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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

Courtesy, shopping carts, and the organization

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There’s a popular meme on the internet that I think is kind of apt. It asks whether you’re the type of person who returns your shopping cart. I think this is an important concept, because it illustrates to me one of the facets that make societies, and organizations, work. So let me talk about courtesy, shopping carts, and the organization.

The meme is basically saying do you return the cart, or leave it near your car. You’ve seen the results: parking spaces blocked by an abandoned cart, carts pulled up on curbs into planters, etc. This, to me, is like whether you bring a bag to clean up after your dog (and place it an appropriate receptacle). Or dump your ashtray and car trash on the side of the street. It’s about recognizing a) that there aren’t necessarily folks who have this as a job, and b) it interferes with innocent others, and c) therefore it undermines a pleasant environment. It may have to do with what your cultural expectations are, but I’ll suggest it’s worth the small effort.

Why does this matter? Because it seems to me that societies work better when folks are courteous. When folks respect one another, they find ways to make things work. When they don’t have that respect, they find or stumble into ways to aggravate situations. Now, I get that sometimes being discourteous is a way to get revenge against a real or perceived injustice. Yet, I suggest there are better ways to register your discontent that more accurately target the perpetrators of the injustice. Random acts of discourtesy can lead to perceptions that you’re just a jerk. Because some of it is people thinking that they don’t have to care about other people. I fear it’s getting worse.

The issue I want to address here, rather than a general societal rant, is about what this means in organizations. What does courtesy have to do with working life? I suggest it has to do with creating an environment in which people can work together for organizational success in an optimal way. That is, if we’re helping make the workplace pleasant, we’re making it effective. This means things like offering to help when you’ve useful information to provide. It means paying attention to the organizational norms. I suggest it also means pointing out when those norms aren’t best for positive interaction. Others: Refilling the printer paper tray when you’ve used the last. Taking notes for someone who  has to miss the meeting. Mot missing a meeting if you’ve no real excuse. Keeping meetings on time and on point. Not holding a meeting when there’s a better way.

There are a lot of little courtesies in everyday life. You may have a grudge or grievance, but deal with it appropriately. A lack of courtesy because you’re upset about something else isn’t appropriate or helpful. I reckon it just makes you look like a jerk. That’s my take, what are your thoughts on courtesy, shopping carts, and the organization?

The Performance Ecosystem and L&D

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On LinkedIn recently, a survey in a post asked whether L&D should simply become performance consulting (Y/N). In the ensuing discussion, a comment was made that the binary discussion was flawed, and that a richer picture was possible. I was extremely pleased when she referred to my  Revolutionize Learning & Development book, and posted a diagram from it. I backed her comment, but it occurs to me that there’s more here, and of course I have a connection. So here’re some thoughts on the Performance Ecosystem and L&D.

To start, she cited how I wanted to move to Performance and Development. Indeed, I’ve posted about it, and included a diagram. In it, performance consulting  is represented, but as she noticed, there’s more. I think performance consulting is great, but…it’s not everything. To me, it only addresses the ‘optimal execution’ side of the picture, and ignores the ‘continual innovation’ opportunity.

To be fair, suggesting that L&D take responsibility for informal learning could be considered a stretch. My argument is simply that informal learning has practices and policies that can optimize outcomes,  and that it’s a necessary component of success going forward. (I note that problem-solving, design, research, and innovation all start without a known answer, so they’re learning too!) It’s not necessarily L&D’s role,  but who else (should) know more about learning?

So, innovation is an opportunity. A big one, I suggest. It’s a chance to move to the most valuable role in the organization, going forward. Orgs  need to innovate, and facilitating the best innovation is going to be a critical role. Why  not L&D? Yes, we have to get out of our comfort zone, start working with other business units, and most importantly know learning. So? We should anyway!

The infrastructure necessary is what I call the performance ecosystem. It’s about formal learning, but also more. That includes social, and information and learning resources. It includes facilitation as well as performance interventions. It’s about technology, but how to use it in ways that align with our brains.

The interesting issue for me is how to awaken this awareness. I  suggest  mobile is a gateway to the appropriate thinking. I wrote about mobile before writing the Revolution book (as my then-publisher required), but even there I laid out the case how mobile was not (just) about formal learning. Indeed, when you look at the way people use mobile, it’s very different. It’s also a digital platform, which means that it supports multiple outcomes.

