The Reluctant Subject Matter Expert: Making Allies
Based on the presentation by Michele Cox and Mickey Phoenix at SD West 2009
Why do some subject matter experts resist sharing information? How can we get cooperation from all our subject matter experts, and not just the ones who are already eager for the projects we’re working on?
In other words:
Once the answers to these become clear, we can work with the reluctant SMEs, and work much more effectively.
Some of the reasons an SME might not be eager to work with you include:
The SME may not be entirely sure what you’re looking for, or why—or even who you are or what the project is really about. Be aware of the possibility that an overworked manager just assigned your SME to the project with no explanation. Start the first meeting with a concise description of the project and its likely impact on the SME’s daily work.
Even more problematically, the SME may not be sure how to answer the questions you’re asking. Nobody likes looking ignorant, so uncertainty can make an SME reluctant to deal with you.
Some SMEs may be afraid. Change can be threatening, even to the most secure employee. New projects, especially those designed to streamline processes, may lead to fears of layoff, replacement, or outsourcing.
Furthermore, SMEs may be afraid that you’ll find out they don’t know the answers, or of making a public mistake. Fear can easily make someone reluctant to work with you.
The SME may be getting contradictory instructions or demands. If the goals being set for the SME aren’t compatible with each other, the SME is being set up to fail, and knows it.
If you can’t find a way to resolve the conflict, the SME will certainly be reluctant to work with you.
The SME may have so many jobs that your project is just One More Thing Too Many—because they passed “one thing too many” a long time ago.
Overwork and lack of time to focus on any one thing will naturally contribute to the SME being reluctant to work with you.
Is this the first time anyone has tried to come in and solve this problem, or a problem like it? How many times has the SME put time and energy into working on a solution that was never used? What happened to those previous projects, and how will this one be different?
Past experience can sometimes make an SME reluctant to work with you.
Under sufficiently prolonged and intense stress, anyone can crack. After years of fear, uncertainty, or overwork, some SMEs simply give up.
They don’t think that their situation is ever going to change, or that anything will ever make their jobs or their lives easier. They don’t dare hope, because they have disappointed far too often.
An SME who has lost hope is definitely reluctant to work with you.
Not all obstruction is created equal. Many SMEs are doing their best to share their experience and information, but they may do so in a way that meshes poorly with your style. Often SMEs are communicating the best they know how, but have a hard time sorting out the important facts, giving appropriate levels of context, and understanding that you don’t share all their assumptions.
There are as many different ways SMEs may deal with being afraid, overworked, or on their last nerve as there are human beings. But here are a few examples, and learning to deal with these will be a good start on approaching anyone you’re finding difficult.
Your SME may be like:
The snapping turtle has one point and refuses to be moved off of it, whether it's a process, tool, or policy they won't consider changing, or an issue they won't acknowledge as resolved or as irrelevant.
The more important the issue is to the SME, the less they’re going to like it if they feel disregarded or blown off. Listen sympathetically to the issue; learn why the SME is concerned about it, and how it ties in to what you’re doing. It helps if you can assure SME that the issue is being taken seriously, even if it can't be resolved to their satisfaction at the current time or in the current iteration of the project. If appropriate, escalate; alternatively, note issues for future resolution or as an identified risk.
Cultivate patience. Sympathize. If you can create an ally, you’ve strengthened the whole project.
The octopus, when nervous, will send out a cloud of details—all related to your issues, but unstructured and disorganized. This may sometimes be a deliberate delaying technique, but it may also be that the SME actually isn’t sure how to summarize or organize the information. The details you’re given may present obstacles to the functionality of a given process, or a related process, or may simply be causing confusion in the SME’s work as well as in yours.
If the SME can’t summarize or organize the information, they’re probably feeling almost as overwhelmed by it as you are.
Begin by making it clear that you respect the SME’s expertise, are willing to learn, and need their help; clarify that your role is to gather information for a specific purpose, but that you must rely on them to help you understand how it all fits together. Make sure that you are asking for the detail you need, and that the SME understands that there are details that will not be relevant to your project, and that you need to identify and avoid getting bogged down in those.
The octopus brings a great deal of fine detail to your project; appreciate that, and help create the structure that is needed for it to be understood by others.
