GOLD MEDALISTS not for after dinner speaking...

This week was, for me, the best sport on tv ever. It was utterly brilliant and genius to watch the Athletes bring in so much gold.  Well done. I’m really proud to be British and gutted I didn’t get any tickets to watch it live.

A dark place...

I’ve also considered how the winners and the teams behind them will all be invited by corporate juggernauts and business behemoths to speak at company events and road shows to pass on their learning. Top executives will pay thousands of pounds each to sit at top tables with the Design Teams and Management Teams of winning Gold Medallists.

CEOs, FDs, Executive Board members will all name drop feverishly months and years from now on the night they had the privilege to hear and ‘learn’ how to get the best from the best.

And nothing of course will change.

That’s the difference between the two worlds and why they shouldn’t mix.

Quangos made up of lazy thinking members from HR, L+D and Internal Comms will think that global businesses culture, values and winning spirit could be solved in an after dinner speaking slot lasting an hour.

An OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST is the ONE PERSON ON PLANET EARTH who knows the true meaning of working hard to get performance right.

If I ever get the chance to listen to any member of the British Cycling Team, I promise to shut up and listen.

My advice would be to do the same.

visual thinking - beats powerpoints 90 years ago.

Here’s a colour study from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.  He was a student come teacher at the Bahaus and let’s face it, the owner of quite a cool name.

If you forgive the quality ( I was taking the photo using my phone in the gallery where I wasn’t supposed to), you’ll notice colours in circles all sitting in a pencil grid.

It’s a genius piece of visual thinking and gives me an example of how you can solve problems in pictures.  Moholy-Nagy was working out the curriculum for the Bauhaus and what student groups went where, when, with whom and for how long.  Looking at the piece I noticed he had worked out a smart little 'carrousel' curriculum where all the students got their full exposure to the material, the teachers got variety, the workshops may have avoided bottle necking and everyone knew what was going on at any given moment.

I like this because:

• It didn’t need a computer (spreadsheets and i-pads werent’ around in 1920).
• It’s done by hand – suggesting the whole thing happened in one sitting; think of the time he had spare to show off his surname in the village. maybe he did it in th park, down the pub or likely at his desk BUT he didn't have to.
• We’ve got the whole “I get it” bit all on a single page so other people can understand – something too often we miss at work when our colleagues send us ANOTHER powerpoint with ANOTHER page added at the end.

We’ve a saying here at ‘theBox’  A picture paints a thousand words and stimulates a thousand too.  If I were teaching at the Bauhaus, all I’d need from Laslo at term start would be this sheet and the freedom to get on and teach; precisely what my thousand words would be used for. Utter Genius.

Now, go spend the afternoon DRAWING your problem and see what happens as you then try and solve it.

Lateral Thinking - really?

Too much of this crap about.

This is how the brain works (and don’t any academic types write in and correct me.  Putting me right in the neuron department you won’t feel as satisfying to you as when I ask you to come up with 10 ideas for something in as many minutes and watch you fail – that’s what I had to do today to earn a shilling so nnnrrrgggghhhh!)

So back to the brain. Basically it’s hard wired to hinder any creative thought as it makes sense of the world through association.  I say ‘BLUE’, you say ‘SKY’.  Free association then and other rubbish games in brainstorms won’t work.  Something I mentioned last week about being positive and non judgemental is also a hindrance as if I’ve nothing to risk by sharing my thinking, then why bother sharing anything at all; if everything I say is ‘right’ and ‘unjudged’ then what’s my incentive to contribute...

Back to the brain.  It makes all these connections and finds itself ‘stuck’ in the familiar so we need a little nudge of new material to shake things up.  In the same way dropping in a new guest to a cocktail party creates more possibility of new conversations happening, a new piece of stimulus will fire the axons and neurons and forge new connections in the head. The result of which will ultimately lead to some nursery thinking and eventually an idea... blah, blah, blah.  Your average creativity book says all this.

