Media Richness Theory et al.

I think it's funny how what I'm seeing now more and more is that the PhD work I'm doing isn't leading to new or revolutionary ideas, but instead it just solidifies and names the ideas. 

Lately, I've been working on and discussing "media richness theory." This is the idea that all types of communication convey understanding to others and that compared to one another they make up a system. I believe it goes further than that in that greater media richness can lead to greater engagement. What I'm also finding is that in terms of VR, greater media richness leads to cognitive overload. 

What's this have to do with anything in my PhD or in life? WEll, I remember discussing this, media richness theory with a friend I used to chat to quite a bit. My thought was we needed more richness in our communication to have engagement and intrigue. We needed pictures, video, chat, email, calls, etc. etc. Why? Because otherwise, things go sour, they get boring. What happened? She didn't agree. The relationship soured. 

I proposed all of this before I knew what Media Richness Theory was. I knew inherently that itw as right to do, and why. I didn't have a name for it. The PhD just gave it a name. Same with virtual learning. I was doing that in 2010, but I just did it because it made sense. 

I'm finding more and more that non PhD things just make sense to do. Where as PhD things just take those things that make sense and provide a framework, a theory, and a name to it. 

Old Grizzled Field Leader

Our professor asked us what is the image that represents our philosophy of adult education? How do you see that image related to your philosophy?

The image that comes to mind for me is the old, grizzled, calloused-handed, denim-faded, field supervisor who graduated high school and has never thought about formal continuing or adult education who sits down to take a computer-based course or instructor-led course that we have created at our organization and being inspired enough to find intrinsic motivation to want to learn more and even use what he has learned to teach the rest of his team something he learned while at our campus. 

Lindeman (2018) writes, "the real distinction between educated and uneducated persons is not to be found in such superficial criteria as academic degrees, formal study or accumulation of facts; indeed, formal learning may and often does, lead people into narrow scholarship and out of life . . . knowledge, rather, emerges from experience. intelligence is the light which reveals educational opportunities in experience" (p. 170). 

This quote made me think of the thousands and thousands of workers that we support who when asked always say that they want more training opportunities, but when provided staid, boring, uninspired CBTs realize that they are not being given the opportunity that they expect or deserve, and that crushes his intrinsic motivation to learn. 

References

Lindeman, E. (2018). The meaning of adult education. Franklin Classics.

Disorienting Dilemmas in Safety

My classmate asked about yesterday's post. She was interested in knowing what it was like to role out a behavior-based program like our behavior-based safety system was. Her husband works for the railroad and is interested in knowing more about behavior-based safety systems.

As I mentioned in my post, my organization suffered a fatality and we implemented the behavior-based safety system as a response to that accident. I think that accident was a transformative moment for our executive leadership as well as the workers in the field by extension. 

The first of ten phases of transformative learning that Mezirow observed, according to Clark, Merriman, and Sandlin (2011) is a disorienting dilemma followed by a self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt, and shame. The organization went through these first two phases and more to help inspire change in the organization. Despite that, it still included having a nine-person core team doing the training, and over 2 years of work to change the culture. 

Six years later, we merged with another organization equal in size that performed exactly the same type of work. After the merger, we tried to roll out the behavior-based safety system to the new organization. This rollout was not as smooth and twice as long. I think partly because there wasn't that transformative moment with a disorienting dilemma. From my perspective, as a part of the safety team, and the Director of Training, I was surprised by how long it took for the system to gain acceptance by the field technicians and managers. Secondly, I was glad that we bought an existing system, despite the high cost, because having a finished product to introduce to the field was far better than trying to create one ourselves or self-perform the rollout. 

From an adult learning perspective, if I was to go back now, armed with the information that our classes have given us, I think some of our marketing material, and training material would have been written from a vastly different perspective, one more geared toward a behaviorist training approach. 

Reference

Clark, M. C., Merriam, S. B., Sandlin, J. A. (2011). The relationship between adult learning and development; Challenging normative assumptions. In Hoare, C. (Ed.), The oxford handbook of reciprocal adult development and learning (pp. 17 - 38). 

Introduction to Significant Literature

Sorry, it's been a while since I posted, but I took some downtime. Now that I'm back two work on the PhD, I can start posting again. We were asked to point out anything that caught our eye in our first chapter of readings for my class on Significant Literature in Adult Education.

When reading Chapter 1 of the text, Introduction: Philosophy of Adult Education, the first thing that caught my eye was the education school of thought or system of pragmatism. 

Just the other day I was complimented by my wife when she told me I was too practical. She might have meant it as a slight, but being overly practical to me is more of a compliment and is similar to pragmatism. I like having things proven in clear and clean terms. 

