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Pride?!
Hm... It's starting to sound like a law of nature: as soon as someone's pride interferes with work and well-being of other people, try to find out the reason of that pride. You will always find that that kind of pride is totally baseless.
And I personally used to picture is as Nobody, but with capital letter 'N'.
—SASergey A Kryukov
modified 9-Aug-23 12:57pm.
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Nelek wrote: Sadly, not the usual feeling.
Oh!
I remembered that someone said "what I want to say have been said" or "don't say that I have not told you" (and the rest is up to you, actually I think... 1000 words omitted).
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Excellent, Nelek!
As to hiring smart or not-so-smart people, I remembered one more saying I've read (quoting not precisely, but how I remember it):
If you want to manage people by treating them as morons, one day you will end up surrounded by morons.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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I've also read a similar statement recently from a book and just refreshed it this morning. I tried to translate it to English below:
If a leader sees the lazy and incompetent aspects in his people, and he will be always be reminded by that.
If a leader sees the active and competent aspects in his people, and he will lead them to be more productive.
So, focus on what we can do, especially the strong suit.
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The idea of this saying about the leader and competence is great, but the saying is somewhat painful to my ears. Perhaps I'm too sensitive to certain social notions, but I hope it would be at least interesting to know. I also hope you won't take it as an offense.
I would never say about any leader that there are “his people”. People do not “belong” to anyone. Even though the expression can be considered figurative, still — no-no. I would also hardly trust any leader who would ever say “my people”, as I would consider such an expression extremely rude, arrogant, and stupid. I would not accept a number of words, such as “boss”, or the like. It is important to understand that any organizational structure is nothing more than a present-day distribution of working functions — people just work together at compatible goals based on explicit or implicit agreements, but play different roles. The relationships of ownership also don't change anything — for example, the ownership of a business is merely yet another role, it does not give any rights or privileges beyond the contracts with other people.
On top of all those specific roles, there is only one relationship — partnership.
There are even more subtle expressions that should call for some extra modesty. For example, I noticed that teachers like to say “I give them knowledge”. No, guys, you don't. Knowledge is something that is absolutely impossible to “give”. You give people information, but not knowledge, and the knowledge is created by each student. You also organize, suggest ideas, and provide feedback, evaluation, criticism, stimulation, and inspiration. This is critically important, but this is not “giving”. This is the same thing — partnership with the students.
Hope so many words can produce at least a bit of interest.
—SASergey A Kryukov
modified 9-Aug-23 1:15am.
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: Perhaps I'm too sensitive to certain social notions, but I hope it would be at least interesting to know. I also hope you won't take it as an offense.
I don't feel it offense at all. The sentences I posted above was just my poor English translation from a Chinese book which was translated from a German book--instead, I felt an urgent need to practice and learn more on English writing. A better translation for "his people" might be "his employees".
In the view of socialism, actually I totally agree with you that "People do not “belong” to anyone" and the Communist Party had put so much efforts to end the long dark history of slavery in our country. The concept of "ownership" is completely wrong and unacceptable today.
A Chinese scholar of enterprise management even questioned the word "human resources", about 20 years ago. According to his opinion, "resource" was another implicit synonym of "ownership": How can you treat live humans as static resources? Each employee is alive, vivid and has his/her own mind! How can you position and dispose them like resources?
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: Knowledge is something that is absolutely impossible to “give”.
Teaching, training, tutoring and coaching can be an important topic in an enterprise nowadays.
Word choices during such type of procedure sometimes can bring significant differences. You have successfully reminded me to be aware of that. Even when I communicate with them in our native language.
modified 9-Aug-23 8:06am.
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Thank you for your understanding.
I actually expected that you refer to your English knowledge and try to explain “his people”. I was ready to accept my responsibility for the creation of the redundant line in the conversation. We have a phraseme for that: “breaking through an open door”. I suspected that you might have said not exactly what you meant, but I thought it gave me a reason to touch another topic and share some ideas.
However, I always ask to take into account that considerable redundancy of speech is unavoidable when you try to exchange ideas, especially with new people. I maintain that the extra redundancy should be tolerated and hope people can understand that.
By the way, your written English looks very good to me. Your style certainly carries the footprint of the familiar foreigners' speech, focusing not on the attempts to look “authentic”, but on the precision and certainty, which is the best approach, in my opinion.
How can you treat live humans as static resources?
Exactly! When I tried to explain that I cannot accept some expression, I should have mentioned this one, too.