Thus, mobile thinking is a way to break through the mindset of courses, and start looking at the bigger picture of technology supporting how we think, work, and learn to the success of our organizations. Which is why I’m happy to say that I’ll again be running the mobile course with Allen Academy, starting next week. Through 18 Jan, they’re offering this as a two-fer, so you get both the mobile and the learning science course for one low price! Together, you’re addressing my silly clip about L&D, both doing courses well  and going beyond them.

If you want to get your mind around the performance ecosystem and L&D, I suggest that mobile learning is a effective vehicle. You get both some deep advice about mobile, but it also generalizes to digital technology overall. The course itself looks at formal learning, performance support, informal learning, and more, as well as strategic issues. Coupled with learning science, this is a real grounding in the most important opportunities and necessities facing L&D today. Whether you call it P&D or L&D, these are core concepts. Hope to see you there!

 

Happy New(s) Year!

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It’s the new year, and I’ve been hinting for a while that something’s up. Well, now I can announce it. The new year seems like the right time for news, so Happy New(s) Year!

While Quinnovation will continue, I have joined another initiative as well. If you’ve been paying attention, and I hope you have, two summers ago Will Thalheimer & Matt Richter ran a new and different event, the L&D Conference. It had two sessions of things, so it could reach most of the globe, and they were recorded so you could watch after the fact. There were also some asynch workshops. There was an emphasis on evidence-informed speakers and content.

It was successful enough that it convinced Matt and Will that there was the opportunity for a society promoting the same values. At the beginning of 2021, they began this initiative, the Learning Development Accelerator  (LDA). The society has had regular events, articles, also workshops. They also ran the conference again.

However, Will got a full-time job with Tier 1. Thus, trying to keep up with demand was, well, trying. After one unsuccessful attempt, they settled on a second choice to replace Will. I’ve agreed. Thus, I will now be working with Matt (who’s heroically shouldered most of the work) to keep the society going. It’s started, and continued, as all virtual. Which helps support the goal of being quite global. The other emphasis continues, to be evidence-based. I can align with that. I think it’s our obligation as professionals. We need to promote those who are translating research into evidence-informed practices.

There’s a second initiative of LDA as well. Matt thinks LDA should publish, and had offered me the chance to serve as initial publisher (more like Editor-In-Chief). So LDA Press is kicking off. We’re going to have to start slow to grow, but stay tuned for initial publications. The goal is to fill in the gaps of the books we should have, and provide a better relationship with authors. We’re already talking to some folks.

That’s pretty much it. I’ll continue to speak, write, run workshops, and assist clients as Quinnovation as well, but I’ll also be putting energy into what I think is an important contribution. Of course, it’s also about learning, stepping out of my comfort zone. My focus will be on trying to help introduce members to people and ideas they should know. The more we know, the better we can do our job! So that’s my Happy New(s) Year, and wishing you and yours all the best for the coming year.

Reflecting (on 2021)

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I don’t think I’ve made a habit of it, but it occurs to me that it might be good to reflect a little on this past year. In particular, I want to revisit the areas I’ve been focusing on. There’ve been some emergent themes, and it’s worth it (to me, at least ;) to think a bit more about them. So here’s what I’m thinking about while reflecting on 2021.

Obviously, the cognitive and learning sciences have been a theme. The publication of my book on  learning science this year was a catalyst, as you might expect. In it, I covered not only the basics, but some of the extended areas. These extended areas include thinking about situated learning and the importance of context, distributed cognition and the use of external representations, and an area new for me, embodied cognition including gesture and motion. Annie Murphy Paul’s  The  Extended Mind covers these nicely.

Another topic is talking about engagement (including four posts on the topic, starting here). Which I view as the complement to the learning science side. I think of learning experience design as the elegant integration of learning science and engagement, and am continually working to create a definitive approach to the latter as I’ve done with the former. (Stay tuned.)

Coping with change is another recurrent theme. As we are facing increasing chaos, the ability of organizations to adapt requires innovation. Which, really, is a form of learning. I argue further that it’s an area L&D  should be engaged in. Agility will be a critical differentiator for organizations, and it’s an opportunity to be more central to organizational success.

I’ve also been on about how the transformation organizations need shouldn’t start with digital. I think this is an increasingly important realization in this era of change. To be successful, organizations need to work in coherence with how their people think, work, and learn. If you get that right, digitization can facilitate outcomes. However, if you digitize some of the old approaches that are holdovers from prior eras, you can limit the effectiveness of the investments.

