Seven Red Lines

Seven Red Lines

The link

Seven Red Lines

What it is

“The Expert”, also known as “Seven Red Lines” is a comedy sketch about the clash between client expectations, sales tactics, and one poor expert’s knowledge of the real world. All this takes place in a single intake/design meeting. Honestly, it 7:34 minutes. Just watch it.

What it means to me

First things first: this is funny. It’s well written, and pokes fun at all the stereotypical problems which ‘subject matter experts’ have to deal with. (It also mentions ‘kitten’, the favorite word of the entire internet). I’ve been in situations where people can't grasp that what they ask for is impossible, and it drives me up the wall. Bonus annoyance points if someone refers to Steve Jobs in attempt to motivate us all so much that we can ignore reality.

It’s easy to look at the video and emphasize with the expert. All the other people in the design meeting have overblown, unrealistic or poorly thought out expectations, which combine into something that’s impossible to deliver.

However.

We see a room with different people, with different agendas, who are each trying to get what they want and are making a mess of it. They each have very constrained outlooks on what the meeting is about, and they can’t communicate worth anything. That doesn’t mean that their problems aren’t real, or that their solution demands aren’t genuine. As mr. Hanlon put it: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.

If you want to actually solve this problem, you need to empathize with everyone in the room. They may not get what they want, but if you can figure out why they want it, you may be able to get them something suitable. Or, on occasion,  something even better. The only way to 'win' in this situation is not to follow what everyone is saying, but to find out what they want.

Last year switched from an internal position as a subject matter expert to a career in consulting. In trying to work out how the consulting business works, 'listen to everyone' is an attitude to live by.