I’m no history buff, nor am I a science guru by any means. In his book titled, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari says, “The most commonly believed theory argues that accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language.” (Harari, 2015, p. 21).
As human beings, we possess an extremely strong tool inside our melons that, if used properly, allow us to grow and evolve. Our brains enable us to not only function, but to become more effective and efficient at what we do. Whether for good or for evil, we tend to learn from our actions and progress. Depending on where you are along your life’s journey, you may hear your parent’s voices in your head giving you advice or you might be sitting at a bar with your colleagues doodling on the back of a napkin on how to fix a problem. These moments occur because our brains retained lessons learned and we are trying to improve the situation.
I constantly reflect on the things I wish I would have paid more attention to when I was younger. As the old saying goes, “I wish I knew then what I know now”. I can guarantee had the 16-year-old version of me paid more attention in Math and English classes then, the 48-year-old version of me wouldn’t be using his fingers to calculate the tip on the bill or struggle with finding the correct performance verb when writing a curriculum outline.
That’s not to say I wish things would have been different then, because had we not made those in our younger lives, we wouldn’t be able to self-actualize the value those moments that made us who we are today. Throughout my career, I’ve been in unique positions to not only evaluate my own performance, but I’ve been able to evaluate and support the performance of others, teams and organizations. Each of those experiences, I could reflect on and identify a different variable or factor that I could have, would have, or should have tweaked to get a better outcome from than the one that I got. Again, that’s not to say, the initial outcome wasn’t great, but there’s always room for improvement.
Growing up, my father used to tell me, “Life is a multivariate equation”. Being the finger counter that I am, his words never resonated with me for the longest time until I started working on my doctoral program and was required to endure the likes of statistical reasoning. This, combined with other factors going on in my life and society as a whole, I finally understood the meaning. The things that make up the complexities of life aren’t as simple as this plus that make it better. Life is the result of countless variables interacting at the same time. Change one variable, and the outcome changes.
How many times have you been in an organization where the first thing out of a leader’s mouth is, “they need training”. A consulting firm is then brought on, and a large sum of money is spent to design and implement a new program just to find out that didn’t resolve the issue? What about an organization that runs out and purchases the latest and greatest Human Resources, Learning Management or Logistics system that they found at a conference, spends a fortune and ends up with buyer’s remorse during the implementation phase because it caused more problems than it resolved?
Whether you’re the unsuspecting employee who’s initiated one of those efforts, someone who makes their living providing a similar service, or someone who’s interested in reading this opinion; the underlying message I’m trying to convey is that improvement isn’t something that can be fixed by one thing or another, it’s a combination of things. Regardless of whether we are at work developing a business plan, home completing your honeydew list, coordinating the family vacation, or even grocery shopping; we will make assumptions about what is needed to achieve whatever the outcome is we are facing, but there will always be some unintended consequences that surface. Some of those unintended consequences may bring a new challenge to tackle, some might improve other variables we may not have been considering at the time. My life’s journey isn’t anywhere close to what I anticipated it would be and I’m still learning as I go.
I originally wanted to be a graphic designer for a scuba diving magazine. Then life happened. A combination of poor decisions, unexpected opportunities, economic downturns, military service, and changing priorities pushed me toward technology, leadership, education, and eventually performance improvement.
Looking back, I can see how each decision was based on assumptions about what the future would hold. Some worked out as planned. Many did not. What I didn’t understand at the time was that outcomes are rarely the result of a single decision. They are the product of many interacting variables, some within our control and many outside of it.
The more experience I gained, the more I realized that understanding those variables was far more important than finding quick answers. Then life happened. I received orders as the instructional technologist for the Advanced Distributing Learning program at headquarters. There’s an unintended consequence I didn’t foresee when I assumed I was living the life of a homeland security professional.
It was this assignment that introduced me to Human Performance Technology. All of a sudden, the young man who used to leverage the WWW to develop online courses is learning that there’s a science and methodology behind the madness, not just coding PowerPoints to an HTML format. Over a decade later goes by, I took assignments that weren’t typical of your standard U.S. Coast Guard Commissioned Officer and went from training assignment to training assignment while completing my Doctor of Education through Indiana University.
All along the way, there were whiteboards in conference rooms covered with colored markings and doodles. There were Scrum boards with stickie notes containing backlogs of ideas. There were piles of napkins at the local tavern with coworkers that had mental models of ways to improve this or that. If you’ve ever seen a State Farm Insurance commercial, you know the saying, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two”. I’m not here to tell you I have the all the answers, nor are my thoughts 100% accurate. I have read the books and understand the theories. I have put those theories into practice. I have also seen those efforts succeed and fail. Just like you, I have reflected on the things I would have done things differently. I’m going to share various theories with you, provide suggestions on how these theories can be put into practice with real-world examples, consider the unintended consequence, facilitate discussion and doodle on the back of the napkin. If Back of the Napkin isn’t for you and you leave with one piece of advice, it would be; if you’re going to learn anything, learn “how” to think, rather than “what” to think.