Reviewing my past year’s posts, there’s a mix of other topics. I’ve continued my usual ‘takedowns’ of myths, shared thoughts on education, and unpacking nuances of learning design. A mixed bag, but then this blog is about my various ideas. So that’s my current reflections.

Take note, there will be some changes to announce come the new year. Until then, please have a safe and happy holiday season, and best wishes for the new year.

 

Time for Reflection

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My dad used to regale me with this tale of his best friend, who told his new employer when he started: “If you see me with my feet up on my desk and it appears I’m sleeping, I’m not. I’m working. I’ll still do the work of 2 other engineers.” And he did!  I love this story, because it brings out an element that we seem to be losing, the value of taking time for reflection.

Now, he may actually have been sleeping, yet that doesn’t concern me; sleeping is a mechanism for processing, too. What concerns me are folks who can’t be seen to be taking time off from ‘the work’. We’re in a mode where we push people to work harder and faster. We say “work smarter” but don’t tell people what that means!

I’ve spent time in a job early in my career reading (relevant) magazines like Byte, with my feet up on the desk. Yet, I immodestly suggest I cranked out work  at least as fast as my colleagues. I found reading, and now searching for answers, to be a valuable use of my time. Why? Because I’m  learning. I reflect on what I do and how to do it better, learning to do new things that I need to meet my current challenges.

Sure, I do the work. However, I also take walks, put my feet up and ponder, and more. I blog, for instance ;). There are other ways I write as well, and experiment, and look to refine my thinking. Also, I look things up, read books, and generally track my field and answers to specific questions.  My work improves as a consequence. Moreover, we  all benefit from taking time to reflect. It’s documented in the work conducted by Garvin, Edmondson, & Gino as one of the elements of a learning organization.

So, I’ll keep promoting, and practicing, taking time for reflection. I hope you can, too. Moreover, I hope you can help get such time recognized as valuable in your organization. We focus too much on the fast, and as they say: “fast, cheap, or good, pick 2”. I’m not sure fast is always the best solution. Certainly for learning. After all, it is about learning…

 

Relevant and anchored

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In reviewing my forthcoming book on Make It Meaningful, I’m poring over my Education -Engagment Alignment (EEA). I’m rewriting part to revisit it. Which I’ve done, but in doing so I had a revelation. I’ve maintained that they’re independent elements. However, I now see Relevant and Anchored as complementary components.

‘Anchored’, in my terminology, is ensuring the learning outcome meets a real need. It’s about the relationship between the learning objective and the performance gap. If you’re trying to get better at something, for instance, the objective is specifically related. If you’re learning about dealing with customer objections, you’ve got a specific objective to use a particular approach. It is not  ‘understand’ but ‘do’. You’re not anchoring if your root cause of the performance gap isn’t a lack of skill. If the learning covers information that’s ‘nice to know’, you’re not anchored. This is determined, by the way, by a performance consulting process.

‘Relevant’, again the way I term it, is about whether the learner  cares about that learning objective. If learners don’t care about being a repair tech, having an objective about the problem-solving process can’t matter. This is something we should design into the experience. That is, we should be helping learners ‘get’ that the consequences of acquiring this skill matter to them. We can use curiosity, or consequences, or…but we should  not leave it to chance!

Using the usual present/absent two-factor diagram, it looks like this:

That is, if you have neither the effort is worthless. Which is like a lot of what we see! When you’re anchoring, but not being relevant, the solution is likely to be moderately effective (tho’ not as much as it could be). People stay away if possible! If it’s relevant but not anchored, it’ll be engaging, but not effective and not meaningful. This is the typical tarted up stuff, aka well-produced but not well-designed and produced. However, if you get both in there, you’ve truly made it meaningful.

I suggest you want relevant  and anchored. If we’re putting in the effort, we should be aligning both. I suggest LXD means the elegant integration of learning science with engagement. It sticks better!  We know how to do this, reliably and repeatedly. Our learning doesn’t have to be dull nor ineffective, and we owe our learners this.

The case for good timekeeping

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It occurs to me that maybe not everyone has the same view of timekeeping that I do. So I thought I’d make the case for good timekeeping. To me, it’s about  coping with change.

To me, it starts with respect. This includes respect for the audience, the speaker, topic, and context. There are times when timekeeping  should be lax, I believe. My first take is that the defining circumstances are when there are no people involved who aren’t already part of it, there’s not a fixed time agenda, speaker times aren’t set, and the outcome is more important than punctuality.. In other words, rare for a public event.

