Based on What I Heard

Before standup, in the middle of a much stranger stream of language, I found myself saying something quite practical:

Here is what I’m going to do after this, based on what I heard.

I keep thinking about the second half of that sentence.

Based on what I heard.

It gives listening a consequence. Something entered the room through another person and became part of what happens next.

That seems like a useful standard for a meeting.

I can arrive with work to show, a difficulty to explain, something I am excited about, and a direction I believe is worth pursuing. I can also leave with that direction altered. The encounter has added something I could not supply alone.

I have been thinking about presentation as part of the work’s intelligence. The room contains knowledge the artifact does not yet hold. Someone understands the audience differently. Someone knows what will happen during implementation. Someone notices a confusion the people closest to the design have stopped seeing.

The presentation gives those perceptions a place to meet.

That asks something of the person presenting. I need to make the work legible enough to question. I need to say where I am struggling without turning the room into a referendum on my competence. I need to stay interested when another person’s contribution changes the picture.

Expertise still matters. So does having a point of view. Listening includes judgment: some comments reveal a problem, some express a preference, and some need another question before they become useful direction.

I want to be able to show what I understood and what I intend to do with it.

That morning’s wandering also produced an invitation: let’s dance into better work, without ego, hunting opportunity together.

There is something in that I want to keep. A little movement. Enough willingness to expose an unfinished thought. The possibility of finding something because several people were paying attention from different places.

Service gives the whole thing a purpose. The designer serves the work and the people who will use it. The presenter helps the room see and participate. Leadership carries a responsibility to make other people’s contributions possible.

I want to measure more of my own participation by what it enables.

At the end of the meeting, I would like to have a sentence worth saying:

Here is what I’m going to do after this, based on what I heard.