Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Often when I’m looking over a students work I find that they provide a good commentary of what they’ve found, but not necessarily what that means. It’s this level of criticality that we try to build, which is really useful in the real world. I stole from a colleague the phrase that ‘you’ve told me the ‘what’, but I also need the ‘so what’.’
I really liked this way of putting that comment into a phrase, which hopefully made it easier to understand. A few weeks ago, I heard a third part to the phrase, which I like even more. It can be used in similar circumstances but also has a much wider use.
Thinking of it as ‘What?’, ‘So What?’, ‘Now What?’ Allows us to think about not only stating the circumstances and the consequences, but also our next move.
I try to keep in mind the advice of not always going to superiors with problems, but I think this short framework allows a nice way of structuring conversations around any issues. It might go something like this:
“This has happened, and this is what that means. What I think we should do about it is this.”
Even if your manager doesn’t agree entirely, they’ll appreciate that you’ve thought about what a solution might look like rather than just going to them for an answer.
A nice, simple, strategy that’ll help you to show that you can think for yourself and aren’t always needing your hand holding. It’ll also encourage and develop your own problem solving skills.
T.Brownlee@bham.ac.uk