One day, I rather brutally break a phone conversation with one of those numerous recruiters offering developers' consulting: “Please stop it and don't ever call be again! I cannot work with you — people are not resource!” At that moment, I worked as a director of a development department and actually struggled with the deficit of damn resources.
Unfortunately, “resource” in this context is not just a bad word. It does reflect some real-life attitude in some businesses and some individuals. And no, even in terms of the most cynical criteria, this attitude does not make any winning strategy, not even close.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Quote: For example, I noticed that teachers like to say “I give them knowledge”. No, guys, you don't. Knowledge is something that is absolutely impossible to “give”. You give people information, but not knowledge, and the knowledge is created by each student. You also organize, suggest ideas, and provide feedback, evaluation, criticism, stimulation, and inspiration. This is critically important, but this is not “giving”. Partially agree.
For that another quote:
Quote: Knowledge is the only thing in the world, that grows when you share it
Einstein "created" knowledge, Aristoteles "created" knowledge, Newton "created" knowledge... Students assimilate / incorporate / earn... knowledge, but do not create it.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek,
I hope you understand what I mean by the title of this post. Sorry if my explanation of my opinion was not comprehensive or clear enough.
I limited my reasoning only to the comprehension of already discovered and generally realized knowledge in the head of each individual student. I totally left out of focus the creation of new knowledge and embracing of this knowledge in the human culture.
I mostly focused my reasoning on the fact that many teachers apparently picture a student's brain as a container where they put some knowledge. They often repeat “I give this material in an easier way”, or “I give more knowledge than the textbook suggests”, and so on. This vision is illusionary and probably caused by some formalized methods, like lecturing part of the lesson when only the teacher speaks. It can also be reinforced by one of the main problems in teaching — the students are usually not only not proactive enough, but most of them are simply afraid of asking questions. And still, this “giving” concept is an illusion.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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I think I didn't missunderstood you. I agree with the part that one can't "give" knowledge. That's why I said that quote. I find "to share knowledge" way more accurated.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I agree. I'm sure you understand me correctly. I only wanted to clarify that I also agree with the part of your message where you said you were not quite agree.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Recently, I also focused my work priority to problem solving in my company.
The most important lesson I'd learned during this period was that if we describe our problem incorrectly, we are unlikely to get a correct answer. It is also true vise versa.
The message sending is well discussed in this article, I suggest that you can also write the other half of communication--how can we make sure that we have gotten the right message from others, when we are the receivers?
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Hi, tnx for the feedback and suggestion. I was also thinking about writing an article about better understanding the message as receiver. How to use visualization, focus improving techniques (also supplements) and so on.
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I would tell you more: very often, the problem is not an incorrect description of the problem, but posing a wrong problem!
Unfortunately, ramming a wrong problem is commonplace. Just look at some questions posed at CodeProject. Some look like a joke: “I tried to build this piece of code, and the error message told me: you cannot do ABC. Please help me: how to do ABC?” I hope you recognize this way of thinking.
One day, I found an interesting site where software architects share their advice. (Sorry, I cannot find it.) One contribution attracted attention immediately, under the title “Don't be a problem solver”. If you read the content, you can see the reason. Indeed, we have many people who can solve the problems, but not enough people who can reasonably ask: “Why solve this particular problem? Is it really solvable? If we solve it, how can it help us to meet the ultimate goals of our project, our team, and our customers? Maybe we need to solve a different problem?” Ideally, questioning such things should be the obligation of every member of the team. If you don't know exactly why you are expected to work on some problem, you should not work on it, at least until you get a good understanding. Every person posing problems and, say, writing technical specifications to be met can make mistakes. Non-assertive attitude to the problems given for development creates multiple problems. If a developer does not speak out in case of concerns about the rationale of the problem, the wrongly posed problems get into development and make things much harder to fix.
This is one of the worst problems of communication.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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The "wrong problem" problem is can be a severe problem usually a big problem. In business problem solving, wrong input seldom yields right output.
Unfortunately, customers, who usually are the problem owner, might get there requirements stated in an "apparently correct but actually not the best" way. The most usual pitfall is that many problem owners present their problems with solutions, and the requirement analysists and system developers just listen to them.
Recently we discussed a requirement and corresponding solution in an IoT project that came from a general manager. The problem was stated briefly as "Can AI algorithms and instruments be introduced to do something?".