The hedgehog is all prickles: whatever you can think of, there’s a problem with it. Whatever the core issue is just can’t be solved, or can’t be solved the way the project is approaching it.
Unlike the snapping turtle, the hedgehog doesn’t have a single issue—the hedgehog has an array. Whatever solution you come up with for one will trigger another one.
This detailed, critical attitude may simply be a cast of mind. In that case, you can congratulate yourself that you have a good QA person on your team, helping you discover what doesn’t work before release.
Remember that this can be a great strength for the project, if you can once enlist the hedgehog as an ally in making the project work. Many projects are tripped up by one or two tiny overlooked details; a hedgehog who has really committed to the work can make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
You can create an alliance with your hedgehog by listening, sympathizing, identifying the source of the hedgehog’s frustrations, and respecting their concerns. Make sure that anything that can’t be resolved currently is recorded and/or escalated appropriately so that it won’t fall through the cracks. Give them reason to trust that you take them and their concerns seriously, and you’ll find that you’re working with them much more productively.
Like the hedgehog, the hummingbird has any number of issues, but the hummingbird will dart from issue to issue so fast it sometimes makes your head spin.
Hummingbirds have so many details in their heads that they can’t keep all of them in mind at once, so they return to issues you think you’ve resolved with “just one more thing—!” They change their ground or their focus rapidly, and they become reluctant to commit because they’re afraid of overlooking something.
Listen carefully to your hummingbird. They have valuable information, if you can hear it and get it safely recorded. It’s particularly important with the hummingbird to document what you learn and follow all the issues that come up, because the hummingbird may lose track without some external referent to go back to.
The spider wants to know every strand of the network they're in, every aspect of the project, every change that might affect them or their work, no matter how distantly. They actively seek out connections, and need each one to be clearly delineated. Every change causes tremors for the spider; they need to be certain that every connection is absolutely clear and defined.
The spider is often afraid of the possible results of a project. Layoffs frighten them, but so do new systems and processes that threaten the things that make their job important to them. The more you will listen to and respect the spider's concerns, and make it clear that they’re going to be addressed, the easier it will be for you to work with them. Find out what the spider most values, and see how it is likely to be affected.
The honey bee works hard, and has assembled a lot of expertise. But treat a honey bee casually or without respect, and you'll find that they can also sting. Respect their time and their knowledge, and the honey bee can be one of the easiest SMEs to work with.
The primary source of possible difficulty with the honey bee is their lack of available time. If possible, ask them for other sources of information—books, websites, other employees who can help you get a grounding in whatever the subject is—and come back to them only for the material you can’t get from any other source.
Treat any SME’s time like gold; treat the honey bee’s time like diamonds.
The bat navigates based on hearsay, guesses, or the results of the random pings they send out to clients or peers to understand what is going on. An overloaded or new SME, whose understanding of the process may be theoretical or who lacks the grounding of years of experience in every phase of the process, may well begin as a bat.
Bats are most easily recognized by their silence in meetings, or the persistent use of “let me check on that” or “let me get back to you on that.” It can be very scary to be a bat; they’re not certain of their position, but they’re afraid that asking for help will make them look incompetent.
If you can, figure out where they missed a step in learning to understand what’s going on, and help them get caught up; once they’ve done that, they may know exactly what it is you need to know. If you can’t do that, try bringing in a third person, someone both of you can consult with to gain a better understanding.
The more face you can save for your SME, the more likely you are to win a lasting ally.
The chameleon can be a very difficult SME to work with, because they change their color depending on what's around them. Their attitude or even the information they give can change based on who’s present or what the sense of the meeting seems to be. Whether their behavior is instinctive or learned, it leaves you with unreliable data; and without reliable data, your work will necessarily be flawed.
Because chameleons can change their perspective when their environment changes, it is particularly crucial to document what you talk to them about. A quick e-mail to them and the team you’re working with saying “I’m confirming what we talked about this morning—as I understand it, _________” can be extremely useful. It doesn’t need to be time-consuming, but this conversational record can be essential to getting a single consistent answer from your chameleon.
Ultimately, if you give people respect, whether that is in the form of interest, reassurance, understanding, patience, clarity, or all of these things and more, you will get what you want and need from them ninety-nine percent of the time.
Listen
Empathize
Be Patient
Document