I like practical application of the techniques that I use. But of the theories expressed in the chapter, the two that made the most sense to me were Progressive Adult Education with the focus on the “relationship between education and society”(p. 12), and Behaviorist Adult Education with it’s focus on “behavior modification, learning through reinforcement, and management by objectives” (p. 13). 

The first is similar in many respects to pragmatism, but the second is interesting to me because of the work I was able to do in behavior-based safety with my old organization. Following a fatality of one of our workers, our leadership decided a drastic change in our safety focus was needed. That change came by way of a behavior-based safety system. Instead of a focus on numbers, and metrics, we changed to a system that changed the way our workers naturally behaved. It is intriguing now, 10 years later, to look back on the rollout of that system and see behaviorist adult philosophies woven throughout the content.  

Reference:

Elias, J. L., & Merriam, S. B. (2005). Philosophical foundations of adult education. Malabar, FL.

Lot to Love

My BFF told me to go read the Thornbirds by Colleen McCoullough. It was an interesting choice. I remember my mother reading it when I was very young because she was inspired by the mini-series. So, I must have been in third grade since it came out in '83.

So I took a month or so off to focus on enjoying a good book. I read so much non-fiction and text books and articles, it's nice to sit back and enjoy a read. And, it's a terrific book. Lyrical. Like reading James Dickey or Patrick McCormick (two of my favorites), so I'm glad she recommended it. 

Lot to Love

My BFF told me to go read the Thornbirds by Colleen McCoullough. It was an interesting choice. I remember my mother reading it when I was very young because she was inspired by the mini-series. So, I must have been in third grade since it came out in '83.

So I took a month or so off to focus on enjoying a good book. I read so much non-fiction and text books and articles, it's nice to sit back and enjoy a read. And, it's a terrific book. Lyrical. Like reading James Dickey or Patrick McCormick (two of my favorites), so I'm glad she recommended it. 

I found one passage especially worthwhile.

Almost as clearly as the sun could, the moon’s still pale light picked out vast sweeping stretches of distance, the grass shimmering and rippling like a restless sigh, silver and white and grey. Leaves on trees sparkled suddenly like points of fire when the wind turned their glossy tops upward, and great yawning gulfs of shadows spread under timber stands as mysteriously as mouths of the underworld. Lifting her head, she tried to count the stars and could not; as delicate as drops of dew on a wheeling spider’s web the pinpoints flared, went out, flared, went out, in a rhythm as timeless as God. They seemed to hang over her like a net, so beautiful, so very silent, so watchful and searching of the soul, like jewel eyes of insects turned brilliant in a spotlight, blind as to expression and infinite as to seeing power. The only sounds were the wind hot in the grass, hissing trees, an occasional clank from the cooling Rolls and a sleepy bird somewhere close complaining because they had broken its rest; the sole smell the fragrant, indefinable scent of the bush.

Who can't love writing that describes grass shimmering like a "restless sigh."

A whole lot to love. 

Part 3 and 4 of Lencioni

 What are the most important lessons in Parts III and IV in Lencioni’s book?

There is a saying in the creative writing community that discusses how to be a harsh self-critic. That saying is "don't be afraid to kill your darlings." Basically, the intent of the aphorism is to inspire authors to edit and strike out passages that they think are unique or spectacular or "darlings" if it helps the overall work to not have them be a part of the book. 

As Bayne (2020) writes, "There are valid reasons, though, to cut pretty, flowery, or clever prose. Some reasons include: it is confusing to the reader, it does not fit the overall tone/style of the piece, it does not fit the moment in the story, it doesn’t serve a purpose other than to show how cleverly you can write prose, and so on (para 10). If there is one thing I've learned about life in the contracting world is that no organization is larger than one person. 

Every time I've left a job and expected that someone would call begging me for help on some crucial process they must now figure out without me,  . . . there is never a call (well, not as often as I'd like). Along those same lines, and maybe this is harsh, but when people leave for other opportunities, I've seen how the organization and even myself, will work dynamically and fluidly around the missing person's absence and find ways to get the job done. Darlings, nor employees, are all that important, I've found, to the overall work or organization. 

This is what I thought about when I saw Kathryn losing first JR and then Mikey. Just because these people worked their roles and might even have been good at their jobs at one time, it doesn't mean you have to keep them over the long run or if things change. 

Although one was voluntary and the other somewhat forced, I appreciated that Lencioni (2002) made the story more realistic by dropping characters rather than rehabilitating them. That facet brought realism to the story. And it was good to see that the organization and the team continued to flow without these two leaders, and might even have performed better without them.