The requirement could be stated on the paper with a clearly described procedure. Each step in that procedure had specifically defined input, actions, actors, time, resources, quality or quantity standards of expected output. In some critical part, illustrations and sample data tables were even presented. AI real-time monitorial instruments and algorithms were also introduced to ensure that the system would be technically advanced. Environmental influences were also perfectly considered and handled. Marketing analysis proved that the requirement was universe. Financial analysis proved positive benefits. The senders and receivers during the communication got mutual understandings perfectly. Nothing was misunderstood. Everything sounded complete, solid and viable. What was wrong?
The wrong part of the above stuff was that it had overlooked the alternative. A much cheaper and simpler solution without AI things does exist. In the discussion, the solution was treated part of the problem (possibility of ...) without any question. Consequently, the possibility analysis was perfectly finished. However, the solution will not bring any extra competitive advantage nor revenue to the solution provider, but heavy burden of system implementation and marketing involvement, which is doomed to fail from the beginning.
modified 8-Aug-23 23:30pm.
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Indeed, you are describing quite real and sometimes painful problems.
However, I didn't even yet assume “apparently correct but actually not the best” stuff. Such a concern can be quite valid and, by the way, chasing for the “absolutely best” could become not only impractical but also could make another kind of totally wrongly posed problem. It can be even logically incorrect.
So far, I considered a different kind of fallacy, when people just go in the wrong direction, and not even due to some mistakes in reasoning (it can always happen, and, importantly, can be fixed), but due to no reasoning at all, due to blindfolded assumptions of the correctness of something, that cannot be just assumed, but is specified as a “task”. This is what I tried to explain in my anecdotal example of the beginner asking about ABC.
Unfortunately, such things happen here and there. “Dilbertization”, if you will. When the wrongly posed problem is obvious and not detected just because no one raises the issue or even thinks about the possibility of the issue. One may think this is an exaggeration, but it happens in real life.bl
The “wrong problem” problem is usually a big problem.
Why? In my observation, it can be absolutely anything. Maybe bigger problems are just more usually exposed, that's it.
And then, there are all the intermediate situations. Optimal, far from optimal, near-optimal, good, bad, whatever...
Thank you.
—SA
Sergey A Kryukov
modified 8-Aug-23 23:54pm.
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Thank you for your reply.
You are right! Problem stated as a "task" is a common mistake as well.
Since I am not an English native speaker, my word choosing might be inappropriate or inaccurate.
The "big problem" was meant to be "severe problem" or "terrible problem".
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The meaning of the expression “big problem” is general enough. It does not indicate the scale or the degree of difficulty specifically — it can be everything. Also, I would note that even though you named some generally sensible characteristics (“severe”, “terrible” vs “big”), you would not be able to correctly distinguish them, because the first two characteristics rather indicate possible emotional responses to the problem.
Anyway, I think I understood you correctly and still think that the nature of wrong-posing problems is universal enough, it can happen at any level of sophistication, difficulty, danger, or scale. The sources of such a mistake are related to social behavior and propensity for mental patterns.
On second thought, а bigger-scale problems are still can be more vulnerable to critically bad mistakes — there is at least one special reason for that. To explain that, I would briefly tell you one funny story: once I met one biologist, who told me about a big large-scale experiment, attempting to reveal or disprove some extrasensory abilities of a good number of famous people. The experimental team was quite serious. He thoroughly described to me the experimental settings, schemas, and all the technical precautions used to avoid all kinds of false negatives or false positives. Following just his descriptions, I immediately figured out two failures that not only render the experiment incorrect but making no sense. You may not trust this statement, but I could describe the fallacies in detail. Even though I cannot take responsibility for the accuracy of this biologist's description, I can clearly prove that the described experimental schema has those fallacies — they are simply funny.
So, what does it mean? I made a conclusion: the problem was not so much related to the qualification of the experimental team member (however, it also could be the issue), but to a more obvious and even conceptual factor: the lack of critical view of the goals of the experiment. In turn, I attributed the lack of this critical view to the emotional factor: imagine, people gathered together to conduct not just the experiment, but the “experiment of a century”. No wonder, people were so agitated that their critical thinking failed.
—SASergey A Kryukov
modified 8-Aug-23 23:50pm.
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: I think I understood you correctly and still think that the nature of wrong-posing problems is universal enough, it can happen at any level of sophistication, difficulty, danger, or scale. The sources of such a mistake are related to social behavior and propensity for mental patterns.
Great! This summary sounds quite complete to me.
One mental pattern in our country is the parent-child pattern. We were all educated to listen to our parents, elder relatives, our teachers, etc. in our childhood.
