Permission to Play: Doing stuff you aren't good at

Rachel Burnham writes:  Last week I was interviewed about my approach to Sketchnoting and how I got started.  As I talked, the questions posed made me look again at my own journey into Sketchnoting and my underlying attitudes to drawing.  I was remembering the messages I picked up at secondary school from our art teacher, which were rather less than encouraging.  One year we had to do a pencil drawing of an object, set by the teacher, each week for homework, which she marked out of 10 and if you received less than 5, you had to do it again.  By the end of the term, I was having to redo 8 pictures every week.

One of my reflections from last week’s interview, is that one of my patterns is to do stuff that I enjoy, even when I am not very good at it.  Sometimes that is about our self-perception of our competence and sometimes it really is the case. Sometimes it is simply that it is new to us.

Last year, I at last had the chance to take a flamenco dance class – it was so much fun.   I enjoyed the sessions, the teacher was encouraging and created a helpful atmosphere for learning – the rest of the group were great – I adored the dancing.  And I was sooo bad at the footwork involved!  To the extent, that I am rather surprised that my left foot is actually connected to the rest of my body – it doesn’t appear to receive many of the messages sent!  But it was a wonderful experience all the same.

I usually go swimming on a Friday night – pre-lockdown, this was my ‘let go of work’ habit for every Friday.  I am definitely not a good swimmer, but I am a happy swimmer – l love swimming in my neighbourhood pool – the way the light glints on the water, the letting go of the week, the focus on breathing, the tired, but relaxed limbs afterwards. 

When I say I am not a good swimmer I am not being modest.  I really only can swim breast stroke and I am too scared to go down the deep end of the pool – I do 80% lengths only.  I hate that feeling of being out of my depth. However, my friend, Liz, challenged me to swim 5 miles over the course of June 2019 and I did it (without once going down the deep end) – it is my only sporting achievement and I am immensely proud of it!

Often we avoid doing things that we aren’t good at or perceive ourselves to be not good at.  In Andy Lancaster’s book ‘Driving Performance Through Learning’ he includes a chapter on ‘mistakes’.  He writes ‘From an early age, we pick up that errors are to be avoided and, if committed, concealed.’ (pg 292)  Doing stuff we aren’t good at can mean making mistakes and not performing at our best.  Our UK schooling system has tended to encourage us to focus on things that we are good at and drop subjects that we find more challenging.  Doing stuff that we aren’t good at (or perceive ourselves to be not good at) can feel risky, uncomfortable, scary – a whole bunch of troubling feelings.  

In a professional setting it can also feel ‘that we should know how to do this already’, that less than perfect competence is unacceptable and we fear of ‘loss of face’ particularly when we are employed for your professional expertise.  I wonder if the more you are used to feeling confident, highly skilled and in control the greater the temptation to not risk putting yourself in a situation where this isn’t case?

I have been pondering these ideas in relation to the field of Learning & Development and the many trainers and other facilitators who have continued to concentrate on face to face delivery – until the challenges of the current pandemic.   And also reflecting on the areas where I personally find it uncomfortable to do stuff I am not good at and as a result avoid doing.

There are many downsides to avoiding things that we aren’t good at: from becoming unpractised at handling these troubling feelings; to losing out on getting better; to being unwilling to risk trying out new ways of working or skills; to just missing out on doing stuff that you could be enjoying.   Of course, there are well-founded arguments for playing to our fundamental strengths, but if we understand this too narrowly; there is a risk that we begin to focus more and more limitingly on what we are good at now – that our territory of confidence becomes increasingly small.  That our capacity to adapt & develop is damaged.

When I am introducing people to Sketchnoting in my workshops, one of the common barriers is the perception held by many people that they can’t draw.    Learning from my experience of helping people to overcome this barrier, here are some of the things that can overcome our reluctance to do stuff we are not good at:

·       Seeing others role model this behaviour – look out for people who do and be inspired by them.

·       Encouragement from others – find a community, network or even just one person who you can practise with.

