Why Do You Do What You Do?

At some point in your work life, you wind up on the opposite side of an interview table with someone in a business suit and tie or interview outfit. As someone who spent more time on the interviewee side of the table than the interviewing side of the table, I'm sometimes surprised by questions that are asked that don't actually allow you to tell the person with the notepad anything of substance about you.

Questions like, "What kind of animal would you be?" and "What's your favorite color and why?" are subsets of the primary interview question, which is "Who are you and why do you want to come work with us?" The problem is, a lot of interview questions (and here’s a list of the most common)  dance around the purpose of an interview, whether it’s for a direct hire or finding out if a new vendor is right for your project.

God forbid you run into the currently popular "oddball" questions, like:

"A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?"

(My answer: "I'm a penguin that was finally able to verbalize English so you stupid hominids would quit messing up the atmosphere and melting our polar ice caps. Now take this stupid hat off me so I can go back home to the ice shelf. Someone thought it would be a clever metaphor for global warming. If I could clap, I would, but I'll settle for you people NOT melting my entire living environment, thank you so much.")

The problem from an interviewing point of view is that the question doesn't actually DO anything. It's a distraction from the real purpose of the interview, which is to find out if the person is a good fit. Nothing I can say in response to that question, from the verbose (see above) to the short and direct ("Global climate change isn't a myth, you jerks. Could I have some fish?") is going to impress upon the questioner the absolute value of an interview.

The point of an interview is to get knowledge, and in a professional job interview, it's to find out if both sides actually want to work with someone.

Which made me ask the question: isn’t there an easier way to encapsulate the entire interview process into a single phrase? And could we leave out all the superfluous stuff that people think a "good" interview needs to have to keep the applicant on their toes?

Come on. You know the answer is going to be yes.

About four years ago I saw an art project at a festival that asked people to write on a whiteboard their answer to a simple question, and took their photograph with them holding their answer. (Here’s a link to the project, but please note that some images on this site may be NSFW, and all content is copyright protected.)

When I looked through the images of every individual holding their answer to the question, I realized that these questions really were just subsets of the biggest question of all, and that you could distill the essence of all interview questions to one question, with variations of the essential Six W Questions (Who/What/When/Why/Where/HoW" applied.

And that question is: Why Do You Do What You Do? (Or WDYDWYD for short.)

Its variants and vague definitions are:

Why do you do what you do? (The Ultimate Reason WHY you do what you do every day.)

What do you do? (Your skills, your abilities, your talents, your career qualifications).

How do you do what you do? (Existing workflow process)

Who do you like to do it with? (best workplace partnerships)

When do you like to do it? (best workflow process for you)

Where do you like to do it? (best working environment)

Why Do You Do What You Do and its variations, if asked right, will both fill your entire interview session AND give you the best possible picture of the person sitting across the table from you. As an added bonus, asking that question of yourself gives you an extremely clear insight into your own motivations and your own reasons for getting to do That Thing You Do every single day.

My own gut reaction to this question (and subsequent realization of its universal applicability to all of my personal and professional interactions) was “It’s way too simple. WAY too simple. If I’m asking people questions, I have to get exact answers. I have to have precision question-and-answer, and I have to mark down exactly what they say to grade them on what they’re saying according to my preconception of what I need to know about them. I have to show that I know what I’m talking about, and I have to give them the opportunity to think about what I’m saying and be impressed by it. I can’t distill everything into the first thing I learned in Journalism 101! That’s too simple! Noooooo!”

This internal diatribe was accompanied by some hair-pulling, some dark muttering at myself, and finally, by a dawning comprehension that my bald-noggined, seemingly pedantic high school journalism teacher/mentor might have actually been on to something. Further exploration confirmed what I’d already suspected: the sixteen-year old me was an idiot who really should have paid a lot more attention to the world around him. 

In short, my reaction (and perhaps your own) was wrong.

It really IS that simple. But as my best friend, the twenty-year Army officer says, “The simple things are always easy. The easy way is always hard. The hard way is always mined.”

So how do you keep it simple?