So, why mess it all up with lateral thinking techniques. WE DONT NEED 101 of them. All you’re giving people is 101 ways to create stimulus. You’re not giving me 101 ideas.  To illustrate my point. We can arrive at the same piece of stimulus by chance using different lateral thinking techniques. I could pull an orange out of a bag.  I could flick though a dictionary at random and fall on the word orange. I could ask someone to think of a word and they say orange.  I can re-express the problem I’m trying to solve and realise it’s a bit like an orange. I could draw the issue... looks like an orange... I could act out my problem with colleagues... we end up improv acting an orange in a bag... there are a number of inherent rules about the problem we could break – one rule is that this problem has never involved oranges... and so on until we reach 101 ways of creating more and more stimulus (or oranges).

What we need to get better at is linking ‘orange’ back to my issue. To do this we need to watch what our head does with ‘orange’ and where it goes. The stimulus need not be a direct link to the idea we have, it’s just there to nudge me along.  I don’t care what the stimulus is, i just need it.  So I actually need 1 lateral thinking technique that I can use time and again to generate any piece of stimulus. As any piece of stimulus will give me an idea if I work it hard enough - it’s THAT which I see little evidence or advice of.  It’s that genius way of getting ‘the new’ and allowing you to make associations with it in your thinking.

Yet we’re brilliant at it without the books and the dreadful training courses with coloured paper and fairy lights.

Ever heard anyone in the office say “I was watching telly last night and there was this programme on ship building and it got me thinking about our recent product placement campaign we’ve to  deliver on Tuesday... why don’t we...?” and away we go.

Lateral thinking techniques – please.

You’ll be asking me to wear coloured hats next.

Brainstorming doesn't work.

Brainstorming doesn’t work.

In the 40’s and 50’s, Alex Osborn (one of the dudes who started up BBDO) outlined in a series of books the concept of Brainstorming. This creative technique advocated volume of ideas over quality and the nurturing of all suggestions in group work. The output of such sessions where ‘no idea is a bad idea’ would be useful and tangible material from which a project and a business could prosper.

I’m sure you’ve been in a brainstorm. We’re all familiar with this daily dose of destiny at a business level. As I type this and as you read it, there is probably somewhere a nervous office junior clutching a flip chart whilst some blazer wearing incompetent gathers up post in notes of luminous colours on which are written half-baked and poorly captured thinking in what the business sees as useful and important brainstorming sessions.

Each year £20bn is spent on training. A percentage of which is no doubt spent on innovation and creativity development where brainstorming and its techniques are rolled out.
It doesn’t work.

It’s costing you money.

I can count on one hand the people I think are any good at it.
You don’t have to go far on a literature search in book or web to cite hundreds of studies over the past few decades – way back to Osborne’s time – that suggest brainstorming is no more effective at idea generation than allowing individuals to ruminate with their own thoughts over time. Some have even suggested that the group dynamic of over emphasising our own performance actually means brainstorming is a sure way to get LESS output than scratching our heads alone.
So here is my point of view on all this:

Brainstorming doesn’t work for four reasons.

1. The facilitation how or who is actually running the session in order to garner output.
2. The over emphasis on creative techniques to push thinking.
3. The actual capture of output that leads to confusion.
4. The belief we have to be positive at all times.

and now let me expand and explain.

1. 99% of the time, there is no-one actually facilitating the brainstorming session. Facilitation can become a dirty word so I’ll clear it up here. The facilitator’s role is to capture OUTPUT from the session. Facilitation is not about coming up with the ideas. If it were – then we wouldn’t need brainstorming and we could all sit at home all day and come up with ideas. If any two people meet in the creative process, one of them needs to agree to be the facilitator in order to record and agree the next steps, if not, then it’s just a conversation in a corridor, lift, boardroom or office cubicle that’s wasted. Back to brainstorming sessions, few facilitators/moderators/trainers/coaches have the skills or experience to recognise what is going on, how they need to be, how others need to be and then what to do to get the best output of a session. At a skill level it’s all executed with post it notes and marker pens (sigh) and at a behavioural level it’s all about ‘being positive at all times’ -surprisingly the last thing we actually want. Facilitation is key to a great brainstorm session. Without it, nothing happens. It’s just a chat. And the more people in the room shouting at a flip chart, the more time you’re wasting.

