The right questions in the right place
In the last article, we discussed the need to collect feedback at the end of a meeting. But often, for the meeting to be successful, it is not enough to collect feedback. We want the meeting to be valuable. Therefore, today we will talk about another practice of Management 3.0 and its unusual application.
So, welcome — Yay! Questions. This practice tells us to focus on experience and learning rather than mistakes and failures. For it, you can use two questions:
- What did we do well? (by following practices)
- What did we learn? (by running experiments)
These questions allow maintaining a positive attitude, concluding what happened, and understanding the importance of experimentation. You can use this practice for a retrospective or update meeting. But today, as I promised, we will look at a more unusual applying.
If you are providing a teaching or training course, you want (I hope) it not to be a waste of time. The knowledge you share should benefit other people. How can we help with this?
According to the concept of The Ladder of Inference (The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge), when we apply new knowledge, we go through an unconscious thinking process. This thought process can be imagined as a ladder that leads us from data to action:
Sometimes people need a little help to get through the process.
The Yay! Questions practice is perfect for this.
Focusing on the experience and the information received, we go through the first steps of the ladder (questions like “What did I learn?” or “What did I use?”). And the second question helps to go through the following steps bringing us closer to action (like “What can I try?” or “What can I use in my work?”). These questions help to prepare right at the training for the use of knowledge, and not to forget about them after the end of the meeting.
How often have you conducted training or education (including those requested by the participants) and then realized that people’s work has not changed? Have you ever asked yourself — they lied to me when they said that everything is clear and it will be helpful? Or maybe you were blaming yourself — Am I so wrongly explained? It happened to me regularly. After that, I realized that sometimes no one is to blame. People just need help and support to move from the state “I can” to the state “I use”.
When providing training or education, I always prepare a board with relevant questions for the end of the meeting.
I tried different options — asking questions sequentially (hiding the second part of the board until the discussion of the first question is over), individually recording and discussing the results, or sequentially polling all participants. In my practice, I have used different formulations of questions that help to focus on experience and learning, for example — “What did I know?” & ”What can I achieve with this knowledge?”, “What did I try today?” & ”What can I use in my work?”, “What have I learned?” & ”Now what?” etc.
There is no perfect recipe, experiment!
The results of this practice are valuable for you because you can discover what was correctly understood and how well you explained what you wanted. But the main thing is that it can be helpful for the participants, as it helps them finalize what they learned for themselves and take the first mental step towards action. When I give this exercise, I always the participants’ pay attention to what they are doing this practice for themselves, so that meeting time is not wasted.
The use of this practice does not guarantee the application of the knowledge gained. There may always be other reasons (both personal and organizational). Nevertheless, ignoring a possible problem is not the best way out.
Instead of searching for your mistakes or blaming others, try using Occam’s razor (“the simplest explanation is usually the best one”) and solve the most obvious problem.
Therefore, to make your training even more effective, try to use the right questions in the right place.