Focus.

If you don’t keep focus on the ultimate question, you’ll be lost at sea without a paddle in any interview process. The ultimate purpose of an interview, regardless of what the interview or conversation is for, is  to find out if the person on the other side of the table is someone you want to spend most of your waking hours with.

We are by nature social animals that want to work and live with similar social animals. Like attracts like, and how we find that out is patterned exclusively on that simple question – why do you exist, and what makes you tick? WDYDWYD is the single core question that allows us to empathize with other human beings.

The fact that WDYDWYD can apply to job interviews on both sides of the table, family counseling, dating, friendships, neighborhood associations, and nonprofit organizations and volunteer work isn’t the point. WDYDWYD is the question everyone wants to know when they meet someone new, and so it’s incredibly relevant when you are conducting an interview, regardless of what side of the table you’re sitting on. And its variants can be just as useful.

How You Do What You Do

The most fun I've had in an interview was a How Do You Do What You Do question. One of my interviewers handed me a drawing of a new invention, and saying, "Let's play a game. I'm the inventor of this new device, and I want to put together the documentation for this device so I can sell it to people. So you're the writer and your job is to get out of me what you need to put down so you can fulfill the documentation requirements."

We went through the standard "what is it, what does it do, is there anything else that could do this, is it similar" etc., etc. It happened to be a woodworking tool from the 1900s that was used to make very specific joinery cuts - and this was a software development company, but I asked to steal the method for interviewing processes in the future - not just because it's an effective way to find out more about the person, BUT it's a lot of fun to do - especially if you're a knowledge nerd like me.

The "Show Me How You Document" question only works if you have a longer period of time to conduct the interview instead of a single hour, because the exercise can take up to 30 minutes or more. However, if you do have the time, it's worth sliding a piece of paper or drawing over and asking, "This is our new product. How would you go about documenting this product?"

The reason: if you're asking a technical writer the standard "how do you do [insert technical skill here] you're not asking about their writing process, their learning process, or their curve of learning new materials and technology. You're asking them the generic 'Are you a good technical writer' questions, to which most (if not all people in any given interview session) are going to find some way of saying "YES!"

Those qualifications are easy to slap down on a piece of paper. To extend the metaphor, someone might have all the woodworking tools invented since the dawn of time and know, in theory, how to use them. However, if they aren’t capable of cutting a straight, level line across a piece of wood, they’re not going to be much of a carpenter.

The reason I loved the “Show Me How” question was that it gave practicality to the interview question without interrogating either of us.

If you give your interviewee a short, easy piece of information to work on with you, you allow them to shape a narrative that tells you how they learn, organize, communicate, question, and develop new ideas. It tells you more about their workflow process, and gives them the space to ask questions. As a result, you get a very clear idea of how they function in a learning curve and interact with both the technology and the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Also, whether they take direction well; if someone doesn't play the game with you and gives "this ain't worth my time" body language and answers, they probably aren't going to be easy to work with in an environment.

 Every time I've given a presentation, I've included some form of this question precisely because it not only helps teach the audience the gaps, but also gives the audience the realization that being part of a workplace, or a community, or relationship, or any other human interaction involves, being a part of a greater whole rather than someone who just slaps content down, stuffs it into a box, and says “Here. I’m done. Don’t expect anything more from me; you get what you get and you’ll like it.”

To put it another way, when someone focuses exclusively on the smallest component of how their own worklife is impacted by the outside world, they aren’t likely to care what happens down the line from them. They focus on their own immediate needs; rather than the needs of their workmates, clients, friends, family - everyone else comes second. 

For some industries and jobs, that’s a good thing – but those roles are few and far between, and mostly involve repetitive jobs that don’t involve a great deal of mental legwork. Even so, collaboration is valued, and essential for how we function as human beings.

In any of our relationships, be they work or personal, any myopia of vision translates to communication breakdown and a toxic environment where asking for collaboration, or assistance, or even a helping hand means you’ll be waiting for a long train that don’t come. The people who do their bit and go home aren't the people you want to be with - they're the people that might have something you need, but you'll do your very best to find what you need by going somewhere else.

