My colleague Harold Jarche pointed me to a post by Dave Snowden about deliberative practice, which I found interesting for a facet not part of the key article (which makes worthwhile points).  Among a list of important requirements for meaningful activity that is part of effective learning (i.e. it’s not just 10K hours of practice that makes an expert, but what sort of practice has an effect), Dave cites that “at least half of … experiments should fail”.  Think about that for a minute. Read more →

While listening to the radio the other day, the person being interviewed spoke about the need for training for those responsible for ensuring clean water in many remote Canadian communities. Now, I’m not going to say that training is not required, but making the leap from a performance issue (lack of skills, abilities, knowledge; lack of access to appropriate data and resources; etc) directly to training as the only solution, is the wrong approach and the most costly. Read more →