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That's a really good way of describing it, Bruce. "If you want respect, respect
yourself." People assume that just because somebody with a fancy degree or a
big computer on their desk is a genius.
People don't respect wimpiness. If you mouse around and act like a tool, people
will use you and won't respect you. If you stake out your territory and work
like a real pro with people, they'll respect you and hand you bags of money.
Please deposit bag of money at: 3800 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Suite 298 Beaverton,
OR 97005. Non-sequential $100 bills are preferred.
Also, SME's are usually more than willing to talk about their designs. Its
merely a matter of approaching them properly and manipulating them into giving
you what you want. Handing out chocolate and dancing around their offices might
be fine to warm them up. But eventually, they need to see that you're giving
them more than just chocolate. SME's want you to make them look like a genuis.
So, if you play off that weakness, you can get them to tell you anything you
want to know. People LOVE to babble about their passions and work.
Which reminds me, let me tell you about our Exchange server....blah, blah,
blah, blah...and then I was like blah blah blah, and she was all, ohhhhh, and I
was like, no way, and she was like, yeah. Whoa.
Sorry, I was up all night fixing mail servers. I am really goofy right now.
Andrew Plato
--- Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com> wrote:
> Andrew Plato wrote:
> >
> > It very easy to fall into the "this is too complex for me to understand"
> > mentality and trust everything an SME says. You have to develop some kind
> of
> > judgment to decide the relevance and weight of the information an SME hands
> > you.
>
> A writer's situation on the job is similar to a high school graduate's
> first weeks at university, or a graduate student's first weeks in a
> doctoral program: it's easy for the writer to be overwhelmed by how much
> knowledge everyone else has.
>
> In this situation, it's important to remind yourself that you have
> specialized areas of knowledge, too. If you let yourself get
> overwhelmed, you are unlikely to develop a decent working relation with
> the experts - by which I mean one of approximate equality.
>
> Obviously, there's a lot more to the working relation than that, but
> I've seen a lot of writers intimidate themselves into a subordinate
> position. And, unsurprisingly, as your status around the office
> diminishes, so does your chances of respect.
>
"
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