·       A more realistic approach to perfection – some times we set our goals too high and it becomes easier not to start, rather than not reach them.  When drawing, I often comment that nature is often wonky, so it is fine if our drawing is wonky too.   It may be helpful to think about when perfection is really needed – for example, an architect may need to be able to draw a perfectly straight line, but a Sketchnoter doesn’t.

·       Take time to notice what the experience brings you – whether the pleasure of doing something or any improvements in your skills, however small

·       Permission and time to play – give yourself permission ‘to draw for the bin’.  Carve out time and opportunities when you can mess about, without it feeling high pressure. Permission to play is a great gift given to us all – why not make use of it.

 

End note – Two weeks after completing my 5 mile swim, I at last made it to the end of the pool.  My swimming is still not great, but it is improving all the time.  

 

Rachel Burnham

11/8/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

5 Ways We Could Change How We Think About L&D

Rachel Burnham writes: At this time of year, I often curate a set of resources that I think are helpful for developing L&D and enabling L&D professionals to modernise our ways of working.  This year I have decided to do something different and instead take a step back to focus more generally on how we think about L&D.

  

Whilst some in the L&D profession are forging ahead trying out new ideas and experimenting with approaches based upon well-founded research and evidence of what works well, we also are part of a profession that is slow to change. Many continue to use methods and practices that we know are not as effective as they could be - methods and practices that are not meeting the challenges facing organisations or individuals.  

Here are five areas that I think we need to work on as a profession.

1.  Evidence-based

Whilst this approach has been adopted recently by CIPD, there is still a lot of muddle and confusion around about what this really means.   I think getting more in our profession familiar and confident using an evidence based approach can help with three challenges:

·       Tackling the pervasive influence of learning myths around subjects like learning styles, left brain/right brain and so on.

·       Encouraging a focus on effectiveness and what actually makes a difference to performance.

·       Building an appetite for making use of data analytics that is practical in focus.

2.  Looking at a wider range of jobs and sectors

So often the case studies, research and examples explored in L&D conferences, articles and podcasts are from the same rather narrow fields of employment.  It is time that we started to look more broadly beyond the knowledge worker or service sector and also consider the needs of other types of worker, sector and size of organisation.

 

When we are only hearing from this relatively narrow field, important though it is, we risk considering only these needs of these kinds of organisation and that the ideas and solutions presented only are effective in those situations.  If we want to tackle the long tail of L&D that is mostly still only using face to face delivery of content-heavy material, then we have to ensure that our examples, our research, our practices can meet these needs of a diverse range of job roles and organisations.     

3.  Less black and white, more nuance

I think we are running a risk of being too simplistic in some of our thinking about L&D practices.  Of making ‘blanket –judgements’ about ways of working.   ‘This is good’, ‘this is not’.  This is current, up-to-date, the latest thinking and this is not.

For example, I notice in each at the time of the Learning Technologies conference and exhibition a slew of articles about the latest technologies and a corresponding slew of articles defending face to face delivery.  

When it isn’t either or. 

We need to be so much better at being nuanced.  Not just about about the respective values of using technology and face to face, but across the whole field.  It is not helpful to run down the whole of education.  We know that context matters.   So let’s get much clearer about what works when, and in what circumstances, for who and at what point in their career and what the limitations are.   Let’s identify the boundary conditions for approaches, rather than portray each approach as the answer to everything. 

4.  Connect ideas

There are some amazing ideas being developed and explored in L&D.  New ways of working and new (well, newish, in some cases) models and practices.  Many have slightly different focuses and emphasis.   When you begin to be exposed to the range of approaches to performance consulting, models of learning, alternatives to face to face, learning at the point of need or in the flow of work and so on (and also their critiques) – I think a lot of people in our profession, who are new to these approaches can feel overwhelmed and over-faced.  ‘Where are earth do you start?’ 

It would be great to see some more linking up of these ideas, some more comparing and contrasting of them, so that they are not just used piecemeal, but more systematically. We need help to work our way through the thickets of new ideas and research, to weigh up what is of value and work out which ones  link together and are worth taking action on.     