2. There is an over emphasis on creative techniques. Think about any classic books called ‘101’ lateral thinking techniques. This is 100 too many. In fact, you’ve a 100 techniques to forget. The main things for people to be able to do is be able to connect any random piece of stimulus to the challenge they face. This is actually super easy when facilitated, coached, supported and given a simple walk through of what to do and how to be. It’s what we do naturally in most conversations. There is no need to list anything and challenge it, dress up, draw, act or introduce toys from a bag. It’s distracting. If you’re being well facilitated, the problem and your own astonishing ability is all you need. I think I’d be totally out of order in citing links on YouTube to sessions showing these dreadful sessions, tools and technqiues. I respect people’s work at any level and this is blog is not about pointing fingers without context BUT the web is littered with misleading information. Keep things simple and at pace and you can have ideas on ANYTHING... a subject I’ll return to another time.

3. Finally the output is poorly captured. Too many thoughts instead of ideas. Consider “I think we should eat out tonight” is a thought. “I think we should eat at the Curry House at the end of the street”. This is an idea. It’s something we can DO and everyone understand it at the same level. “..eating out tonight” is open to interpretation and too often it’s this comment that’s captured on a post it as output from a Brainstorm. Get it right. Capture IDEAS and not THOUGHTS.

I’ll save a further posting for the big contention; no. 4 that we don’t need to be positive to have a good idea. For that, dear readers, you’ll have to wait. I thank you however for making it this far.

As for the questions on what we as a business did this week... we held two Brainstorms. And on both occasions for our clients, we mitagated against disaster and made sure there were facilitators in the room, we schoold folk on ideas and not thoughts, we embraced the critical comments and we stuck to the brief.

Tomorrow, if someone says let’s have a brainstorm – tell them not to bother...

.. or call us
x

WHY WORKSHOP HANDOUTS ARE CRAP.

Adult learners don’t need information – they need application.

Consider going on a workshop or a project or a training session. In work or out of work. At the time it all makes sense and you can make connections in the context of the classroom (that’s often because the trainers should have engineered it so it works positively). Anyway, you return back to work and after a few days of catching up on missing emails, you think “oh yes, I ought to do some of what I learned last week.”

And nothing happens.

So you ask for a handout or an aide memoir or a bit of written support.

And that is where it just goes wrong. So please can all folk in L+D stop doing it.

FACT: children with learning needs (e.g. struggling with maths or English homeworks) are often put in classes or extra class where they are given more work to do to help them. Easier problems or verbs to learn. They don’t do very well. BUT if given counselling (or coaching, frame it how you like) they do very well – better in fact than their peers without help.
Children make good learners are most of their world is at school and what you can’t succeed in doing one day you can succeed in doing the next as each day and week and term presents more opportunity to get it right. A lot can be learned from this when it comes to adult learning.

Adult learners are different.

It’s a one chance thing really as they have a desk job to commercially deliver upon. They don’t make good learners.

Few (if any) read up on the courses they attend and question the material they are given. A simple google search or Wiki search will fuel them with plenty of information on what they are about to learn and in many cases that’s VERY detailed and far beyond what’s offered on a course. So it’s not a question of information adults want to satisfy their learning needs but application.

Consider me teaching you to change a tyre on a car. I could sit you in my kitchen and show you pictures, tell you stories, draw you sketches, watch films on youtube, go –online to a forum, ask questions, dial up a conference call, web chat, webinar, tweet, act and a whole range of blended learning options.

Or I undo one bolt, you watch and listen to my advice. I then watch you undo the other three. We take it in turns in short stabs of info and immediately apply learning AS WE SOLVE THE TASK so the learning is visceral and real. The added extra is I then watch you teach someone else what you have just learned on the second wheel of the car offering feedback to your coaching style and quality of advice, chosen language, metaphors, stories and timing.