To these people even the IDEA of WDYDWYD is scary. And things that are scary are, of course, BAD. What do they do with things that are bad? They do whatever possible to avoid them, and stay in their comfort zone – even if it means being completely unaware of the negative effects they have on the world around them.

There Are No Stupid Questions. Only Stupid People. 

For me, the nightmare scenario is when the questionee says “That’s a stupid question.”

That’s when I back away, and stop asking any questions outside of the immediately relevant ones (do you have qualification [X]. Do you have degree [Y], etc.). It’s not that their question, their perspective, or even their “That’s stupid” comments are invalid. Sure, it's a stupid question. But so is "What color is your parachute?" and "Who moved my cheese?" and "Why am I in a basket, and why is it getting warmer?"

It’s that the short response to my question equates, in my head to: “I want money, so that’s why I work. Duh. I just want to do a job and make money.”

Well, obviously you want some kind of tangible benefit, or else you wouldn't have applied for the job. But that's not really the point of the question. Just because something is outside of your personal experience or value zone doesn't mean it's necessarily "stupid" - it's just something you're not familiar with, so picking up a rock (metaphorically) and bashing it over the head preemptively is easier than figuring out what it actually means.

The problem here is that I view my worklife and my career as a choice that I love and enjoy. The people who just do it for the money, or the benefits, or the ancillary benefits aren’t giving that same passion to their work. If I just want a job to make money, I could just go sign up to sell Made In China stuff at a Big Box Store and bring home a paycheck.

But what I want is a career, and I want to work with people who put their passions before themselves being comfortable.

  (Don't click this link unless you want to listen to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. On second thought, click the link anyway. Then go buy their album. I'm not biased, I swear.)

I don’t want to work in an environment filled with people only in it for the money. Those people aren’t working to be a part of something other than their own little fiefdom of control. All too often, when those people find themselves in a position where they feel untouchable, they’ll simply remove themselves entirely from the worklife reality and become a dead weight to the team. And they don't either understand why people are driven to change, or see more than just the immediate world around them. That's change, and to them change is BAD.

Any change or improvement is viewed as a dire threat to their fiefdom of control, and in some cases, that person actively fights against anything new or different. In other words, they act like cavemen confronted with anything that might change their way of life, or any perceived threat to their survival.

 

It’s a worst case scenario, of course, but ultimately when I ask the question, I ask because to me, the people who work solely to obtain a paycheck are not interesting. I want to work with people who are up to collaborate instead of someone who demands things fit around their own niche preferences. And while sometimes I can find the way forward with them and get to a place where we can work together, it can feel like trying to work with them continuously reverts to "I have a bigger stick than you do. Stay back! Because I said so! You'll do it my way or I'll...I'll...well, you better just do it MY WAY!"

Unfortunately for them, that rarely works longer than toddlerhood, and with a smart toddler, not even that long.

The people who work for their passions, and have a reason why they show up outside of a paycheck ARE people I want to work with. They're the people who accept their passion and their drive - and they found something even more awesome - there's people who will PAY THEM to pursue what they'd be doing anyway, regardless if someone handed them money to do it.

What every interview question ever asked comes down to is the same one I want to ask everyone I meet on a personal or professional basis.

“Why do you have the best job in the world?", or "Why do you have the best life in the world?"

 I ask not because I want to know why it’s the best for THEM, or the best perks, the best salary, the best city to live in. Those are all personal preferences imbued by their environment, upbringing, personality, and skills. I ask because I want to know what gets them up in the morning and sends them out the door to go to work.

And all you have to do is ask that one simple (but infinitely complex) question:

Why do you do what you do?

All you have to do is ask that question, and you'll get every answer you ever need.

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Consistency in Voice Is Important When Building Knowledge Content

When confronted with a request for consistency in their writing, most writers, authors, and creatives love to trot out Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote from Self-Reliance,

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency, a great soul has nothing to do.”

