Undrstanding Context

"All meaning is context dependent" is a phrase that has been very helpful to me. Therefore, I appreciated this article by Joel Gascoigne at Buffer - The Habits of Successful People: They Work To Understand Context. The material below is quoted from the article.

I’ve had a few different experiences in my past that made me reach a big realisation. What I’ve discovered is that the context of any situation is very important.

Hiten Shah clearly already understands this very well. This Tweet from him is what tipped me over the edge to share some of my further thinking around context:

                      Get context before you give advice - @hnshah

Why we should seek context at all times
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood” -Stephen R Covey

The above quote is Habit 5 of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I’ve read the book a couple of times, and I’ve read other content around the topic of gaining context, but it’s something which has only just “clicked” for me as to why it’s so important. Also, after now understanding the importance of context, I’ve found it to be very difficult to actually practice.

The premise is quite clear as to how vital context is: without context, we immediately jump in our heads to what we want to say next, based on the very first few words we hear from the other person. This is something I find myself doing far too frequently.
Most of us listen to someone with the intention of replying, and therefore as soon as we have a “reply” in mind, we stop listening and wait our turn to reply. No matter what remarkable new insights are uncovered in the subsequent words from the other person, it is likely that we now have a strong desire to share that initial thought we have about what to say back.

With context, on the other hand, we can achieve so much more. If we truly understand the background of the other person, we can tailor the approach for each occasion. I believe gaining or having context can be useful in so many scenarios:

• giving advice
• receiving advice
• meeting a stranger
• making friends
• getting press
• raising funding

The conversation that shocked me

A while back, I was in a Skype call with someone to try and help them with their current startup challenges.

As normal, I asked about the founder’s startup and what stage he was at. After uncovering a tiny amount of context about his previous experiences and where he was now at, I unfortunately slipped and switched to my own thinking about what the best next steps were for him.

I proceeded to advise him based on my previous experience. The experience I based my advice on was the following:

• I had worked on an idea for a year and a half which I never charged for
• I therefore generated no revenue, and consistently had to work on the side
• While I had a few thousand users of traction, I failed to raise funding

I advised him to charge for his product from Day One, since that worked for me the after the first failure. I also advised him to aim for revenue and not worry so much about user numbers, since that’s what truly freed me from working on the side.

He was very receptive of my advice—even thought it was the wrong advice for the situation he was in. Luckily, he went on to share extra information that changed everything:

• He had a previous startup for which he had hundreds of paying customers and good revenues
• He was still making money from the idea and had runway to last almost indefinitely working on a new idea
• He got into an incubator with the idea
• He went to the Valley to raise funding, but since he had low user numbers (even though they were all paying) he struggled to raise funding

I could now completely understand why, in fact, he shouldn’t just follow the advice I gave him. He had almost entirely the opposite previous experience to me, yet equally valuable and foundation building. He was perfectly poised to try an idea which could gain massive visibility rather than simply making money. Making some money was not his biggest challenge, as it was for me when I started.

Our opposite contexts meant that in fact opposite choices for next steps made complete sense. I was genuinely taken aback when I realised this....

More at the link.