Ignorance Unmasked: Do You Know the Secret Language of Technology and Business?

The importance of effective communication has been studied and championed from every field in business, to relationships, to politics and everything in between.  And as Daniel Pink points out in his excellent book, “To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others”, we are frequently communicating in order to teach, coach, instruct, and persuade or convince others.

As technology becomes a native part of most business processes and products, the types of communication Pink describes, as they occur between Information Technology teams and other lines of business, have come under increased scrutiny.  For example, Capgemini Consulting recently posted an article titled, “The Digital Talent Gap.”  (Talent defined as employees who “combine excellent digital specialist skills with deep functional business knowledge.”)  The reasons cited for this gap included, the inability to speak each other’s language.  Specifically stating that “technical talent needs a strong understanding of the business”; and, “business professionals must understand the business of IT”.  They even gave these rare, bi-lingual employees, their own nomenclature, “Digerati”.

So this got me thinking, what exactly is the “language of business” or the “language of technology”?  Why can’t we just train others in the skills of this scarce Digerati-species?  Or, do we need to hire a translator for every technology and line of business meeting?

Parlez-vous CCIE?

In an interview by Martha Heller of Robert Webb, former CIO of Hilton Worldwide and CEO of the Technology Business Management Council, Mr. Webb advocates the need for a lingua franca.  He suggests this language should be based in finance in order to create a “common measurement for costs, services and performance.”  So, do we get a CFO of IT, train the CCIE in accounting, P&L, quarterly reports and we’re off?!  Should all CISSP’s get an MBA?

There is also commentary from Michael Wolff, who stated in an editorial for USA Today, “Non-tech people, no matter their good intentions, can’t do tech, at least never as well as tech people do it.”  He went on to explain that “Technological astuteness or intuition or cool is less a skill set than a culture or language or temperament.”  Is he correct?  To his point, the language of technology uses very few real words: FTP, DNS, IP, BSOD, RTFM…

I strongly agree with Mr. Webb – IT has traditionally done a poor job of measuring and explaining the financial impact of technology.  However, this has been espoused for several years with only a few making the change[1].  And Mr. Wolff has a point, non-tech people “can’t do tech” as well.  A 2011 article by Alex Madrigal in The Atlantic titled, “Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don’t know how to Use Control+F” would certainly validate Wolff’s claim.  However, if asked, I’m sure both technologists and other lines of business would agree they had enough knowledge of the other team to get by.

And herein lays the first part of our problem: behavioral scientists call it the Illusion of Explanatory Depth[2].  This mental error explains how we subconsciously overestimate our knowledge.  As Yale psychologists Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil described,

“People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do.”

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth occurs in areas that involve complex, interactions such as mechanical devices or biological processes.  For example, an employee uses email and Microsoft Office so they begin to infer how these technologies work.  They may further assume a general understanding of the company’s technical desktop operations.  But, of course they are missing magnitudes of detail: application interoperability, storage issues, bandwidth and security concerns, to name a few.

On the other side of the coin, a Fortune 500’s operation system is as elaborate as some biological processes. They are both extremely complex, interdependent systems.  And by the same error, an IT employee who understands how an order flows through their ERP system should not assume they understand the intricacies around revenue recognition and supply chain management.  Unfortunately, situations similar to these frequently occur in the office.  Due to errors like the Illusion of Explanatory Depth, even limited exposure to another team’s product or processes can cause us to think we know more about how they operate than we really do[3].

Because these errors are subconscious, we are not prone to search for answers and additional information[3].  We are not intentionally arrogant know-it-alls.  The brain operates with a multitude of these types of heuristics to make daily information overload easier to process.  The result:

We are ignorant of our ignorance.

Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, describes this blindness as “WYSIATI”[4] (He must be hanging out with those cool tech people).  Translation: What You See Is All There Is.  Chip and Dan Heath summarize it as the Spotlight Effect[5].  Essentially, our brains choose to focus only on the information that is right in front of us – that which is easiest to see.  This subconscious, narrow framing causes us to miss a lot of pertinent information.  And because it “feels” like we took a thorough analytical approach in our quest for understanding, we are not inclined to look for additional details.

For example, can you imagine this monologue?

“We met with the technology team to make them fully aware of our need for this social media solution.  They won’t budge.  They claim our solution won’t fit with our existing infrastructure.  But we have also met with the manufacture’s engineers.  Not sales people, engineers!  They have shown extensively how perfect the application really is!  It fits with everything our marketing department needs!  Our IT teams are just dumb!”

Let’s try to decrypt the situation: The marketing team followed their usual due process.  They have a decent understanding of the application they want to purchase; and from their perspective, it is ideal.   Inadvertently, they may extrapolate from their limited technical knowledge, an understanding of “infrastructure integration”.  They still cannot fully “see” the technologist’s concerns: their spotlight isn’t broad enough.  The narrow light also illuminates what they want to see – that the new application is a perfect fit (For additional edification, see Confirmation Bias).  Furthermore, IT may not have enough knowledge about marketing’s needs to recommend alternative solutions.  One again, no one knows what they don’t know.  (They are however, quick to judge the other side.)

