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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Fervor isn't votes
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Ted Leung discusses fervor in politics. It's funny, but I keep seeing marketing in many of these political posts. Like this:
You can do it -- if you can change someone's mind. But (ideally) you can't force them to change their mind, you actually have to persuade them. Persuasion is tough. There are different components to persuasion. There's the idea you are trying to push. That better look good in the other person's mind. Then there's the persuader. You can have a good idea, but if people don't trust you, you may not be able to persuade them. There's also relevance. You may have a perfectly good idea, and be trustworthy, but your idea may be irrelevant to the hearer. They just won't care. Many people believe that they know how to persuade, when in reality they only know how to give orders.
That's something that all Smalltalkers - and Lispers - should read and ponder. A lot. One of the problems we have in making our case for Smalltalk (and I've seen the same problem, possibly worse from Lisp people) is arrogance. We are so sure that we have a better answer than (fill in today's language of choice) that we tick people off. Instead of presenting what we have, and letting them start asking "how did you do that?", we insist on running down the other technology. The problem with that strategy is that it puts many developers right on the defensive. They chose to use that technology; by denigrating it so loudly, we implicitly impugn their intelligence. That's no way to convince; in fact, it's a sure way to get people walking out of the room.
That's one of the reasons I have started using BottomFeeder and this blog as examples - it's easier to point to fast turn around and ease of development by example than it is to do so by tearing down (Java, .NET, etc). Here's another interesting thing Ted quotes:
Imagine if a mailing list had to issue a formal opinion on the issues discussed, and lurkers got a vote. The high-flow posters would complain that the lurkers votes would not reflect the actual discussion that took place, merely the aggregate opinions of the group, and yet that is how the primaries work. Talking loudest or most or even best means nothing
One of the hardest things to remember is that most of the people you want to influence won't necessarily be asking questions. They'll be sitting back, and listening. And maybe not listening all that hard either - many of them will come away remembering more about the tone and attitude of the conversation - so if you come across as condescending, it'll leave a bad taste in their mouths. The tragedy is, you might feel like you walked away from a long conversation about the efficacy of manifest typing having won a few points - and never realize that lots of people walked away from it thinking "jerk". The longer I stay in this business, the more I realize that Alan is exactly right when he says that the person who leaves an argument without losing his temper wins
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