SAMs First Law of IT Conversation
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Decided that this was needed after a few months of mulling it....
The underlying driver in discourse in IT is for the purpose of improving ourselves, our profession, our business or our decision making and we must start with the assumption that doing this well is the goal.
This is important because it comes up often that someone may begin a conversation but it is then introduced that the "point" is moot because "no one will listen" or "most people do this poorly" or "why do we care." These are valid concerns, of course, because businesses often do not listen, people do generally do things badly and it is often frustrating to care when it seems that few others do. However this is naturally self defeating - if those factors were true what is the purpose in any conversation, any learning, any growth, any attempt at doing well? If we don't care, or we don't believe that anyone will listen or we only want to do "enough to not get caught" rather than attempting to do something well we would not be asking the question, beginning the conversation, attempting the discourse.
Yes, of course, the majority of decisions are bad, the majority of businesses don't listen, the average IT pros does not do impressive work. Given. But no matter what ratio those come in, we don't care. The goal of discourse within IT is to overcome those things, for whatever reason. There are businesses that listen, there are IT pros that do well, there are people who care and, by the nature of the question being asked and someone responding the discourse is for those people, for those businesses.
The conversation only makes sense when we assume that doing well, making good decisions, having meaningful discourse is valuable. Sure, sometimes it is not, but that is irrelevant. The value of good decisions is intrinsic. Those seeking to make good decisions care, for them it matters, those for whom it does not matter do not seek discourse around decisions.
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I like your law but you need to condense it, chop some of the unnecessary bits out and get it short and catchy.
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You realize only the italics are the law, right? The rest is just an explanation of it.
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@scottalanmiller lol yes, yes I got that. I think you can cut it down by half and make it easier to understand. I'll have a crack at it once I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed next week.
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@scottalanmiller said:
The underlying driver in discourse in IT is for the purpose of improving ourselves, our profession, our business or our decision making and we must start with the assumption that doing this well is the goal.
I think that says it all. It is a little wordy, but not so much that it muddles anything... At least not to me.