5.  We neglect skills at our peril

I think there is some very interesting thinking around at present about knowledge – mostly about how we make much better use of resources or other performance support tools to reduce the need for knowledge learning.   There is great work on behaviour change around – work on habit formation and learning transfer to support this.   But I think we need to be also paying attention to how to effectively support ‘skills’ development. 

I think we have taken our eyes off this area a bit, yet it is hugely important.  High level skills can be challenging to develop and continue to be important in many areas of work.   Although we critique learning programmes for ‘mere content-dumping’ and a reliance on knowledge transfer done badly, we haven’t really focused much on how to develop complex skills effectively.  Skills that are needed in this wider range of jobs and organisations that I think we should be looking at.  

So, these are the 5 areas, which I think we could usefully focus on, to help shift thinking within our L&D profession, this year.  What do you think?

  

Rachel Burnham

13/1/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

Review of 'Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess'

Rachel Burnham writes: I recently read ‘Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess’ by Michael Bhaskar.  Published in 2016, this is an exploration of the very wide way in which ‘curation’ as an approach is being used.  In L&D, many people will be familiar with the concept of curation being applied to how we select, manage and share resources for learning.  You may also have come across the term curation in relation to content marketing, in the context where a marketing strategy makes use of content created by others which is selected and used to promote a particular business – you may even use this yourselves.  And of course, curation, has its origins in the world of museums and art galleries.

Bhaskar looks at curation in many different fields, as a business strategy, in retail, music and many other fields, in governmental regeneration and planning policies and in how we present ourselves as individuals.   He looks at how curation is being used to create value in fields, such as food retail, through specialist food retailers who bring together small niche providers of particular high-quality foods all under a single roof or fascinatingly in the way that a new city is being planned in Abu Dhabi, by curating a cultural district with top museums, art galleries, theatres and music venues. The book is full of examples of curation permeating all sorts of aspects of life – I think he sees curation everywhere – I wasn’t always convinced, though he does a great job of presenting examples to illustrate.

And I found the opening chapters with their emphasis on the abundance of everything for everybody, rather sickening and infuriating – you don’t need to look further than our city centres to see people living without a roof over their head, or open a paper to see the growing demands on foodbanks and that is within the wealthy UK.   But the book did make me think wider about what curation is and how it can be used. 

He describes curation as ‘using acts of selection and arrangement (but also refining, reducing, displaying, simplifying, presenting and explaining) to add value.  I found very helpful some simple diagrams he shares which describe different ways that curating can add value.

Diagram from Pg. 166

He identifies a number of benefits that curation can bring through the way it adds value including:

·         saving time

·         freeing cognitive resources 

·         sparing us anxiety

·         cutting down complexity

·         finding quality 

·         overcoming information overload

·         creating contrast

·         redefining creativity

·         channelling attention

·         providing context

·         beating overproduction. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that looks at both curation through the use of algorithms and also human curation and so it provides insight into our very current concern about how can humans and technology work together. This is sometimes described as ‘thick and thin’ curation.   Where ‘thin’ curation is the network of cataloguing and filtration mechanisms, recommendations and discovery algorithms found throughout the Internet and 'thick' curation is done by humans 'based on detailed personal choices, often for smaller audiences; it discuses its choices and comments on them, adding extra spin to its decisions' (Pg. 233)  Algorithmic curation can keep costs down and make curation scalable, but it is human curation that makes it personalised and personable. I like this quote from Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at Oxford University 

'Curators are experts - you have to have a say to be a curator.  There is a practical side to curation that means algorithmic curation should be joined by a sense almost of ownership or custodianship.  The ability to intervene, to follow on, to ensure your curation has an impact is key.  It is a pragmatic relationship. ' (Pg 229)

What shines through is that effective curation is a highly skilled process.   Bhaskar says in the context of content curation in marketing 'But the term is often used weirdly.  Websites advise people to 'curate in the morning' or curate their way to success. Curation is seen as a shortcut, a defined thing, not a process.  … Good curation is more difficult and subtle than that.' He sees expert selection as at the start of good curation and quotes from Maria Popova, curator of the highly thought of ‘Brain Pickings’:

'The art of curation isn't about the individual pieces of content, but about how these pieces fit together, what story they tell by being placed next to each other, and what statement the context they create makes about culture and the world at large.  This is, she argues, a process of 'pattern recognition'.  Seeing how things fit together, understanding connections (which multiply in a networked environment), but then also, crucially, creating new ones by recombining them, is a massive part of curation.' (Pg 125) 

I love the sense of patchwork which her words evoke, making something new and fresh from scraps of the old or the familiar.  Another word for this would be ‘bricolage’ which Andrew Jacobs has written about.

