StrategicLearner's blog

. . .   as I am delineating my blogging activities more clearly.   Here's a synopsis:

The Strategic Learner  is where I will share my observations and questions about learning, teaching, and training.  I'll be looking at how we adults learn, change and improve our performance in the corporate world, how higher education is morphing, and the use of social networking media to drive social and informal learning.  This blog is established and contains the archives from "A Matter of Strategy".

The Digital Disciple will be my vehicle for exploring the more personal side of life, including things spiritual, religious, and internal.  I'll look at my own denomination, talk about my experiences as a layperson working with an online religion-focused social network, and throw in a little psychology from time to time.  THis blog is new, so be patient:).

In ALL cases, I will focus on human behavior and how we live, work, interact and relate in our constantly changing world. 

I hope that you will join me as your needs and desires dictate.  My posts are never meant to be a speech or rant, but are always an invitation to others to come, listen, reflect, and respond.   

See you on the new sites:).

Just in case the above links do not work, here are the URLS for both sites:

• The Strategic Learner is at http://strategiclearner.wordpress.com/
• The Digital Disciple is at http://thedigitaldisciple.wordpress.com/

The issue:  Do we go for continuous performance improvement or address the reality of needing to get on with the daily flow of business?


I have often touted one of my "qualities" as being the desire to constantly seek a new and improved version of my own output. This sounds like a great thing, until I put this concept into operation.

Continuous improvement for me means that every time I teach a class, I rework the syllabus, outline, handouts, slides, and exercises.  After all, you can always improve your product, right?  While the basic content and objectives may remain relatively constant, my emphasis on perpetual tweaking results in a very different class being taught each time.

For me, the result is a continuous cycle involving a large amount of work, requiring a large amount of time, and during which other priorities suffer.


Someone once described my persistent pursuit of improved quality as "obsessive-compulsive behavior on steroids". Okay, fair enough and probably accurate, but I was not shooting for that exact image.  I had something relating to fresh and innovative in mind.


But I value the ability and results of always looking at people, concepts, and systems with an eye to how to improve or change them.   The person who understands this need for continuing improvement of skills, knowledge, processes, and procedures is both more rare and more valuable than we might think.   With all the lip service paid to continuous learning and improvement, many of our current organizational systems do not seem to support these concepts.

However, as I noted earlier, I can get "lost" in improvement and sometimes have missed the target because I was adjusting my aim to make the shot perfect.  Sometimes you just need to hit the mark and deliver the results, even if what you deliver is not "perfect", but falls into the acceptable range.

So, on behalf of those of us who have a psychological desire to make it as good as it can be, I pose these two questions:  

What is the reasonable balance between these two goals of perfection and practicality?  
How do I know when an effort is "good enough"?

John

One of the most impacting and emotional experiences of my life happened a long time ago in a faraway land called Texas.


It was that "without breaking eye contact" part which made this an incredibly emotive and difficult exercise for most of us.  I had to phsyically resist strong repeated urges to look away, not so much as I was talking, but while I was listening.  I will freely admit crying.  My background did not prepare me to hear such direct and honest positivity.

Here are some ruminations on the power of sight from various sources to stimulate your thinking.

"I looked at God and He looked at me, and we were one forever." C. H. Spurgeon

"I see you." repeated line in the movie Avatar (said by one character to another to indicate love)

"The eyes are the window to the soul."  (various sources)

"The eyes not only look, but are looked at." (James J. Gibson and Anne D. Pick)

Even in our more sedate world of training, teaching, and group facilitation, we understand the value and power of eye contact.  As one of my favorite presentation experts says, "Eye connection means spending time with each person so that person feels like you’re just talking to them." (Olivia Mitchell)

When have you experienced this power of direct eye contact?

What observations do you have regarding how this power is best used?

John

The Noticer is about Jones, an old man who notices things about the way we interpret and respond to events and other people . . . and then he shares what he sees and hears with individuals at critical points in their lives. How all this works is revealed through a series of interactions with different residents of a small Florida town, anchored by two main characters: Jones, the mysterious and wise old man, and Andy, the narrator of the story and alter ego of the author. The story unfolds in an intriguing and engaging manner, as more and more is revealed, leading to the ultimate departure of Jones and the revelation of sharing and perspective as the key components of his message.

I found it hard not to identify Jones as a Christ figure in this story. His wise, gentle, and somewhat mysterious way of moving into people’s lives combines with some solid, if basic psychology to create a seemingly “perfect” individual. That different people use different names for this enigmatic old man reinforces the transcendent nature of his character.

Maybe he’s more like an angel, but the reality is that Jones uses his powers of observation and communication analysis to help others see the “reality” of their lives in transformative ways. His self-depreciated skill, described as “It’s just something I’ve noticed over the years.” (pg. 44), is a true gift.

I particularly enjoyed Jone’s dissection of fear as mostly worrying about things that either will not happen, have already happened, or are “little nothings” (pg. 52). While it may be somewhat naïve to imagine that this alone will bring about the type of powerful change that is described repeatedly in this book.

Jones also helps us understand the difference between our mistakes and our choices and how we should approach being remorseful for our actions and to seek forgiveness in meaningful ways.