References

Lencioni. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team a leadership fable (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Bayne, M. (2020, July 12). What ‘kill your darlings’ does and doesn’t mean. The Writing Cooperative. https://writingcooperative.com/what-kill-your-darlings-does-and-doesn-t-mean-cd8d533dd627

Doing Right by Employees (and Business)

I disagreed a bit with what my classmate wrote. He said, "There is a double standard that exists between companies and their employers. Companies demand loyalty and sacrifice, but are quick to do what is best for the company first." 

I don't think there is a double standard, I think instead there is a detente or an armistice. An agreement that both sides will do what they need to do to do the best for themselves. 

Before the company had pensions and there was an agreement that if employees were loyal to the company, the company would continue that loyalty through the pension. I believe that Generation Xers valued mobility and not being chained down to any one company, thus we have IRAs and 401Ks to replace pensions. 

I've seen articles lately that tend to show the current generation coming into the workforce may value the solidity that Gen Xers eschewed. Kiddos watched their parents lose their jobs during the financial downturn in the 2010 era and now with Covid we might see the same. Maybe we will see the return of the pension as a natural part of work life. 

Like I said I think there is a give and take. Yes, the company I work for demands loyalty and sacrifice, but I am free to leave as soon as I want or if a better offer comes along. I can take that new offer lickety-split, port over my 401K and be gone in no time. Personally, I would love to see a mixture of different financial tools more available to employees. 

I would love to have signed up for a pension with any of the companies I worked for. I want to be handcuffed to an organization and have that agreement that neither of us is going anywhere. Instead, there is a mutual trust (or distrust) that feels like the demilitarized zone where we are both watching one antoher and waiting for the next move. 

 Reply

Lencioni and Lessons

What important lessons did you find in Parts I and II of Lencioni’s book?

I had two takeaways from reading Lencioni's (2002) book. I've participated in many different retreats like the one described in the book and actually have participated in several of the exercises that Kathryn leads her team through to build trust. 

Some were very successful personally, some were successful for the organization, and some were complete failures. I liked the chapter called "Getting Naked." My organization has held retreats where we did this. It's a terrific opportunity to get to know a new team on a far more intimate and meaningful level. The problem is that many groups act as if it is a fire and forget missile instead of something that has to be tended to. 

What do I mean? We completed a get to know each other activity once years ago, but no sense. People have come and gone. Memories fade. People change. It's important, I believe, to have regular opportunities to "get naked" with the team. And this leads to my second takeaway.

I loved the first part of the book because it dealt so much with trust. I'm a huge fan of Covey's (2008) Speed of Trust. It helped me understand how trust is important in not just personal relationships, but also in the business world. Kathryn's work with her team is all about trust building. In the first part of the book, she is doing that by breaking down barriers and by helping to instill comfort. 

She does it to inspire conflict to help her team find the best solution. Similar to the Socratic Method, where there is constant questioning, Kathryn is hoping that by having conflict can be a greater consensus and better decision making. The only way to have conflict is through trust. Part of building that trust comes from not having as many secrets, and knowing one another on the team in a more substantial way. 

As I alluded to in the first paragraph, these are things that not only take time to produce, they also need to be fostered. I like that Lencioni's (2002) work shows that it takes many sessions to have change occur. I think the follow-on book or equal should show how the team has to engage in these exercises constantly and that a one-and-done isn't enough.  

References

Covey, S. (2008). Speed of trust: The one thing that changes everything. Simon & Schuster.

Lencioni, P. M. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Jossey-Bass.

Do Nothing Change of Command

My classmate wrote something the other day I really liked. Nicole wrote about leaders who take command waiting to make any changes until after they have observed and processed what the current state of the dept or organization is. 

In the military, after a change of command, the first thing the new leader is supposed to do is do nothing. They are supposed to observe and process for several weeks and months before making any changes. During my time in the military, we had three new first sergeants come in and take charge of our company. 

This would be similar to a new VP or COO coming into an organization. Two of the three sat back silently and just watched. One didn't. The one with the greatest number of challenges and difficulties, the one who had the least success ultimately was the one who did not do nothing. 

I've tried to remember that throughout my career. I think the one thing that will stick with me most about this class was the essay on leadership by Haskins (2013) about whether or not leaders really matter. In that essay Haskins (2013) makes the argument that a team's processes and procedures are more significant to the health and success of a team than a leader. I think that this standard of do nothing plays into the theory that leaders don't matter that much. 

Reference

Haskins , C. (2013). Do teams' leaders really matter. In E. Salas, G. Latham, D. J. Cohen, & S. I. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Developing and enhancing teamwork in organizations: Evidence-based best practices and Guidelines (pp. 121–153). chapter, Jossey-Bass.