I was introduced to the STAR framework recently which lays it out like so : Situation > Task > Action > Result
Situation: I was asked by my wife if we should sail around the world for a few years.
Task: I agreed on the spot now we had to work hard towards looking for possible sail boats that could be our home for a few years and keep us safe while sailing.
Action: We travlled around the continent looking at boats, at the same time we saved up as much money we could. When we found a boat we bougt it, sold our house and lived on the boat. We took sailing and navigational classes and used a lot of time researching where in the world we wanted to go.
Result: We went sailing on May 17th 2023 and at the moment we are in the pacific helping environmental organisations de-plastic Hawaiian islands.
I found it being a good framework getting to the actual point!
This is near how I conduct business, as I cannot keep track of everything, nor can I have a non-stop scribe to note and catalog things.
AWS and several others use this in interviews.
I use STAR/SPAR:
[S]ituation or context
[T]ask or [P]roblem
[A]ction or solution
[R]esult or expected outcome
Basically, tell me the background, tell me the problem or thing that needs done, tell me all the ways it was reviewed, and the actual picked solution or action, and finally what is the expected outcome or result. As an exec I can be a stateless machine and with that set of details, I can make a decision.
Sometimes I dig into it a bit to see if proper due diligence was done, if there is real info & data is present, but once I am comfortable that the person distills it properly, it is a no brainer decision. I can say, "yes, go forth with your action/solution" or "no, because XYZ, go back and consider that" (usually from the T/PA/R areas).
There might be a way to craft this for story telling, after all, most things are stories.
Situation: I was asked by my wife if we should sail around the world for a few years.
Task: I agreed on the spot now we had to work hard towards looking for possible sail boats that could be our home for a few years and keep us safe while sailing.
Action: We travlled around the continent looking at boats, at the same time we saved up as much money we could. When we found a boat we bougt it, sold our house and lived on the boat. We took sailing and navigational classes and used a lot of time researching where in the world we wanted to go.
Result: We went sailing on May 17th 2023 and at the moment we are in the pacific helping environmental organisations de-plastic Hawaiian islands.
I found it being a good framework getting to the actual point!