People often ask me what is the benefit of elicitation versus the standard interview. Actually they share more in common than they differ. Preparation in similar. You want to learn as much about that person as you can before you talk to them. Elicitation is a conversational interview, a planned conversation. Elicitation builds off human tendencies that most people have: a desire for recognition; showing off, curiosity, gossip, complaining, correcting you.
A recent HBR blog post, “Just Call Someone Already,” focused on when to use the phone versus email, often used instead of the phone. I resonated with the author, Dan Pallota in his comment, “Much worse than the inefficiency of using email to set up phone calls are the missed opportunities and unnecessary misunderstandings that come when we use email instead of phone calls.” A best cooperative intelligence practice is to think about how the individual you want to reach likes to be communicated with, even if it’s not your preference. Another cooperative best practice is only send communication to those who will value it.
Be skeptical of the business information you find through digital media and traditional media sources. So much of it comes from press releases and is regurgitated more or less at face value by other news sources. Press releases are carefully crafted to further the interests of the originating organization, whether a company, government organization, trade association or other special interest group. So who is telling the truth? A skeptical, informed person recognizes that news contains some bias, distortion and misinformation. You also know you can’t rely on a single news source, and if the same news is repeated by many sources, it’s good idea to find the original source, so you can check its veracity and the content that JDLR (just don’t look right).