Dismissing A Person As Not Worth Listening To
In his 1995 book Dynamics of Software Development (ISBN 1-55615-823-8), which presented a series of rules about the political and interpersonal forces that drive software development, Jim McCarthy applied the bozo bit notion to the realm of human interaction. The technical issues facing programmers were sufficiently daunting that just getting code written was commonly considered good enough; McCarthy and other authors (Lister & DeMarco, Constantine, McConnell) were just breaking the news that social issues trump technical ones on almost every project.
McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again.
Read more about this topic: Bozo Bit
Famous quotes containing the words listening to, person, worth and/or listening:
“So my mind hesitates
above the passion
quivering yet to break,
so my mind hesitates
above my mind,
listening to songs delight.”
—Hilda Doolittle (18861961)
“It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a mans parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.”
—Cleveland Amory (b. 1917)
“It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.”
—Philip Larkin (19221986)
“The tension to mother the right way can leave a peculiar silence within mother daughter relationshipsthe silence of a mothers own truth and experience. Within this silence, a daughters authentic voice can also fall silent. This is the silence of perfection. This silence of perfection prevents mothers from listening and learning from their daughters.”
—Elizabeth Debold (20th century)