When an event is public, there tend to be some other constraints. Most importantly, there’s liable to be a schedule. People need to know when to arrive. If it’s a more than one event in the schedule, extending beyond 1 hour, and the audience is diverse (e.g. not just one company), time becomes increasingly important.

Why should we care? Back to the starting point, people might be coming in to see someone in particular. If the schedule isn’t adhered to, folks who were counting on a particular time could be disappointed. If there’s a start and end time, and block, speakers further down the agenda could be impacted if someone runs long. Neither is fair.

I have experienced folks who seem to be unaware of time. In my personal experience as a speaker, I was on a joint presentation where the leadoff presenter seemed to forget that there was anyone else on the agenda! He was gracious once it was pointed out, but it was uncomfortable for me to have to break in and remind him. I’ve also seen people unaware that they were running long, and others unable to amend their presentation on the fly when they  did become aware. I’ve literally seen someone have to stop where they are instead of finding a way to wrap up!

Having had early experience  being  a moderator, after being the victim of such sessions, I made a commitment (in line with the event organizer’s intent) to be rigorous. I’ve now no qualms about, after giving fair warning, stopping someone who hasn’t maintained control. To the contrary of a possible position, I think it’s rude  not to! It’s the speaker’s fault, no one else’s. They aren’t being professional and respectful of the audience and the other speakers. That also includes getting out of the way in a timely manner if it’s a scheduled room, leaving time for the next person to set up.

So my guidelines for timekeeping:

  1. Designate someone as the timekeeper; there can’t be a question over who’s job it is.
  2. Warn speakers ahead of time about the rigor and practices. No excuses!
  3. Have a practice for signaling if things are getting close, e.g. signs for # of mins left, colored lights, messages in chat (tho’ some people seem unable to process them; beware), what have you.
  4. As a presenter, if you don’t have a good basis for assessing your likely length (e.g. I’m about a slide a minute, though with some quick builds it can be faster), practice and check your timing! Realize that live it’s likely to go a bit longer than your practice. Trim if necessary.
  5. Also, have enough awareness of your material that you can adapt on the fly. Sometimes other things happen (once the power went out in a presentation), and you have to adjust.
  6. Be firm; interrupt and stop speakers when it’s time.

That’s off the top of my head; I’m sure there are more comprehensive and thorough lists. My point is to be aware, and prepared. As a speaker, I appreciate it. As an audience member as well. That’s my case for good timekeeping.  What do you think?

Coping with change

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It’s an  interesting  time for Quinnovation. New things are afoot business wise, and some personal changes are underway as well. All end up being natural and/or for the good, but…seldom are things as easy as you’d hope and expect. So here are some reflections on coping with change.

First, there are some changes afoot for Quinnovation. If all comes together as planned, there’ll be some updates come the new year. Yet these changes, welcomed as they are, will require me to adopt some new work practices. For instance, my attempts at project management will need to become more effective. I’ve been working on it, but I need to instill some new habits. I’m putting in place some steps, but…not everything works as well as you’d hope. Useful watchwords here are concepts like acceptance and agility.

Which is also true for some expected, but significant personal things. Of course, these are more complicated. They entail large bureaucracies, not just leveraging interpersonal relationships with the principals. Thus, you run into all the flaws of complicated systems, and things fall through the cracks. They’re also largely immovable objects, so remedying problems is an exercise in calm. Watchwords here might be patience and persistence.

Of course, some are just new events in familiar guises, such as new clients, e.g. Quinnovation as usual. Here the mechanisms are familiar, but details are different. This requires reliance on updating familiar patterns to new circumstances. Useful watchwords here are adaptation and execution.

I’m reminded of April Rinne’s Flux, which I recently reviewed. It’s a good time for me to review her 8 superpowers for coping with change. I’m positive and committed, but I also have to acknowledge the shift from my comfort zone. However, that’s what learning’s all about, right? It’s partly formal and partly informal learning, yet this is what I  do. So here’s to more learning!

Beyond Industrial Age Thinking

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I’ve long maintained that our organizational practices are too often misaligned with how our brains really work. I’ve attributed that to a legacy from previous eras. Yet, I realize that there may be another legacy, a cognitive one. Here I’ll suggest we need to move beyond Industrial Age thinking.

The premise comes from business. We transitioned from a largely agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy, of goods and services. Factories got economic advantage from scale. We also essentially treated people as parts of the machine. Taylorism, aka scientific management, looked at how much a person could produce if they were working as efficiently as possible, without damage. So few were educated, and we didn’t have sufficiently sophisticated mechanisms. Times change, and we’re now in an information age. Yet, a number of our approaches are still based upon industrial approaches. We’re living on a legacy.

