The elephant in the room

 


Once upon a project, I had a great colleague and mentor (Michael Pellaton) who when asked what he thinks of me, he replied: "Ilija is the kind of person that asks the right questions". This statement stayed with me a long time after I heard it. 

I then remembered my collage days, when I always asked our professors the questions nobody would dare to ask. My peers hated me for that, openly as a matter of fact. My reasoning was simple, either I understand the problem/project or I don't. I can't semi understand something, some abstract concepts maybe, but that is it. If I don't understand the problem or task, I will not be able to come up with a solution, nor I will understand a solution someone else devised. Afterwards, even the solution will appear too complicated, so I don't dare to peak inside. The "black magic box", somehow works, the output is OK.

Turns out understanding the problem and getting all the angles of it, is an absolute necessity for me in order to develop the best solution. Implementation is just a technicality in most cases.

So I encourage all my students and children, before starting to solve any problem, understand it deeply, ask stupid questions, imagine the edge cases, get the context of the problem and the people involved.

Always ask about the elephant in the room, even if nobody else dares to ask, be the idiot that asks obvious questions if they are not addressed otherwise.

I got inspired by Simon Sinek's video to write this post:


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