And since Emerson loved to continue in that vein for some time (read the full quoted text here), those who embrace brevity as wit tend to run with Oscar Wilde’s:

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

With all due respect to both Emerson and Wilde, who were brilliant writers of the 19^th century, I must say to their advocates that when it comes to technical communication, marketing, and audience accessibility, Emerson and Wilde can stuff it.

Building knowledge base content – whether it’s technical documentation, APIs, SDKs, user manuals, or simply a quick technology overview – is a job that requires consistency. When writing content for a product or suite of products, the user-facing content has to be smooth, easy to read, see, and adopt.

The words and images written can’t snag the reader’s mind and get them caught up on minor inconsistencies. The readers of product documentation and user-facing content aren’t interested in the mysteries of human interaction – they want to know why their Fitbit isn’t syncing to their account, and how to fix it.

What’s even worse: content that’s inconsistent can increase a user’s frustration with the site, or even convince them the product’s designers and authors didn’t really have a clue about what they were doing. And more users are looking to the existing documentation of a product to decide if they’re willing to spend money. And inconsistencies in voice and style acts on user perceptions like a splinter snagging the wool of a sweater. It’s subtle, but it’s annoying – and it makes processing that information just a little harder than it should be.

That’s not to say creativity and passion aren’t a part of the knowledge base experience. In fact, knowing HOW people access information and walking through a use case scenario on when, how, why, and where a user comes to the knowledge base and support center is the critical component of writing anything that a user or client might see.

On the contrary, creativity is REQUIRED when you want to make things consistent. You have to know what voice you want to present, whether you want a formal or informal dialogue with your audience, or if you need a crisp, clean, no-fuss no muss approach. The difference is, once you and your teams across all the communications channels agree on what that consistent standard LOOKS like, it can’t change without full consensus and buy-in from the group. Editors, reviewers, contributors, SMEs – if even one person colors outside the lines, it makes it all the harder to maintain the audience’s belief in the content.

Here’s The Book. (THUD). Read That. It’s In There. Have Fun. (Less Polite: RTFM)

You can’t start out expecting a new users to walk themselves through your site content and find what they’re looking for. You have to make the content both relevant AND accessible. And that means you have to create content that syncs up and dances with all of the other content on your site.

So, you have to make your content consistent. Otherwise, you're expecting a user to wade through pages and pages of content to get to anything remotely relevant to what they want to learn. It's just easier to go somewhere else than it is to plonk through a six hundred page tome for a single nugget of information.(Sure, some people think that's fun, but most don't want a background proof of WHY MySQL databases aren't sufficient for wide scalability on a diversified platform scale - they just want to know what database system to use.)

The alternative is dropping a massive tome of knowledge on the user’s desk (metaphorically) and expecting them to read it in a single sitting.

Doing this with your content means your users won’t ever access that wealth and breadth of knowledge. When you’re starting out to find more about a product or service, you never go for the expert manual. You take the path of least resistance, and you get hooked on your own personal needs, rather than the one-size fits all approach.

Users NEVER pick up a technical manual to read it start to finish. They run through the index to find how to do a specific task, and then use that section to build out a specific knowledge base around their preferred tasking. They learn by finding contextual answers to their needs – not by absorbing huge bodies of work.

If you don’t believe this is how the human mind works, try this little experiment. Sign into Google and search for any single subject pertaining to water, and click the third search result. Spend fifteen minutes poking around with that search, and see if where you ended up has more than a distant relationship to where you originally started your search. You’re guaranteed not to do the same pathway twice, even if you find the same content, or just slightly different content.

People don’t want to read the technical version of War and Peace. They want instant knowledge gratification and they want it now. And when they get the instant gratification, they discover off-shoots of knowledge they want to know more about…and it helps reinforce the memory of the knowledge they just accessed.

That’s why knowledge content offered by companies with technical products have to be accessible and written to keyword and SEO standards. No user wants to sift through fifty pages of content to find what they’re looking for when they could simply find a short blog post somewhere else that gives them that answer.

As a result, when tasked to build separate content for artificially divided audiences, it not only doubles the delivery time required for building content for deliverables, it also requires that everyone in the chain responsible for creating that content is up to speed on the requirements AND has the background to maintain it.

