Hi Folks, (01)
During conversations with Bob Smith while strategizing over potential
ways to approach existing and potential conflicts among standards and
how to increase the effectiveness of efforts to achieve consensus, it
occurred to me that my experience in various technical committees and
working groups in standards organizations might be of value. In
thinking about the various times when I've been confronted with
seemingly insurmountable conflicts, whether of issues or
personalities, I noticed that beyond the ethic of just outliving the
conflicts, in the sense of being among the last ones standing when
the dust clears, I have developed a couple of techniques that you
might find valuable. (02)
One technique that I hadn't noticed I was using, and that I would not
have thought of as a technique until this recent epiphany, is just
reminding the parties of why we came together in the first place and
restating our goals. Of course, there's a big difference between
finding ways to encourage the use of 3D and working on a standard for
emergency alert messages or naming the roles in a web services
specification. In particular, in emergency management, you can remind
everyone that the ultimate goal is to save lives, and as long as it
is not a cheap shot and you don't use it for every situation, it is
usually assured of at least calming things down. (03)
The main point with this technique is to get people back to thinking
about what they want to accomplish and to look at whatever a conflict
happens to be and decide if it is really as important as it seemed. (04)
Along the same line, when I can see that I am on the losing end of
the battle for consensus, I often find that it is worthwhile to throw
in the towel as gracefully as I can, saying something like, "okay, I
can see the handwriting on the wall here, so even though my opinion
is such and such, I am not gonna dig my heels in on this." Amazingly,
and especially if there are some particularly stubborn parties on
your side, it often happens that even those stubbornest in their
opposition will decide that a particular issue just isn't worth
spending more time on if they see someone else who was on their side
letting go. It can save a lot of time, and I find that if whatever
your own point was, is indeed, a difficulty that keeps cropping up,
it will be easier to fix it later with little or no resistance, and
sometimes an issue just never does cause enough of a problem to be
revisited. It is wise to remember that almost everyone is wrong once
in a while. (05)
Another technique that I have noticed myself using is when a couple
of parties are heatedly arguing, and it gets to the point where you
are about to scream if they rephrase their points one more time, what
sometimes helps is if you step in, especially if you happen to be the
chair or simply chairing that meeting, and say, "Let's see, Foo, if I
understand correctly your point is that ...x, y and z, and Bar, your
thinking is that ...u, v and w, right? So aren't we looking to ...x,
y and z AND u. v and w?" Sometimes merely putting the two positions
together, especially if they are essentially different aspects of a
situation that needs to be considered from both viewpoints anyway,
the parties can at least think about the overall context in such a
way that x, y and z does not exclude u, v and w, and vice versa.
Also, if they really are exclusive, you are likely to get the parties
into a discussion about why one solution excludes the other, and that
often results in the parties then thinking about ways in which other
non-mutually-exclusive options might better address the issue. (06)
I suspect that, in the healthcare field especially, there are a lot
of blind alleys and dead-ends that can be avoided if we can approach
the discussions by looking for diplomatic ways in which apparently
opposed viewpoints and standards can be nudged closer to consensus on
how we can reclassify oppositions into more domain-specific
controlled vocabularies or taxonomies that do not necessarily have to
conform to each other. (07)
Now, I guess I should get back to the darn DRM! You might want to
take a look at it, since they avoid the "O" word except in relation
to OWL (once only), and in the Glossary where they use the ANSI/NISO
Z39-19-200x reference. It would be nice if I wasn't the only one
pointing out the error of their ways, before it gets cast in concrete.
--
Rex Brooks
President, CEO
Starbourne Communications Design
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-849-2309
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