging a perfect hole in the wrong place and you don't
come back and actually talk about the hole in concrete terms now, if you don't
talk about this is why I don't think the value is there in concrete terms, then we're
missing something that is vital.
Does that make sense?
>>: I have a senior -- I had a friend of mine who was a senior manager and went
to talk for some mentoring. [inaudible] using analogies. And the analogy -- to my
situation using this analogy to help find -- the observation takes it off the ground.
I really hope you could talk about getting back on the ground. But to kind of pull
me out of that immediately, just the analogy was helpful. And it did personalize it
for both of us.
I thought once the personal stuff was out of the conversation, just looking at the
facts, the analogy, then we could go back to the problem that we were trying to
solve -- facilitate communication.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Let me give you an example of using the ball of energy. If
you're a manager, if you're a manager and you have a lead that's working for
you, and that lead needs to go deliver a tough message to somebody, right,
whatever the tough message is, for you to be able to say, listen, you've got to
think about how you deliver this message, you're about to hand off a ball of
energy and here's the nuances that come along with that.
Because a lot of times if we stay too direct, literally we lose a lot of the nuance.
And if I could coach that lead on what it means to happened off a ball of energy
and what are the subtleties related to it and what is this receiver apt to go do
when you hand off this ball of energy, we can have a conversation between me
and this lead to help them be stronger in what they're doing, right?
And the net effect is they're a stronger lead and the person that's receiving this
message ends up with a more robust situation, because the person that's doing
the communication suddenly could think about it first. Right?
>>: I'm curious on the analogy with digging the perfect hole, how you came to
see digging a hole as the best analogy, because you're using it and it's working,
I'm curious how that's been received by others. Because it's not like we're
building the perfect house or perfect business or you know what I'm saying, we're
just digging a hole.
And any insight into why that works so well for people? See what I'm saying.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Yeah, yeah, it's fair to say that the word "perfect" isn't
necessarily where I put the downbeat. But I can tell you -- that analogy happens
to be the oldest one in the book in terms of -- I told you these were all invented
on the job. And I can tell you specifically who I was talking to for each one of
them. And that analogy, the reason that it came out the way it did was to get
somebody to understand where you're digging is actually more important, and
because everybody's trying to build perfect might too strong of a word.
But because we all care about the quality of what we're doing, you guys don't get
up and come toil every day on we'll just do a chip and move on.
And that's the reason the word "perfect" got stuck in there. Does that make
sense?
>>: Actually asking about a hole versus making a ->> Peter Jerkewitz: A vertical structure of something ->>: Or building a shed or a palace or whatever.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Building a perfect palace on the wrong parcel?
>>: I know for certain people on my team if I told them you're digging a hole they
would take it from a negative connotation.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Fair enough. So my guess is the reason it came out that
way -- it's interesting. I haven't drilled on this one this way. My guess is the
reason it came out that way was because I was talking to somebody who was
thinking that their effort is all that mattered. Look at how hard I worked, and it
came out that way.
It's an interesting -- I haven't had anybody push back on that that way, though.
So it doesn't mean that it's not valid. But in the journey so far. Unfortunately,
maybe it works because we're telling them you're putting it in the wrong place.
It's interesting.
>>: You talk in your book about when the analogies don't work or some cautions?
Are there times where making up an analogy on the fly fails or some good things
to think about not trying to create your own?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: So in the book, no. So the book -- in the book I do not
explore the theory of analogy. However, I would submit that you don't want to do
that if you're not -- if it's not going to crystallize the concept that you're after.
And I can tell you that using too many analogies that you don't stop and get a
consensus over what this means can absolutely, it can breed confusion quickly.
So like I cautioned, we don't want to overdo.
Other thoughts?
>>: Wrapping around, she says she uses analogies when she's having
disagreement. And what she wonders is people will reject the analogy as
opposed to focusing on what she said was how do you get people to consider the
analogy [inaudible]? Wondering if, can you use analogies effectively in this way?
>> Peter Jerkewitz: I can tell you that injecting brand new analogies in groups of
people is going to be harder than using them in individual one-on-ones. Because
getting a group of people that are focused on solving a problem to take this side
step when everybody in the conversation may or may not need to take the side
step actually will cause more confusion sometimes than not. So typically I would
do the analogy with people as a one-on-one. Even if it means after this meeting
pulling a couple of people aside that I think were probably a little more confused
than others is the way I would go about doing that.
>>: It's interesting. I hear different accents here. I'm Swedish I work in the U.S.
It's funny most of the analogies I hear are sports-related in this country. Double
down you play with the team. In Sweden we use animal, nature kind of
analogies. So maybe I do myself a bear service by asking you a question, you
don't ask a bear for service you want to get killed.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Hang on, I gotta write that one down.
>>: I have several more ones. So if you're going to use it, you have to consider
people are different, like you say, but also there's a lot of international people in
Microsoft. And I think using the most [inaudible] more useful ones you have to
be careful how they perceive personal and also linguistic, if that makes sense,
cultural as well.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Yes, yes, the cultural aspects you have to be very, very
cautious of.
>>: Double down I never heard of. That was apparently something very
important. That was a baseball-related thing, or was it basketball.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Sounds like a Vegas thing to me. [laughter] I don't know.
>>: It's an important aspect of it. Not to expect -- don't expect people to really
understand the analogy just because you're in a certain corporate culture or ->> Peter Jerkewitz: I agree with that. I agree with that. And in the analogies.
Keep in mind so one of the things I discovered in writing the book is that in the
one-on-ones I did with people where these were actually kind of brought into
focus, I only talked about the aspect of an analogy that related to what this
individual I was trying to communicate. So one of the things that I kind of
discovered myself in writing the book was that some of the analogies were
actually bigger than even I realized they were.
Because when I was using them with people I was staying very, very focused to
the issue at hand, not let me stop and tell you about this analogy and all of its
idiosyncrasies.
But I agree, and it's a caution that I put in earlier that bears repeating is make
sure you're actually communicating. Because if the analogy is not helping you
connect with the person and helping them see something that you're trying to
help them see, then you need a different tactic with this individual.
>> Amy Draves: Thank you so much. Peter will sign books over here.
>> Peter Jerkewitz: Thank you.
[applause]