Now I’m taking this is to our models of mind. The cognitive approach is certainly more recent than the Industrial Age, but it carries its own legacies. We regularly take technology as metaphors for mind. Before the digital computer, for instance, telephone switching was briefly used as a model. The advent of the digital computer, a general purpose information system, is a natural next step. We’re information processing machines, so aren’t we like computers?

It turns out, we’re not. There’s considerable evidence that we are not formal, logical, reasoning machines. In fact, we do well what it’s hard to get computers to do, and vice-versa. We struggle to remember large quantities of data, or abstract and arbitrary information, and to remember it verbatim. Yet we also are good at pattern-matching and meaning-making (sometimes  too good; *cough* conspiracy theories *cough*). Computers are the opposite. They can remember large quantities of information accurately, but struggle to do meaning-making.

My concern is that we’re still carrying a legacy of formal reasoning. That is, the notion that we can do it all in our heads, alone, continues though it’s been proven inaccurate. We make inferences and take actions based upon this assumption, perhaps not even consciously!

How else to explain, for instance, the continuing prevalence of information presentation under the guise of training? I suggest there’s a lingering belief that if we present information to people, they’ll logically change their behavior to accommodate. Information dump and  knowledge test are a natural consequence of this perspective. Yet, this doesn’t lead to learning!

When we look at how we really perform, we recognize that we’re contextually-influenced, and tied to previous experience. If we want to do things differently, we have to  practice doing it differently. We can provide information (specifically mental models, examples, and feedback) to facilitate both initial acquisition and continual improvement, but we can’t just present information.

If we want to truly apply learning science to the design of instruction, we have to understand our brains. In reality, not outdated metaphors. That’s the opportunity, and truly the necessity. We need to move beyond Industrial Age thinking, and incorporate post-cognitive perspectives. To the extent we do, we stand to benefit.

Quip: Systematic Creativity

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I’ve documented some  quips in the past, but apparently not this one yet. Prompted by a nice article by Connie Malamed on creativity, I’m reminded of a saying, and the underlying thinking. Here’s both the quip and some more on systematic creativity. First, the quip:

Systematic creativity is  not an oxymoron!

In her article, Connie talks about what creativity is, why it’s important, and then about steps you can take to increase it. I want to dig a wee bit further into the cognitive and formal aspects of this to backstop her points. (Also, of course, to make the point that a cognitive perspective provides important insight.)

As background, I’ve been focused on creating learning experiences. This naturally includes cognition as the basis for learning, experiences,  and design. So I’ve taken eclectic investigations on all three. For instruction, I continue to track for insights from behavioral, social, cognitive, post-cognitive, even  machine learning. On the engagement side, I continue to explore games, drama, fiction, UI/UX, roleplay, ‘flow’, and more. Similarly, for design my explorations include architecture, software engineering, graphic, product, information, and more.

One of the interesting areas comes from computer science, searching through problem-spaces for solutions. If we think of the solution set as a space, some solutions are better than others. It may not be a smooth continuum, but instead we might have local maxima that are ‘ok’, but there’s another elsewhere that’s better. If we are too lax in our search, we might only find the local maxima. However, there are ways to increase the chances of exploring a broader space, making a more global search. (Of course, this can be multidimensional.)

Practically, this includes several possibilities. For one, having a diverse team increases the likelihood that we’ll be exploring more broadly. (On the flip side, having folks who all think alike mean all but one are redundant. ;). For another, brainstorming properly keeps the group from prematurely converging. We can use lateral random prompts to push us to other areas. And so on. I wrote a series of four posts about design that included a suite of heuristics to increase the likelihood of finding a good solution. Connie’s suggestions do likewise.

I also suppose this is a mental model that we can use to help think about designing. Mental models are bases for predictions and decisions. In this case, having the mental model can assist in thinking through practices that are liable to generate better design practices. How do we keep from staying localized? How do we explore the solution space in a manner that goes broad, but not exhaustively (in general, we’re designing under time and cost constraints).

Creativity is the flip side of innovation. It takes the former to successfully execute on the latter. It’s a probabilistic game, but we can increase our odds by certain practices that emerge from research, theory, and practice. We also want to include emotion in the picture as well, in our design practices as well as in our solutions. When we do, we’re more likely to explore the space effectively, and increase our chances for the best solution. That’s a worthwhile endeavor, I’ll suggest. What are your systematic creativity approaches?