The Art of Distinguishing

Co-written with Hernan Vilaro.

Back in July when we conducted one of the The 5 Minute Manager demonstrations in Mauritius, Hernan recorded it and then used it as an example that illustrates the art of defining or distinguishing.  When a participant connected her “communication strategy with making money,” I asked her, “How does the communication strategy create money?”

            “Oh, so getting more clients, right?” she replied.

To that I then classified that statement.  I said, “So that’s the result.  I’m eliminating that because that’s irrelevant to what we’re talking about—namely for you to be clear about what’s the problem that’s stopping you and procrastinating from the goal.”

            “The goal is an understanding, engaging communication strategy.”

I heard that as her criteria, that she wanted a communication strategy that would fit the criteria of eliciting understanding and engagement from people.  I then ask, “Any other criteria?”

“I want it to be perfect.”

Wow!  Talk about a high level criteria!  I didn’t expect that, yet when I heard it, I knew that it was this kind of thinking that was creating her problem.  So I commented, “Now, we’re hearing the problem.”

Hernan’s comment to me about that was that in this short exchange, he understood more deeply what a manager would be doing in defining the problem.  “That moment helped me understand why I kept asking you throughout the training, ‘What distinction are you making between a goal and a result?’ and similar questions about conditions, problems, symptoms, and generators.  I was not merely asking for definitions. I was trying to understand the system of distinctions from which you listen and intervene.”

A System of Distinctions

While I had not thought of what I was doing as operating from a system of distinctions, when Hernan called that to my attention and explained what he meant, I realized that he had modeled out of the exchange a way of defining.  I was defining the problem by distinguishing what the problem is not.

Here’s what Hernan wrote as he called out what I was doing.  “Because those distinctions are already available in your mind, you can recognize:

·                clients and money as results;

·                the communication strategy as the goal;

·                procrastination as a response or symptom;

·                perfection as the criterion governing her relationship to action.  Only after those distinctions, did the problem become recognizable.”

Here Hernan identifies as ‘distinctions’ what you will find under Question #1: “What is the problem?”  We use that to identify what the problem is not.  That creates the distinctions: not symptom, not context, not condition, etc.  Why?  Because to know what something is, you have to know what it is not.  Continue that with Question #2: “What do you want?”  Identifying the goal creates the next critical distinction.  Question #3: What symptoms do you experience?  This not only highlights the distinction, it begins the inward journey inasmuch as symptoms are felt in the body and are closer to the real problem.

Question #4: implies that the conversation you want is the ‘solution’ to the problem thinking that’s giving you the problem.  That brings us to Question #5: “What is the problem-thinking?”  In my thinking, all 5 questions is defining, defining, defining and therefore getting closer and closer to the real problem.