I’m not convinced enough that being specific IS a good thing to do, frankly. Maybe there’s something else buried within the concept that we’re called “specific” that really is valuable… but when I think about “being specific” and applying this to all the various cases, it very quickly leads me to doing things that are completely useless. It collapses, basically, into casuistry. At maximum specificity, I have a list of observed cases and no way of linking them together to make sense out of them.
“What is red?” becomes “Well, this thing I’m pointing at is red. Care to guess what I mean by that?”
“How should an economy be run?” becomes “Well, Singapore’s GDP growth in 2009 was such-and-such, while Switzerland’s was such-and-such.”
It seems to me that in many circumstances, we really aren’t asking specific questions—we want to know the really general answer. If you’re trying to derive a theory of gravitation, a long table of things that were observed to fall from various heights at various speeds may or may not help you in the process—but it certainly is NOT a theory of gravitation.
As Darwin put it: “About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”
I think the mistake that the entrepreneurs were making was not a lack of specificity; it was a failure to convey information at all. “It will connect people” is the sort of trivial normal statement that you make when you’re a political candidate who has no particular ideas. (It fails the reversal test: “My product will not in any way connect people ever.”) And I guess there is a certain sort of “specificity” at work here: you have to be specific enough that your assertion has content.
So for instance this is a theory of gravitation (Newton’s): “All objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.”
This is not: “When I dropped a rock yesterday, it hit the ground in 0.6 seconds from a height of 1.7 meters.”
But nor is this: “All things fall toward each other.”
One of these is not specific enough; but the other is TOO specific. Hence, “Be Specific” isn’t really the right advice here.
Perhaps the better advice would be “be AWARE of how specific you are being, and in which direction you should move to facilitate communication”—sometimes you’re giving a bunch of overly-specific examples without tying them together, and sometimes you’re being overly general without giving someone some concrete examples to test their understanding.
My roommate and I often sit on the couch and discuss ideas for our shared D&D campaign. We exercise this skill a lot—two very common questions are: “can you give me some specific examples?” [be more specific] and “I don’t get what ties these examples together” [what’s the big picture / be more general]
Possibly an exercise that involves going through a quick dialog, and the audience calling out “be more specific” / “what’s the big picture?” as appropriate at each step (or holding up colored flags, etc.). Another very simple exercise here, but it helps the audience calibrate to the idea, engages them a bit.
I don’t think breaking people in to pair would be beneficial for this, unless you want to focus on “seeing where you are on the ladder, and WHICH direction you need to move.” You seem to want to focus just on “moving down, being more specific”, which seems fine to me. This just helps them to see the ladder itself, and realize that it moves BOTH ways.
You can then transition by saying “Okay, now we’re going to focus specifically on techniques for moving DOWN the ladder, for being more SPECIFIC...”
I have begun noticing that i do this(moving up and down the ladder of abstraction) in all my communications. I realize i am doing it by reflex/habit. Trying to observe conditions that trigger a move up or down. So far there seems to be a correlation between the level of uncertainty i feel about an answer and the level of abstraction at which i verbalize my answer. Infact, i have found that the more uncertain i am about i tend to take the descriptive,detailed examples route.
I agree—as far as I can tell, a lot of people have no idea how to summarize. On the other hand, there really are people who have trouble being specific.
I’m not convinced enough that being specific IS a good thing to do, frankly. Maybe there’s something else buried within the concept that we’re called “specific” that really is valuable… but when I think about “being specific” and applying this to all the various cases, it very quickly leads me to doing things that are completely useless. It collapses, basically, into casuistry. At maximum specificity, I have a list of observed cases and no way of linking them together to make sense out of them.
“What is red?” becomes “Well, this thing I’m pointing at is red. Care to guess what I mean by that?” “How should an economy be run?” becomes “Well, Singapore’s GDP growth in 2009 was such-and-such, while Switzerland’s was such-and-such.”
It seems to me that in many circumstances, we really aren’t asking specific questions—we want to know the really general answer. If you’re trying to derive a theory of gravitation, a long table of things that were observed to fall from various heights at various speeds may or may not help you in the process—but it certainly is NOT a theory of gravitation.
As Darwin put it: “About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”
I think the mistake that the entrepreneurs were making was not a lack of specificity; it was a failure to convey information at all. “It will connect people” is the sort of trivial normal statement that you make when you’re a political candidate who has no particular ideas. (It fails the reversal test: “My product will not in any way connect people ever.”) And I guess there is a certain sort of “specificity” at work here: you have to be specific enough that your assertion has content.
So for instance this is a theory of gravitation (Newton’s): “All objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.” This is not: “When I dropped a rock yesterday, it hit the ground in 0.6 seconds from a height of 1.7 meters.” But nor is this: “All things fall toward each other.”
One of these is not specific enough; but the other is TOO specific. Hence, “Be Specific” isn’t really the right advice here.
Perhaps the better advice would be “be AWARE of how specific you are being, and in which direction you should move to facilitate communication”—sometimes you’re giving a bunch of overly-specific examples without tying them together, and sometimes you’re being overly general without giving someone some concrete examples to test their understanding.
My roommate and I often sit on the couch and discuss ideas for our shared D&D campaign. We exercise this skill a lot—two very common questions are: “can you give me some specific examples?” [be more specific] and “I don’t get what ties these examples together” [what’s the big picture / be more general]
Possibly an exercise that involves going through a quick dialog, and the audience calling out “be more specific” / “what’s the big picture?” as appropriate at each step (or holding up colored flags, etc.). Another very simple exercise here, but it helps the audience calibrate to the idea, engages them a bit.
I don’t think breaking people in to pair would be beneficial for this, unless you want to focus on “seeing where you are on the ladder, and WHICH direction you need to move.” You seem to want to focus just on “moving down, being more specific”, which seems fine to me. This just helps them to see the ladder itself, and realize that it moves BOTH ways.
You can then transition by saying “Okay, now we’re going to focus specifically on techniques for moving DOWN the ladder, for being more SPECIFIC...”
I have begun noticing that i do this(moving up and down the ladder of abstraction) in all my communications. I realize i am doing it by reflex/habit. Trying to observe conditions that trigger a move up or down. So far there seems to be a correlation between the level of uncertainty i feel about an answer and the level of abstraction at which i verbalize my answer. Infact, i have found that the more uncertain i am about i tend to take the descriptive,detailed examples route.
I agree—as far as I can tell, a lot of people have no idea how to summarize. On the other hand, there really are people who have trouble being specific.