Bhaskar argues that there are no shortcuts to becoming trusted as a curator – it is about ‘Authenticity, consistency, excellent selections - it is very hard to fake.' (Pg. 210)

I think curation is a useful skill for us to develop both as individuals to aid us in managing the huge amount of information we now need to navigate daily as professionals and also as a skill for us in L&D to share with others and use in our professional practice.   Bhaskar puts it like this:

'The more we understand how curation coheres with a network of new skills, strategies and capabilities, the better prepared we will be for thriving in the age of excess that is changing forever how we live and work.' (Pg. 165)

Rachel Burnham

7 July 2019

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

Sketchnotes from the launch of GoodPractice's 'The Evolution of 70:20:10'

Rachel Burnham writes: Last week I participated in the launch event for GoodPractice’s new piece of research.  This has become a highly anticipated annual event, when their latest research into the L&D world is shared with fellow L&D practitioners.  This year the research focused on how L&D professionals understand and are using the 70:20:10 model.   The report is titled ‘The Evolution of 70:20:10 and can be downloaded from the GoodPractice website.  Participants at the launch tweeted using the #gp702010 and this generated quite a bit of discussion, which is worth checking out.  It is also worth having a read of Jonathan Marshall's blog on the subject.  

    

Here is the Sketchnote I created at the event based on Owen Ferguson’s presentation introducing the research:

We were also treated to a couple of presentations from GoodPractice clients about their approach to L&D and you can find my Sketchnotes of Peter Yarrow, from Standard Life Aberdeen and James O’Mahoney, from Edrington below:

Each piece of research in L&D adds to our understanding of what is actually happening in organisations and enables us to ask better questions and work with a more realistic view of the extent to which the models & practices so often discussed in conferences, books and articles are working.   Each piece of research gives us the possibility of working more effectively and having more of an impact. 

By commissioning and sharing their research each year GoodPractice contribute to the development of the whole profession.   It would be great to see more companies adopting this approach.

Rachel Burnham

26/11/18

Burnham L & D works with individuals and organisations to help them learn and work more effectively.  As part of this I help L&D professionals to be even more effective through updating their skills and know-how.  I have a particular interest in curation and the use of digital technologies in learning.  I frequently Sketchnote at events and offer workshops in Sketchnoting.  

Sketchnoting: 5 Benefits for Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: This week I have been reflecting on what the benefits are of Sketchnoting for learning.   Sketchnoting combines simple pictures, graphics, text and layout.  I also make use of colour, but some Sketchnoters just use black ink very effectively.  There are no rules in Sketchnoting.  You create a style and approach that works for you. 

Here are 5 areas where I think Sketchnoting can be a useful tool.

1. Note taking

This is the main way I use Sketchnoting, both for taking notes live from presentations and also to summarise podcasts, books and articles.  Some people may find that Sketchnoting works better for them as a way of making notes, than traditional note taking.  I always struggled a bit with note taking because I write very slowly and find spelling a bit of a challenge.  My notes always looked very chaotic.  Sketchnoting encourages you to focus on listening for meaning and key points, rather than attempting to capture everything.   With Sketchnoting, you create notes that work for you.  There is anecdotal evidence of this making a difference for some learners.

Example of Sketchhnote recorded live

Creating notes using Sketchnoting can aid recall.  It makes use of dual coding – the use of both visuals and words to capture ideas and because both are used there are two potential memory triggers. This is different to the idea of learning styles and the notion that someone has a visual learning style, which has little evidence to support it.   There is a very good exploration of dual coding and how this differs from learning styles in Episodes 12 and 13 of ‘The Learning Scientists Podcast’. 

