> As an aside, there are elements of this sort of thing in Bay Area tech culture too.
The more general case of misaligned strength of a statement is widespread in other cultures as well.
E.g. I'm Norwegian, and it's not unusuals for Norwegians to use similarly soft language, though it's by no means universal. A statement like "perhaps it would be worth thinking about doing X?" will often mean "do X" or "do X right now!", and where you lie on the range from the literal meaning on one end and a direct order with an implied threat on the other extreme, may hinge on subtleties of intonation, which words are emphasised, and/or the personality and your relationship with the other person.
I live in the UK now, and my impression is that the same is true here but to a much lesser extent, and will then often be phrased in ways that may be easier to recognise by either being overly formal and/or wrapped in a layer of sarcasm.
> I live in the UK now, and my impression is that the same is true here but to a much lesser extent
I worked for a client once who had units in NL and BE, and a UK supplier. We had a short meeting once, it went like so:
> Architect(BE): I have an idea, let's do X!
> Developers(BE): OK boss!
> Developers(NL): Terrible idea. No way we're doing X. Let's do Y!
> Supplier(UK): Well X is interesting. None of our customers do X. But, it is possible!
BE thought X was a good idea, developers questioned it but an architect outranks them. NL thought they decided to do Y, and work on it will start the moment the meeting ends. UK thought they were very very clear not to ever do X.
As if there weren't good enough reasons to agree and circulate meeting outcomes, these kinds of things make them invaluable...
Okay, here’s what I’m wondering: How do you urge people to do discoveries or try things out when you’re reviewing something?
e.g. Do you think it would be better if we used a queue system here? Oh, no, I can try it but I had issues with blah blah etc.
One way would be to ask for an update before we make a decision. By making an explicit statement that a decision will be taken in the future you're making it clear that this wasn't the decision.
Another would be to be explicit about asking for them to conduct an experiment or test, as those would unambiguously not be intended to be a final solution.
But you might then well find that the request to carry out an experiment to do X will sound equally nebulous. But at least it's clear you're not being told it's a decision to do X.
Practically change the scope of work to make an experiment to find which way is better. Though, come to think of it, then they’re likely to get mad at me for requesting extra work. Well, we just need to communicate more.
Extra politeness of mid-west sometimes before a hurdle in business process development, because it really slows down the brainstorming phase. And then companies end up with software that doesn’t serve their needs because someone didn’t feel like talking and we didn’t have the whole month to design a single screen.
Why is it hard to directly ask them to try something? Is it because you subconsciously realize you're actually just piling extra work on top of them for variable benefit?
They’re just accepting the proposed solution without any elaboration or participation, because they take the question as a hidden request to do it in a particular way.
Let me give you an example. Working on developing a particular business process, we’re evaluating alternatives, and I introduce something else that wasn’t there before because we’re still in the brainstorming phase. The team tends to just jump on it immediately as if they’re told to do it that way. While trying to be polite, they’re accidentally removing the value adding step, and this persists even when they’re asked directly, we’re in mid-west.