I like this book . . . I like this book a lot.  It is excellent as additional reading for coaching clients who were interested in personal change for improved communication and relationship building.  An accompanying reader’s guide makes it an excellent choice for small group discussion classes. Relatively short at 177 pages total, easy and interesting to read, with many fascinating points for discussion and reflection.

I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program: http://brb.thomasnelson.com/

But cradled somewhere in a trusting heart.
                           by Rachel Van Crème

Think about enjoying and sharing the spirit of the holiday season every single day of your life.  What's not to like about that?
If this seems a little "mushy" for you, try thinking of this as a performance improvement project, which begins with a vision, includes change management strategies, and results in increased ROI for your entrepreneurial self.
Get your own inspirational daily thoughts at This Day's Thoughts
John

I have been reading "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell and it's a fascinating read. The book is full of stories, such as elite soccer players in Canada, the Beatles in Hamburg, Jewish lawyers in New York learning takeover law, Bill Gates learning programming, and other examples of people who have excelled, along with a few who should have succeeded, but did not.

Of the many messages in this book, here's the one that really made me stop and think: It takes 10,000 hours to become proficient at doing something. That roughly equates to five years of constant, daily practice at a specific thing.

Gladwell repeatedly shows us that the people in his stories who succeeded did so, in part, because they were prepared through years of practice at a particular skill and could take advantage of opportunities that arose. The Beatles, for example, played in Hamburg nightclubs seven day a week for years before climbing to the very top of the music world. This grueling schedule made them into a very tight and well-trained band. Those with military experience know that training (practice) is a major and continuous non-combat activity for most personnel.

Reminds me of two well-known, but somewhat opposite sayings: "Fortune favors the prepared mind" (Louis Pasteur) and "Being in the right place at the right time".  I'll post more later about how we know WHAT to prepare for in this world of constant and rapid change, but for now, I just have one question:

So what have YOU done for 10,000 hours?

Waiting for your responses in the lightly snowy Heartland . . .

John

Today is Melvil Dewey's birthday.  He was born in New York in 1851

Why does this matter to any of us?  Because Melvil gives us three great examples:  1) how to see and fill a need, 2) how an idea can become so much more than we think, 3) never underestimate the value of a choice.

Melvil worked in the school library while attending Amherst and saw the need to create a system to organize the books.  Now he could have just collected what was probably a small paycheck and spent his time at work browsing the collected works.  Melvil chose to think and he quickly identified a need for some system of organization for the information in the library. 

His decision to spend the time to develop such a system gave us the Dewey Decimal System.

Okay, this covers examples 1 and 2 quite nicely.

The interesting part of this is that Melvil's other option - the road he did not choose - was to become a missionary.   So the question he had to answer was basically "Become a missionary or create a filing system for books".  Without knowing the outcome, many of us would tend to identify the missionary work as the "greater good".  We often see some jobs or careers as more valuable and the truth is that this is probably an accurate way to view the world.

However, Melvil once said something that makes this all fall into place.  He described his passion thusly:  "My heart is open to anything that's either decimal or about libraries."   What a clear view of his inner drivers, along with a willingness to be open to possibilities connected to what this young man found to be the things that stirred him.

Well, most of us would not connect the Dewey Decimal System to passion, but this is exactly what fascinates me about this story. 

So what is YOUR passion . . .  and what are you doing to be open to the possibilities of following it?

Thinking about my passions on a bracing early winter morning in the heartland.

John









It's the birthday of Melvil Dewey, born in Adams Center, New York (1851). He went to Amherst, and to support himself there he worked in the college library, and he decided that it needed to be reorganized. At the time, there was no consistent method that libraries used to organize books. Some numbered shelves, some arranged books by size just to look nice, and some libraries tried to alphabetize the whole library, which meant that every time they got a new book they had to redo the entire system. Dewey saw a better way to do this, but for awhile, he couldn't decide whether to be a missionary or to put his time into reorganizing the library system. But he chose the latter, and he started to figure out a system of categories and subcategories, based on older ideas. As he researched, he wrote in his diary, "My heart is open to anything that's either decimal or about libraries."


And he came up with the Dewey Decimal System, which is still used today in many libraries, a series of classifications divided and subdivided into subjects and assigned a decimal number to each book.

I am not a fan of "feel good" religious books. I chose to read this one because I liked the title and the cover - purely a visual thing. This book has affected me like few other titles over a lifetime of reading and searching.


The narrative style was engaging, as we moved back and forth between the perspectives of these two very different men struggling with a common tragedy and dealing with a loss in dramatically different ways. While Ron does move from “arm’s length altruism” to true giving in the course of the story, he continues up to the end for God to give his wife the miracle of new life. Denver, in his simple and direct faith-based way, does Herculean duty as he literally “prays without ceasing” for God’s guidance and will.

This dichotomy between “Give Me Prayer” and “Tell Me Prayer” is the message at the heart of this well-written and often humorous book. We learn that relationships, whether with others here on earth or with God, are often long and difficult in the growing. I found it especially fascinating to watch the transformation of Denver from the one being ministered to into the one ministering to others as the story moves forward.

This is an inspiring and engaging work and one which I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who wants to read an account of how God works through people to create love and benevolence here on earth.

 
I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Blogger program: http://brb.thomasnelson.com/