Ken Burns on Storytelling

Ken Burns is a national treasure. 

There are so many take-aways for instructional designers and trainers and OD professionals in this five minute piece.  But I won't go on and on.  It speaks for itself. 



What I am reflecting on:

 
The power of storytelling for teaching in the affective domain.
The power of storytelling to illustrate complex concepts such as cognitive dissonance.
How there is no one version of truth... everybody holds a piece of the truth.

On Teachable Moments

I am a big fan of the comic strip, XKCD.  The best humor is observation of the small ironies and truths of everyday life.  Randall Munroe is brilliant at it.

Having worked in the past in the field of ABE, I am particularly sensitized to the fragile confidence with which adult learners often struggle.  This is also true in workforce training, where people's jobs and professional futures may be on the line.  Most everyone struggles with what I call "the imposter syndrome."  Leaders and trainers must know there are no insignificant comments or tone of voice.

Early wins built confidence and engagement.  Use every opportunity to encourage both.  The more learners can relax in to trusting you and the experience, the more they will learn.

Designing for Flow

After having read this blog post by John Hagel on the new book, "Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization,"  the book is now at the top of my library list.  

It also has me reflecting on the concept of "flow," both in how I practice my craft and in my life.  The core theme of the book is introducing the concept of  the constructal law: “For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve in such a way that provides easier access to the currents that flow through it.”  The author goes on to say:  “The constructal law is a shout from the rooftops: Everything that flows and moves generates designs that evolve to survive (to live)."

Things that live / move persist and become sustaining by constructing and evolving themselves for the most efficient flow.  Think rivers, lightening strikes, animals staking out prime grazing or hunting grounds. 

Diverse, easily-accessible sources of input, minimizing/removing barriers and inefficiencies to the "flow" process, and opportunity for expression/practice/application/output to "feed forward":  These are the prime, universal elements of the law that I can identify. It all speaks to sustainability... the persistence of the "life" of something, be it a river, a person, an idea.  This concept has implications for and application to all aspects of life, including support networks of family, friends and professional colleagues, the rise of social media for communication and learning, democracy, the politics of energy and conservation, etc.

It makes me think about how I:

• Structure a lesson plan
• Architect a performance management program
• Manage my own professional development
• Prioritize my time and nurture my relationships / communities - personal and professional
• Take care of myself and the ones I love

It creates a new paradigm for approaching it all.  Wow... and I haven't even read the book yet!

 

Failure: Necessary for Success

The more I read about creativity, the more I read about failure.  Failure is a necessary and integral element of the creative process, for leadership, for success in business, relationships... just about everything.  Here are a couple examples to my point:

From Stanford's School of Engineering's blog, "Ask the Expert":  How Should Organizations Handle Failures?

"The best-run organizations understand that failure enables improvements in everyday work and characterizes the creative process. Dysfunctional companies create a climate of fear where failures are stigmatized and hidden. There, mistakes are never examined, creativity is stifled and progress is difficult."

This Business Week article, "How Failure Breeds Success" argues that breakthroughs depend on failure and the best companies embrace their mistakes.  I particularly like the idea of "failure parties."
 

From Hack the System:  Habits, Failure, and the Creative Process–How IDEO, the World’s Premier Design Firm, Succeeds by Expecting Failure

In the Creative Liberty blog post: Embracing Creative Failure (I): Getting It Half-Right , insightfully aligns "failure" with the inherent iterative nature of the creative process.
 
Dave Atack of Intrepid Learning argues we should embrace failure as a learning tool in his post, "Fear of Failure." 


Michael Hyatt, who writes on intentional leadership and Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  In his podcast: How to Benefit from Setbacks and  Failures he speaks to the lessons he's learned from big failures in his work and personal lives.

More on Creativity

“It’s hard to have original ideas when you are surrounded by people who all have the same experiences as you.” 

 – Jonathan Harris

“Intuition is a very powerful thing—more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.” 

– Steve Jobs 

 A friend forwarded this link to an NPR interview of author Jonah Lehrer on his new book: "Imagine:  How Creativity Works."  His book, and the interview, focus on recent research on how inspiration and the creative process work.  The findings support long-held folk wisdom on epiphanies in showers, the tortured artist, and more.  This Fresh Air podcast is a 1/2 hour well spent:

'Imagine' That: Fostering Creativity In The Workplace

Delicious Tidbits: Measurement

A colleague will be speaking on "getting real with measurement" soon at an industry event.  She asked her community of practice to provide her with opinions on what this means to each of us and with resources that might be useful.  Themes that arose were alignment with organizational goals, ROI and "less talking, more doing."  I dug through my Delicious library recently and found some interesting articles and other resources on measurement:

From Educause, an article by George Siemens and Phil Longon on, "Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education."

From the eLearning Curve Blog, a post by Micheal Hanley on:  "Evaluating Non-formal Learning: Validity in Research"

And another eLearning Curve Blog post: "Using Quantitative Data when Evaluating Non-Formal Learning"

ASTD's:  "Handbook of Measuring and Evaluating Training: 2010"

A measurement job aid from Will At Work Learning.

From Dave Duarte's blog,20 Ways to Evaluate Contributions to a Corporate Social Network

From the Dissident: Trying to Find Life's Instructional Manual, a post on "Measuring the value of communities of practice."

A Beth Kanter blog post on Reporting Social Media Metrics To Stakeholders.

From The Social Organization blog, a post on Social Media Metrics.
 

And, finally, from Forbes Magazine, an articles on Five New Management Metrics.

Do you have favorite, "go-to" articles or tools you would like to share?  I'd love to see them! 

On Belonging and Leading

“Human beings can’t help it: we need to belong. One of the most powerful of our survival mechanisms is to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people. We are drawn to leaders and to their ideas, and we can’t resist the rush of belonging and the thrill of the new. … We want to belong not to just one tribe, it turns out, but to many. And if you give us tools and make it easy, we’ll keep joining. Tribes make our lives better. And leading a tribe is the best life of all.”
- Seth Godin

Tribes, by Seth Godin

Hat tip to design maven SwissMiss