Category Archives: Work

Shake and Fold

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I saw this a few months back, and for a simple concept it’s genius in its execution. Take five minutes and watch:

First the speaker, Joe Smith, has a very simple goal, reduce the amount of paper towels people use.  The execution in it is taking that large goal and distilling it into a simple, easy to learn concept.  It boils down to two steps.

1. Shake

2. Fold

After he demonstrates the using of one paper towel he repeats the process over and over. The idea and his method infects your brain.  Since I’ve watched this I haven’t used a washroom without thinking of this video, and have adopted the method in how I dry my hands.

This simple lesson also points to some important reminders about making presentations.  People tend to retain things they see, hear and perform at a higher rate than that which they only read. People will retain something that is repeated – six times seems to be the optimum when it comes to repetition – during a learning session. People tend to remember the first Shake+Fold Flyerthing and the last thing in a list – so a two item list (while not really legal for a bulleted list, unless you institute a “There is no number 2” rule) – helps with retention. Finally, people tend to remember things that are linked to something they already know, everybody washes their hands, and using the number 12 in context cements the “how many times?” concept pretty easily.

The follow on lesson is we also tend to remember things when we can teach it back to someone else. That small 5 minute talk inspired someone to make a handy graphic, that they’ve used to spread the knowledge along.  While the handy flyer isn’t as effective as the 5 minute presentation it makes the same point, and helps to pass on the knowledge to people that haven’t seen the nifty TED talk.

Hello new office, same as the old office

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except with a different view…

19-09-07_1136Old view: Central Expressway (US-75) southbound dominates the view, with a small field, and parking lot (sometimes fun to watch the coppers nab the speeders on the road that parallels the expressway. Beyond that, I can sometimes see the Dallas skyline, and any weather that approaches from the south.

19-09-07_1147 New View: The building next door dominates the view, with Old Glory standing watch. View of the park and water features across the road, and the loop near our office park. Northern view means less sunlight, and if I look off to the left, ad squint I can see the steeple of my church. Lots and lots of water towers too.

Blogitus Interruptus

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Sorry for the lack of blaaawgifying the past couple of days, I was in a Bob Pike Bootcamp for work the last two days, and was totally wiped by the time I got back home.

But, you might say, didn’t you just get done doing that whole Bob Pike thing.

Uh yuop! you are correct, sir.

The powers that be would like our whole department to be certifiable certified Participant-Centered Facilitators (or some such series of initials), and the pre-requisite requirement for such a certification is to take the Bootcamp, have advanced training, take an assessment and have a classroom facilitation observed and assessed.  I’m doing the steps in a cha-cha-cha fashion, in that the advanced training took place before the bootcamp.

So the last two days were like remedial training for the event that took place two-weeks ago (oh and I took the test already too, scored 90% on it too!)

The training was repetitious for me, but fresh, new and exciting for the other participants, which made it fun for me.  Which is really one of the benefits of a participant-centered (PC) approach.  In a PC classroom, an experienced practitioner of the topic is treated as a resource, instead of a member of the audience.  The acolytes can tap into the experience and knowledge of the more experienced.  It works the other way as well, the vim and vigor of the fresh young faces, refreshes the tired old soldiers into rethinking/reshaping the worn-in pathways of the veteran.

Think about that approach, next time your involved in a class that expects you to sit in your seat and listen, until the time for questions come.  Or wants to by-pass your experiences in order to trot out the speakers talking points.  The PC approach is more than capable of providing a structure for getting those points across, it does so in a manner that honors the participant, and respects his experience.

I’ll have more to share in a few more posts, perhaps giving y’all a way to put participant-centered into your vocabulary, and change the way you share your knowledge with others.

My nose is going to fall right off…

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Either that or blast across the room with an enormous ACHooOOOWEEEE.

I sure hope it is alergies, rather than some spooky biological warefare agent (aka the common cold). Regardless, I’ll be the one down here snippy and blowing my nose all day.

This is day one of Bob Pike Certification Training for the group I work with, this will be the third or fourth time I’ve done a workshop, and they are always fun and thought provoking. I fear after a while it will become old hat.

For the unitiatied, I’ll leave you with Bob Pike’s Laws of Adult Learning.

  • Adults are babies with big bodies.
  • People don’t argue with their own data.
  • Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have.
  • Learning has not taken place until behavior has changed.
  • Fu Wu, Wu Yu, Wzu Tu Yu *

* Roughly translated this means: Momma’s having it or Papa’s having it ain’t like baby having it. (or, the best way of knowing you’ve learned something is when you can teach it to others.)

UPDATE: Clartin-D seems to have an effect. and.. CROSSWORD PUZZLE … *ergahd not a simple NYTimes one…but a training jargon one… designed as a learning aid, which is just silly… brilliant.

UPDATE 2: No sneezing since ~9am, so the allergy scenario seems most likey, so call off the Homeland Secuirty dogs…