Yaro Starak got me thinking about meta-thinking. While he writes from the perspective of a web entrepreneur, there are a lot of points in common between the way he thinks about things and good information architecture/consulting practice.
Yaro thinks about the way people think - and this is a good thing. He says:
The entrepreneurs reading this will no doubt relate to the way of thinking I am talking about. I often look at a restaurant I’m having dinner or lunch in, or a retail outlet I’m shopping in or any business whatsoever, whether it’s a service provider or product producer and ask - I wonder how profitable this business is? Or I wonder where they source this product from and what the wholesale price is? Or I wonder whether this business model has been applied to another industry? I wonder why the business owner decided to put this here or price this much or offer this now? etc, etc.
I don’t know much about entrepreneurs, but I know that this is how I think. When see a poorly trained waiter in a restaurant, I don’t think “you idiot”, I think “what management process failure allowed you to be put in a position that you are not able to handle?”. I look behind the issue to not just the answer, but the potential solution. That was why my rant about EzyDVD didn’t attack the employees who were present at the time of the debacles mentioned, but questioned the motives of the business system that allowed the failure.
I think that meta-thinking is essential to practitioners of my trade - information architecture - look behind and beyond the obvious so as not to fall into the sin of best practices. More than this, whatever field of human endevour we follow, meta-thinking is essential for self-examination, which I believe is a necessary part of a life worth living.
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