Examples of success in consistency are not hard to find, either. The Economist is a highly respective news analysis magazine that both editorializes and presents news. However, the Economist does not have writer bylines. Writers for the Economist are expected to maintain the standards of the Economist’s Style guide (and if you’re as nerdy about words as I am, I highly recommend a perusal, available here). These standards not only give a wide range of writers, editors, and contributors structure, but also maintain consistent voice across the entire magazine's body of work that establishes both trust with their audience, and consistent, trackable voice.

And when I say “artificially divided audiences”, I mean that when we look at who’s supposed to read our brilliant writing and painstakingly crafted videos and user communities, we think of the doctoral students, the new and old-school developers, the marketing and sales teams, and the product management groups as separate entities all with wildly divergent needs.

How the heck do you actually MAKE things consistent?

By creating use case scenarios that connect to more than four different audiences, and making the content available to all of them.

In a practical sense, this means not only analyzing the user audience, but also implementing common sense practices.

The most important? Making sure more than two sets of eyes reviews all user-facing documentation.

The second most important? Building consistency and accessibility at the grammatical level.

An example of that consistency is also one that shows up no matter what content I write, and it’s make sure.

The word ensure is one that I always change when I write or edit content. The reason? My first job was working in localization. If English is not the native language of the reader, then “ensure” and “insure” are very easy to confuse (and are for many English speakers as well). One means to be certain, and the other is to provide material backup in case of failure. (One is also a supplemental diet shake, and the other is something you need to do to help pay for medical and dental bills.)

Compounding the problem: the words “ensure” and “insure” are a single letter apart, whereas “make sure” is significantly different enough from either of the others to clearly communicate the intention.

WARNING: [Ensure] that the database is backed up completely to an external source before starting this process.

Saying the previous sentence into my phone results in the following:

Different people's voice inflections are so similar both when spoken and in print that Google Voice showed this result. Predictably, replacing the word ensure with the phrase make sure gives the following results:

You might say, “Well, duuuh. Google Voice is a stupid machine that just polls the most likely results and picks the top based on context.” The worst-kept secret is that the reason Google’s results work that way is BECAUSE the human mind filters in the exact same way – on context, and on personal preferences.

In general, Google’s search engine - just like the human brain - delivers the most likely results. So if someone’s frame of reference makes them check what the writer means by “ensure”, they won’t understand why someone wants them to take out a policy on the software database.

It’s not that big a deal, one might say. But combine hundreds of similar inconsistencies in language, tone, word choice, punctuation and search functionality, and you may wonder why you built a knowledge base at all.

The secret? All of our “diverse” audiences actually aren’t that diverse at all.

In the world of knowledge base research and search, we don’t seek our answers based on a waterfall hierarchy of information lessons. Each individual user and audience automatically customizes their learning experience based solely on their needs, desires, and wants – just like someone sifting through stacks of books or articles to find the best sources for their story.

Our audience (viewers, readers, consumers) all arrive at the same place, and they all need one thing: more information. The ease of access is exacerbated by content that varies wildly in voice, labeled audience, tone, TWAs (three-world acronyms) and context.

The only way to create a cohesive, trusted source for that content is to create standards that make sure the content is accessible to all levels of experience and interest, regardless of the depth of technicality or interest.

If you provide consistency, clarity, and an easy library that lets everyone find what they’re looking for, your site and product content becomes a resource that serves not only as a teaching or training tool, but also as an integral component of your product marketing and user adoption models.

Your users want your organization to be their source for knowledge about your product. To be a strongly trusted source, you have to build style guide in your organization that models the standard of “good” communication regardless of audience, and maintain a review process flexible enough to allow for creativity while still maintaining consistency and excellence in content.

Their 19^th century sneers at consistency notwithstanding, even Emerson and Wilde wanted their audience to pick up their books and know (without looking at the spine) whose work they were reading, and why; to learn, to be inspired, and to be excited to read more.

And that’s a goal authors of any century can understand.