In the business world, this type of pattern is unfortunately shifted to the sales activity. Unprofessional sales representative tend to apply that pattern and listen to the customers as if the customers were their parents, without questioning the underlying motivation of any requirement. This pattern can be quite unconstructive during requirement gathering phase until they are re-educated to master the professional expertise and posing the right question to cast light to those deep buried motivations. Again, this can be challenging as well. Inappropriate questions can be considered unprofessional and result in loss of business orders.
modified 15-Aug-23 22:52pm.
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Thank you!
I knew a lot about this parent-child relationship pattern in the society culture, but I absolutely cannot pretend I understand it in the Chinese ways. I still have vague ideas.
You see, one would be tempted to reduce the notions you've mentioned to patriarchal cultures. Apparently, I'm pretty well familiar with such cultures, as a person having many colleagues and friends from very many places around the globe, and having pretty deep relationships with many. But with Chinese ways... I feel that is by far not as simple.
Probably, it would be too much off-topic to discuss the cultural clashes with Chinese people in the West, and my attempts to understand something. And even the groups of most Westernized Chinese people remain nearly the most isolated ones. However, personally, I feel the more I socialize, the more I get into the illusion that with time I would be able to find a common language even with Martians.
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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The cultural differences discussion may end here.
However, it is quite interesting when we try to compare the Western culture with the Eastern culture.
For instance, if you hate someone very much and you want to curse that person, you might probably say "F*** you"--that is the Western way.
Whereas, in the Chinese way, you should say "F*** your mom", or "F*** your granny (the mother of one's father)", or even "F*** your ancestors up to 18 generations"! We just don't use four-letter word to the person directly. And most Chinese curse have only three characters, the "18-generations" version is a very "luxurious" version.
modified 10-Aug-23 8:17am.
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Well, very interesting.
Right, we're going far away from the topic. Please see the last paragraph below.
To complement your information, I would add that in Russian culture we have several words like that with a totally different attitude: they are considered strictly taboo words. Moreover, officially, a person can be legally punished for the use of these words in certain settings — in the Law code, there are special articles defining the conditions and the measures of punishments. This is called the Russian “mat”.
At the same time, all these words are very popular and are used very widely. Its usage was also greatly expanded during the last decades. It became a lot more acceptable but is still much less acceptable than in English-speaking cultures. It is less acceptable in patriarchal cultures. We know a few Chinese people knowing Russian extremely well (an extremely rare phenomenon!) and use these words a lot in their Youtube videos. They look like people totally missing an understanding of delicate Russian senses: being confused by the popularity of these words among their Russian friends, they freely use them in situations where those Russian friends would never do it. They get false reinforcement of their behavior only because Russians typically don't tend to criticize foreigners for such behavior for certain reasons. Of course, there are many Russians who will not agree with me, because they like this behavior, find it brave or exciting, something like that. But still, this is not exactly how they behave themselves. There are many subtle criteria and also certain groups of people with very different attitudes.
Another interesting aspect is that Russian is an enormously inflectional language. It is almost impossible to grasp it on the base of Chinese or English. One favorite exercise is to take just one taboo word and create a long and complicates statement composed only with the words with the root of this word, plus some prepositions, nothing else. This way of expression can create hundreds of different nouns, verbs and other forms with many very different meanings, helping to express almost anything. Using just the flexes of the same single word. It also greatly expands the popularity of such taboo words: if a person cannot find a proper term, they can substitute a word based on a taboo word, using flexes to express the required meaning. Of course, it can be something other than a taboo word, but a taboo word would be much more understandable, because it is also a marker of substitution.
Look, at my Code Project profile page you will find the link to my Website, after the words “Contact me”. On this top index page of my Website, you will also find a “Contact me” link. What if you write to me and give me a personal contact address, better be an e-mail address and/or maybe some instant messaging channel? Please, no social networks, I'm not going to join any of them. You see, while I prefer supporting public discussions, there are things that are too much off-topic. I would not suggest that, but I'm also hoping that you can answer some of my questions, in particular, about the Chinese and China. I hope you could be the one who could answer the questions, if you will, of course — because of your very independent thinking, open mind and positive attitude. On my side, I can assure you that my goals are always totally friendly, positive, objective, and open-minded. How about that?
Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Sure. I am always open to new friends. E-mail is the recommended way. No social network.
I'll leave a message to your on your site.
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Thank you.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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I left a message on your site with my e-mail address yesterday.
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