Tell Me Why

In a previous post I discussed three general categories of musical skill, theory, technique and feel.  I wanted to explore theory a bit more.  Theory is basically understanding the "rules" for how music is structured.  Someone with a solid grasp of music theory will have a good sense of what kinds of notes will sound good together.  This will help them compose in a purposeful way and will also help them with improvisational skills.  Now this is not to say that someone without a solid theoretical foundation is incapable of composing or improvising something that will sound good, but without the theoretical base, such successes will tend to come more through trial and error than being planned in advance.  Knowing theory lets you be more purposeful in what you're doing because it helps you understand the answer to the question of why certain things sound a certain way.

Understanding the why of something is tremendously powerful tool.  In the musical example, it takes you from being someone who can reproduce a set of notes written on a sheet of music to being someone who can generate the notes in the first place.  Answering the question why is also a critical skill for a mediator or negotiator.

This fact was ably demonstrated in a blog post this week from Tammy Lenski talking about a negotiation she was personally involved in.  She was negotiating a contract and the other party insisted in a 20% reduction in the proposed fee.  I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that Tammy used a creative solution that satisfied both parties and the key was understanding the why behind the other side's position.

Mediators, particularly those mediating cases that are in litigation, tend to walk into conflict well after it has arisen.  Often, parties have become firmly entrenched in their positions.  Now obviously, if those entrenched positions were compatible, the parties wouldn't need the services of the mediator so the mediator must begin deconstructing those entrenched positions in order to allow the parties to decide if they can reach a resolution.

The question "why?" can be a very powerful tool in that deconstruction process.  Suppose that a party is walking into mediation insisting that they will not settle the case for less than $X.  It is critical to gain an understanding of why that figure is significant and the best way to gain that understanding is often just to ask, why $X?  In Tammy's example above, she got a fairly straightforward answer to that question, but often it is going to need to be asked several times and with subtle tweaks.  It may well be that even the party doesn't really know the answer to the question "why" they are taking a certain position, it's just been ingrained in them.  Once you understand the why behind a position though you can start looking at alternatives that still satisfy the same why and once you've opened those alternatives up for the parties, you're often well on the way to resolution.

Today's post title shows up in titles and lyrics to a number of songs.  I'm a little chagrined to admit that the one with which I am most familiar is the breakthrough 1999 hit from The Backstreet Boys, "I Want it That Way".