Chunky Learning is like Spaghtti Sauce?

Malcolm Gladwell tells the story about how a food industry consultant was put in charge of discovering what kind of spaghetti sauce people like to eat.  When the consultant asked the “experts”, they described runny sauces as the most authentic so the most preferred.  But when they were actually given taste tests, they overwhelming chose “thick and chunky” sauces.  At that time, there were no “thick and chunky” pasta sauces on the market even though that is what people wanted.  The consultant worked with Prego to come out with many of kinds of “thick and chunky” sauces, and no if you go to the supermarket you could find dozens of “thick and chunky” style sauces – the thicker and chunkier the better.  

 

How is this like “Chunky Learning”?   If I ask people what kind of training programs they want, they describe week long programs, and very complex delivery.   But when actually given the choice between getting their training in the “chunky” format (bite size chunks of learning) and week long programs (such as eLearning or half-day programs) some reach for the chunky style.   

 

How do people learn most effectively?  Studies tend to agree that learners need to find ways to apply their learning, and that learning should happen close to the time that it can be applied.  Also, retention rates of learning in a traditional lecture format are practically nil.  Now there are instructors that can make lectures or week long programs very effective, but I postulate that what they are really delivering is “chunky” in that they have broken down the learning into “bite size chunks” :  The learner takes a bite, then there is learner application, then another bite, and so on.  Please allow digestion between bites!

Reading Today: What Got You Here Won't Get You There

I picked up the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith about 4 months ago and it is one of the few books this year that I have read from cover to cover. Now that I have read the whole thing I can attack it chunky-style, reading paragraphs here and there.

I really like Marshall Goldsmith (he is just a neat guy and speaks/writes in a gentle way)(kind of the polar opposite approach of Tom Peters who I also really really like). Goldsmith gives a lot of tips in this book for moving from point A (where you are today) to point B (where you want to be).

The book’s title sums things up pretty good, and the content is easy to follow and nicely categorized into four sections: (1) The Trouble with Success; (2) The Twenty Habits That Hold You Back from the Top; (3) How We Can Change for the Better; and (4) Pulling Out the Stops.

I have been recommending this book to leaders that come to me for advice/coaching.

Here’s my chunky review. For the non-chunky version you will have to read the book.

Section One: The Trouble With Success-- Success feels really good, and builds confidence. The problem is that it is easy to think that you are responsible for your success and that you naturally will be successful in the future. That kind of thinking can lead to failure: you need to realize that just because you are successful doesn’t mean that you will rise to the top. In fact a lot of the habits and behaviors that got you to where you are today might not be sustainable.

Section Two: The Twenty Habits That Hold You Back From the Top--Goldsmith gives a great run-down on 20 habits that we can acquire along the way, which can hold us back. When I read these I said for some of them “that’s me” and for others “that’s that other guy, he’s such a jerk.” So my advice is go down the list, pick a couple of these and work on them, and keep you self-awareness high to see if you can catch yourself behaving in one of these destructive ways.

1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations - when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.

2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them

4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However” : The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”

6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.

9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit when we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

(There’s also a 21^st habit, which is goal obsession.)

Section Three: How We Can Change For The Better-- Goldsmith gives a roadmap to correcting these behaviors and (possibly) setting yourself up for success. They are all common sense.

Feedback

Apologizing

Telling the world, or advertising

Listening

Thanking

Following up

Practicing “feedforward” (asking what can you do better in the future)

Section Four: Pulling Out the Stops-- This chapter talks about the special situations that leaders are in and their responsibilities for orchestrating change in people.

Organizational Agility

I’ve been thinking about Organizational Agility a lot (as a competency and success factor) recently.  An executive asked me to pull together a workshop regarding this, which he called the “ability to work through the smoke and mirrors,” or the ability to get things done amid complexity.  Some of the “remedies” for this are increasing self-awareness (understanding your strengths and weaknesses in this area), and the ability to size-up the complexity of the organization, and keeping your composure when confronted with complexity/rejection.  

 

Organizational Agility is defined by Lominger according to this map:

 

“Organizations can be complex mazes with many turns, dead ends, quick routes, and choices.  In most organizations, the best path to get somewhere is almost never a straight line.  There is a formal organization – the one on the organization chart – where the path may look straight, and then there is the informal organization where all paths are zigzagged.  Since organizations are staffed with people, they become all the more complex.  There are gatekeepers, expediters, stoppers, resisters, guides, Good Samaritans, and influencers.  All of these types live in the organizational maze.  The key to being successful in maneuvering through complex organizations is to find your way through the maze to your goal in the least amount of time while making the least noise.  The best way to do that is to accept the complexity of organizations rather than fighting it and learn to be a maze-bright person.”    (quote from “FYI For Your Productivity, A Guide for Development and Coaching” by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger)(one of my go-to books).

 

What in effect Lombardo and Eichinger are saying is “business is very complicated.  Work through the complexity.”  When I was going to MBA School one of the texts we read started out with the line “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we see the truth, we transcend it… because once we accept it, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters”  (the book was “The Road Less Traveled” by Scott Peck)  which means in effect “life is tough.  Don’t expect that your life is going to be easy.”    Business is no different:  business is complex: if you accept that fact you can begin to find a way to work within it. 

 

A related competency would be “simplifying the complex” which maybe I will write about another day.

 

Reading Today: Persuasive Presentations for Business

Today (and a bit yesterday and a chunk a month ago) I have been reading a book called "Persuasive Presentations for Business" by Robert W. Bly. I ordered it from Amazon.

The reason that I picked up this book is because I had to give a presentation about change management and was frankly a bit nervious. This was a ten minute presentation to a CEO and her staff, and I was browzing the books and found this one. I am glad I did!

This book, which is written in an easy to understand style, gives some great tips on how to write the speach, how to engage the audience, etc. The author has a "number one secret" which I am going to let you in on because you are so nice in reading my blog.

"When I am speaking to a group," Bly writes, "I look into the audience as I begin talking, find one person who is looking back at me, and make eye contact. Then, I talke to just that one person as if we were having a private, one-on-one conversation. I know everyone else can hear us. But notice: I am not 'giving a lecture' or 'making a speech,' those activities that the average person approaches with fear and trepidation. Instead, I am just having a conversation with one person."

When I speak to big groups, I always like to meet people at the door, shake their hands, and try to find a person who seems genuinly interested in what I am going to talk about. That is the person who I give my presentation to: someone who I know and not to strangers.

Now I am preparing for another big presentation (this one for a group of 300 executives) and I am going to use some of the tips and secrets that I am learning in this highly readable and concise paperback: Persuasive Presentations for Business.

click here to see it on Amazon

Why "Chunky Learning"?

What is "chunky learning"?

There's a joke that goes something like this: "How do you eat an elephant?" with the answer being "One bite at a time."

Same goes with learning. For me and other busy (and easily bored) people, the best way to learn is in bite size chunks. Sometimes I will learn five minutes of this, ten minutes of that, and so on. In today's fast paced world, who has the time to spend days in training?

That is one of the reasons I like this kind of learning: online learning, book summaries, magazines, and Internet searching. Now once in a while I take a "real class" (in fact once in a while I teach a class.) But most of what I learn is in chunky-format.

So I hope that you, my blog reader, will get some "chunks" of learning from my blog.

Welcome to my blog

This is my first post. Welcome.

I am creating this blog to document some of the things that I do and think about business and personal success. I am an avid reader so a lot of this will be about things I am reading.

I am "Director of Global Learning" at a big corporation, which means that I am in charge of education, training, employee development, and such. I love this kind of work, with the greatest challenge being keeping focused and business oriented.

Here goes the blog!

Dave