

Humans v2.0: Thinking Abstractly and in Frameworks - danielodio
http://www.danielodio.com/2009/11/24/humans-v2-0-thinking-abstractly-and-in-frameworks/

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danielodio
Here's an exercise via excerpt from the blog post I'd love to know if anyone
has ever tried & get comments on:

"Here’s the problem: People just don’t know how to talk about what they’re
going to talk about! Instead, they just start talking about it! Not sure what
I mean? Well, let me frame it for you. Whenever you participate in a
conversation, there should really be two things you’re trying to do: #1)
Understand what the framework of the conversation is, and #2) Communicate and
receive specific points. Everyone always jumps to point #2. Rarely do people
even realize #1 exists. Here’s a concrete example: Next time you’re on a
conference call, run a little test. Start the call by saying, “I’d like to go
over our agenda. Here are all the things I’d like to cover on this call.” And
list your items. When you’re done, ask, “are there any other topics that
anyone wants to add to the agenda?” Now, what you asked for were more agenda
items. This goes to point #1 – the goal is to frame out what the conference
call is going to be about. But often – very often – what you’ll get, instead,
is that people will dive into specific items. It’s the most frustrating
exercise, to realize the futility of it, and the difficulty that the human
brain has in processing #1. People will say things like, “Well, I wanted to
talk about XYZ. And the thing about XYZ is that….” and there they go – off
talking about specific items when you were trying to frame out the agenda of
the call. Try that test; I’d love to get your comments."