That’s what makes great adult learning.

Handouts are not the answer. They are a symptom of trainers not considering the learning issues and thinking more material makes up for what’s clearly missing in their classroom intervention.

In summary, we learn all the time but at work we learn in a sociocontextual fashion how to be and what to do. We pick up the learning from watching those around us. We adults don’t make good learners when training isn’t thought out for us. Adults have forgotten how to learn (or don’t realise that they need to change their behaviour a little to lock in the new content). You don’t have to read very far to see the statistics on how much is learned before and after the interventions.

If there is a constant request after your training for some more material don’t give it to participants but think on why it is they are asking.
It’s because the want is there to apply but the ability to do so isn’t. You can’t teach the ability transfer bit, you can only pass on information. It’s in the coaching whilst doing the magic happens.

Change your programme design so there is more of that and more opportunity for live work on live projects and material and see what happens...

Now, go save your photocopier and yourself a lot of wasted time.

the more things stay the same, the more we change...

The more things change, the more they remain the same...

Or should it be the more things stay the same, the more we change?

I was sitting on the train last night. [Before we go any further, this is the correct English. Far too often I hear “I was sat on the train”. That is incorrect. If you are DOING the action, then your verb must be active not passive!)
So,

I was sitting on the train last night. I was returning home from another day in London and the carriage then filled with school boys. “uh oh” I thought, here we go. Then I just watched and listened as I pretended to read my book – but not in a nasty way.

So NOTHING has changed in 25 odd years since I was their age. These guys were 12/13/14. They all looked the same as my class at school. There was the fat one, the ugly one, the sporty looking ones, the small scrawny looking on ee who probably had a pretty sister, there was the joker, the quiet one and so on... The lad opposite me was reading his exam notes (1950s communism, nitrogen cycle, French verbs and what looked like a bit of classics. I figured a posh school). The lad to my right was on his phone and the one to the right of the one opposite was playing a ps2 and talking apps, downloads and interrupting everyone with the gaol he’d just scored at the European cup.

Nothing has changed has it.

My trips were full of the same thing, just different content and expressed differently. We had magazines (Viz), the Ps2 was a rubbish Donkey Kong that was made of red plastic and had the screen printed in ink as the graphics were like a modern day digital watch, football, science lessons, balls sports, teachers we hated, bikes we’d ridden, homeworks we’d forgotten, tapes we were listening too and which member of the A-team was best were the subjects.

I suppose a steam train in the 1930’s wouldn’t look that different, straw hated boys talking latin and cricket... and maybe 50 years from now I hope the school is going and some hologram t-shirt will replace the totally impractical blazers our kids are forced to wear.

For years people say ‘the youth of today’ and ‘it wasn’t like that for us back in the day’.. but it was. And it is. We’ve changed. That’s all.
I’ve changed.
I don’t get the music as easily.
I can’t as easily intuitively pick up the Ps2.
I know nothing about the euros.
I still don’t see why we need to learn the nitrogen cycle either.

BUT I am happy that we send boys to school so they can go on trips and interact with each other on day like yesterday; It was there and in those situations I found I could understand everything.

Last night, I was just a commuter on a train and the world seemed pretty difficult if I let it...

mobiles - bad for the back

Had my chiropractic appointment just before the weekend (no, this is not a lead in to a joke) and before we had the joy of adjustment, we got chatting about health in general.

Not quite the full hippy, I do believe that a healthy head = health body. It (the head) after all is the control system for everything else so chemicals, thoughts and actions for me are all intertwined. the chiropractor and I have hit it off in this meeting of health thyself minds.

Anyhow two points to think on from our chat...

count the number of people (particularly kids) hunched over their heels tapping away on mobiles - bad for the back...

AND consider the NHS. It's full of sick people right? it's not about health, it's about treating you when things have got to the stage you're broken. So let's call it the National Sick Service!

Imagine the programming across society such a name gives and how more readily we'd take care of ourselves as a result.

Got me stretching and eating veg all weekend.