The Two Antimatter Questions

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the two questions which might spark folks to consider whether they are working on the right things:

Q1: “What is the purpose of this work, from the paying customers’ (end-users’) point of view?”

Q2: “What measures will we, the workers, choose and use to understand and improve our work?”

Since then, I have written much about the Antimatter Principle and its role in creating the kind of environment in which folks might actually seek to do the right things.

So, maybe there’s some utility in framing the two original questions in terms of the Antimatter Principle:

Q1: “What needs do folks (everybody) have, that we’re going to attend to?”

Q2: “What means will we (the workers) use to attempt to see those needs met, and what measures will tell us how (relatively) effective those means are?”

Note: When I say “folks”, as ever for the Antimatter Principle, i mean everyone who might have a stake in the endeavour at hand – all the Folks That Matter™. That means customers, and also workers, managers, executives, shareholders (probably), suppliers, users (if different from customers), the organisation(s) within which the work is being done (as collective entities), and quite probably society at large, too. I have in the past referred to this inclusivity idea as “covalence”.

A Question For You

If you took these latter two questions and applied them to your work, would you ever need to ask yourselves anything else?

– Bob