Be careful if you are saying to yourself, “Laura, you are so right (ego-boost achieved), I see our business teams behaving this way all the time!  I’m glad I don’t really do that.” Another prominent mental error is creeping into the equation: the Bias Blind Spot.  We assume others have these mental biases, but, that we do not.  Additionally, intelligence is not a buffer against these errors.  A new study indicates that smarter people are even more vulnerable to these thinking errors⁶.  Kahneman summarizes,

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”[4]

So What’s the Answer?! 

I agree with Michael Wolf, non-tech people will never “do tech” as well as technologists.  But so what!  Connecting knowledge from different experts is part of creating a successful business.

Additionally, I do not believe the “Digerati” possess a rare talent gene that stimulates dual proficiency in customer market segmentation and network intrusion prevention.  However, they were fortunate enough to have their ignorance unmasked.  By will, force or luck, they were exposed to situations which developed a more thorough comprehension of both business units’ perspectives.

Though some skills on both sides of the table need improvement, I believe we can begin to close these knowledge gaps.  We can’t deactivate our biases; but, we can start to counteract them by acknowledging a need to widen our spotlight.

We must acknowledge our ignorance and proactively learn more about our business counterpart’s operations.  Not just their processes, we must seek to understand the goals, needs and key performance indicators by which they are measured.

Ok Great!  So we are ready to call IT and schedule a big Lunch and Learn. (Please, no pizza or dry sandwiches).  Wouldn’t you know – herein lays another pesky mental error.  Not only do we not know what we don’t know, we are also inept at sharing with others what we Do Know.  (It’s a wonder we get out of bed in the morning.)

This mental error is called the Curse of Knowledge: our subconscious falsely assumes that our audience has the same knowledge base as we do.  Better informed people find it extremely difficult to put themselves in the perspective of lesser-informed people.  We can’t walk a mile in their shoes.  I originally discussed this here: I used the example of technologist’s inability to calculate the amount of training and transition necessary with a new software roll-out due to their own proficiency with such tools.  So if you are saying, “Yes, we have already tried to explain to the marketing team our technical security restrictions, but they just don’t get it!” think again.  Your explanation was likely not as clear as you intended and the audience inadvertently assumed they understood.

The Capgemini Consulting article suggested the following solutions:

1. Employee Exchange Programs with Technology Companies
2. Digitizing the Recruitment Processes
3. Targeted Company Acquisitions
4. Incubating Startups
5. Partnerships with Online Skill Platforms

Wow.  Though possibly effective, this certainly read to me as very expensive and complex solutions.  However, it seems we sometimes prefer these more lofty solutions compared to something like: “communicate better”.  And now we know why!  Due to the Blind Spot Bias, we do not believe we have a problem in such “simple” areas.  The Heath brother’s provide a perfect analogy:

“It’s like learning that you can cure the avian flu by clapping your hands.  But here’s the catch: You won’t clap your hands if you don’t realize you have the avian flu.”[5]

So clap your hands!  Acknowledge ignorance, seek knowledge and communicate!  That clap rings a bell: learning each other’s language… And what is this eccentric language?

Communication without judgment or presumption of a group’s needs, priorities and obstacles.  It is less about speaking and more about impartial Listening.

Learning to overcome our ignorance and listen is not easy work; and, there is not a one-time fix.  Even Nobel Prize winning Daniel Kahneman stated, “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy, as it was before I made a study of these issues.”[4]

One solution to this communication gap is to seek a nonpartisan third party who is trained in asking questions and objective listening.  Another great Heath brother summary: “We can’t shine a spotlight on areas when we don’t know they exist.”[5] These objective teams can facilitate business units to more thoroughly and clearly define their position, values and goals.  They can act as a personal audio-visual producer to expand our spotlight.  Additionally, they can assist in delivering a team’s objectives to an audience whom they guided to listen with more openness and objectivity.  Paying for a third party may not make sense for every conversation; but, certainly for more important or controversial projects.

Speaking of good third parties, consider reaching out to your company’s Value Added Technology Reseller of choice.  Don’t let the “technology” label scare you off.  These teams are versed in the tedious nomenclature under which IT teams operate.  Additionally, many also have significant business exposure to a variety of industry verticals.  I would also recommend you seek one with the training to address the communication challenges discussed above.  (Advertisement Alert: training from programs like the ones offered by Techlaborate).

As always, I look forward to hearing your opinion on these issues as well as communication solutions that may have worked for your teams.  Also, follow us on Twitter!

 

Original Photograph by Shutterstock.  Modified by Techlaborate.