    2. Planning

You can also use Sketchnoting for planning.  This can be helpful when planning to write an assessment, report or article or when planning a project or presentation.   I used to use Mind Maps for this, but I find Sketchnotes are more flexible.  

When I use Sketchnotes for planning, they often look much more ragged and unfinished than my other Sketchnotes, as I keep adding notes to them and often create them much more quickly than my other Sketchnotes.  I often don’t keep these Sketchnotes as they are just part of the process.  

Here is an example of a Sketchnote I used to help me prepare for a presentation I was delivering at the AGM for CIPD Manchester.  

    3.  Retrieval Practice

Sketchnotes can be a useful tool in retrieval practice – that process of actively revisiting and rehearsing material previously learnt, as part of the process of committing it to memory.   For example, you could create a Sketchnote from memory of material previously studied.   This active process of recalling material is much more powerful as a study technique than simple rereading your notes or learning materials over and over. For further information on the effectiveness of retrieval practice, let me again recommend you to the excellent ‘The Learning Scientists Podcast’ this time to Episode 2.

In Learning & Development, I want to emphasise that this technique is only valuable if employees really need this knowledge to perform better.  Often we have thrown knowledge at employees, when actually the issue isn’t a lack of knowledge, but perhaps more an issue of skill or even some other factor in the workplace.   So first we need to make sure that we have properly diagnosed what will make a real difference to workplace performance.  

Even if it there is a knowledge-component, we also need to carefully distinguish whether learners really need to learn this knowledge, so that it is internalised or is it more effective for them to be able to find it when they need it.   It is difficult and takes time & effort to really get knowledge embedded within us, plus much information that is needed for performance in the workplace changes rapidly, so it makes sense to only do this where this is absolutely essential.    And there are times when it is essential that a learner has that material always to hand – but this is far less than we have traditionally assumed. 

So with those caveats, Sketchnoting can be a tool to for use in retrieval practice.   For example, on as part of a longer programme, whether face to face or online, you could encourage learners to create a Sketchnote of key points explored at an earlier point in a programme and thus also bring in an element of spaced practice.

    4. Reflection

You can also create a Sketchnote as part of the process of reflecting on learning, whether that learning is part of a formal programme or has come from experience.   Reflection goes deeper than the recounting of information and facts that might be found within a Sketchnote created for retrieval practice, to include feelings, impact, application, implications for the future and so on.   You could encourage reflection using one of the many reflective practice models, but capture it in the form of a Sketchnote.  

In my experience, some learners like writing reflections, but some find the writing a challenge and prefer to video or capture reflections in a visual format.

    5.  Conceptualising

Sketchnotes can be a useful tool to think something through.  Many people find it useful to explore, through using pictures and diagrams, the relationships between information or ideas and Sketchnotes can be a vehicle for doing this. 

As with planning, the end result may be less finished, more back of the envelope.

Here is an example of a Sketchnote that I created to pull together some of the findings from some informal research that my colleague Niall Gavin and I did into the uses of Virtual Reality (VR) for Learning and Development.  We read articles, talked to experts, tried out different examples of VR and reflected together on what we had learnt.  As a result of this I put together a Sketchnote showing examples of the uses of VR for learning in the workplace using the degree of immersion as a rating scale.  This Sketchnote is the final polished version, as I reworked it for use in an article – if I was just sense-making for myself, I wouldn’t include such finished pictures!

I hope that this review of these five uses of Sketchnoting gives you some ideas of how you can use Sketchnotes to support learning.  I would be really interested in your ideas and examples of how you can use Sketchnoting to support effective learning – do get in touch to share your thoughts.

Rachel Burnham

16/9/18

Burnham L & D works with individuals and organisations to help them learn and work more effectively.  As part of this I help L&D professionals to be even more effective through updating their skills and know-how.  I have a particular interest in curation and the use of digital technologies in learning.  I frequently Sketchnote at events and offer workshops in Sketchnoting.