Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Dear Ellen,

great subject you're discussing here. It seems lots of people feel that they've learned the wrong things at school. But I think that's partly due to the fact business and the world changes so quickly - schools can't keep up with that.

I'm a big fan of immediately applying new ideas. At one point you got a lot of momentum and all those ideas grow exponentially - as well as the business' profits.

We always send people out to seminars and to take notes. Then we buy tapes and let 2 or 3 others listen to these, they also take notes. Afterwards we ask them to sit together and create a list of all the ideas at least 2 persons of the group share in one way or another.

Those ideas are applied within a few days to a few weeks. The other ideas are stored and used when we run out of ideas.

-Dave

Dave, thanks for your thoughtful ideas on this topic. It suddenly became apparent to me that I was hearing the same complaint over and over -- and when I speak to faculty I sometimes sense they are not quite sure what to do about the problem. You've given some great ideas here -- and perhaps it's just a matter of brainstorming a bit together to see who's already doing this well! Thanks! Dave your own insights are backed by solid research about the brain -- which is likely why they work so well too:-) Thanks for stopping by!

Your post offers reinforcement for my belief that most MBA programs do a fine job of teaching students how to analyze a business but a pretty awful job of teaching them how to function in one.

Many of the things on the list are things you simply can't learn in a classroom. I can prepare a list of "performance management strategies" but they have to work in "real workplaces." That's where the great ship of theory comes hard by the rocks of reality. The magic is in the execution.

Influencing the behavior and performance of people who work for you is not a subject like history where you read the book, take the test and are forever wise. It's more like riding a bicycle where start out with training wheels, fall down some and learn by doing.

The parts of work and life where we deal with people, whether in management or sales or marriage are apprentice trades. You can get some ideas about what to do from classes and books and programs, but you still have to learn 80 percent of stuff on the job.

Wise counsel of mentors and discussions with peers can help you make better choices. Feedback can turbocharge the process. But you're going to be learning it out there in the arena. Not in your MBA program.

I'd like to chime in with a huge one (thought I'm biased): Best practices for self-management. If you can't *execute*, you're not making a difference and applying your talents.

Spoken like a pro, Matthew! "If you can't *execute*, you're not making a difference and applying your talents."

Wall you build a good case for change - as I see it:-)

"Many of the things on the list are things you simply can't learn in a classroom."

I love your notion that " The magic is in the execution." YES -- Therein is the case for change:-)

Why do you think "you still have to learn 80 percent of stuff on the job?" What about new ways to link workplace and MBA program in ways that both benefit the other:-) There -- I said it:-) Thanks Wally -- see- your ideas always make us think outside the box!

Ellen –

For the foreseeable future, I think you will need to learn things about supervision and management in the field and not in the classroom because they are art forms and therefore more like learning painting or bike riding or gardening than like learning academic subjects.

In my lifetime we've made huge strides in realistic training for some kinds of practice. There are now effective and quite realistic simulators, for example, for flying airplanes or driving oil tankers. There are increasingly excellent gaming-type simulations for competitive environments.

We've learned a lot about what makes for realistic training. In the early part of the Viet Nam war, Navy pilots had a kill ratio far below previous wars. The Navy assigned Captain Frank Ault to figure out why. He noticed two things.

First, it took new pilots approximately ten missions to get to the point where they had a better than even chance of surviving to go home at the end of their tour. He determined that Naval Aviator training should mimic those ten missions.

But he also observed that Naval Aviators at the time learned combat skills by flying against similar aircraft using similar tactics. Easter bloc, Chinese and North Vietnamese pilots flew very different aircraft and were trained in different tactics.

One outcome of the report was the Naval Fighter Weapons School, immortalized in the plane-as-hero fantasy movie, Top Gun. Crews that went there trained against aggressor squadrons flying planes and using tactics similar to what the pilots would face in Viet Nam. The result was lower mortality and higher kill ratios.

Now, what does that all have to do with learning leadership skills? The flight and tanker simulators only handle a limited range of situations. They don't deal at all with the human side of the equation.

The more complex training situations like the Fighter Weapons School, add the human response, but, again, in a limited environment and at huge cost. So we're left with this: the only way to learn to lead is to lead.

You can improve the odds of making a good choice with book learning and discussion with mentors and peers. You can increase your learning speed and effectiveness with feedback.

That's why the best leadership development programs put people in lots of different situations and give them lots of feedback. Even with that, though, there's no book learning that will give you character or strong values.

The reason you have to learn leadership on the job is that leadership is an art form that's practiced in a constantly changing and challenging environment with other human beings. It's too complex for classroom instruction.