26: It’s like ten thousand spoons
Let’s discuss the irony of what’s going on here - because it’s not lost on me.
I’ve spent twenty-four emails arguing why L&D should avoid prioritising the development of an individual ahead of designing the environment, as a means of improving performance.
And yet, I’ve done all of this by dumping content into your inbox (15,904 words to be exact).
Isn’t this a contradiction? Am I not guilty of using knowledge transfer to encourage a behaviour change?
Well, if we think back to How People Learn and the wisdom of Nick Shackleton-Jones, he teaches us to avoid courses, and instead focus on:
experiences when we want to shift mindsets, and
resources when we want to help people perform.
He explains this in the context of ‘push’ versus ‘pull’.
When we want to increase someone’s motivation, we should push an experience towards them (think about the phishing emails we receive which deter us from clicking on dangerous attachments).
But when we want to improve someone’s performance, we should provide a resource they can pull from at the moment of need (think about a handy tooltip in the software interface that shows us how the functionality works).
And so, what I’ve been doing here is trying to shift your mindset. Drip-fed emails are an incredible way to deliver an experience. As long as they’re engaging, they provide that continuous trickle of information that seeps into your psyche (and if you’ve made it this far, they can’t have been that bad).
However, from a performance perspective, emails are useless! They’re not in the flow of work. You’re taking time out of your day to read me. I haven’t given you anything practical (and if I did, it would need to be something you could integrate into your work or else it’ll become redundant pretty quickly).
But the reason I wanted to highlight this contradiction is not to sound like a smart-arse (for what it’s worth, I had no idea I was applying this technique when I started writing - it only dawned on me recently!). The reason I’m highlighting this is because for you to be recognised as an expert on performance improvement and/or effective AI implementation, you’ll need to consider an approach that highlights this contradiction.
Because in addition to actually designing your colleagues' work, you'll also need to educate them on doing this for themselves. And for you to do that, you’ll need to shift their mindsets via learning experiences!
Now there’s a headscratcher…
Because our stakeholders won’t take these ideas seriously unless they care.
Some are realising for themselves. But most are not.
Most are throwing AI at their people and expecting them to succeed.
But as we know, that’s a risky strategy. When the work isn’t defined, people wing it. They write prompts on the fly. They create ad-hoc context. They provide half-baked guardrails.
And they get inconsistent results.
We know this to be true because of a single word: ‘slop’.
We’ve all seen it. We’ve all felt it. Slop exists because the work hasn’t been adequately designed. AI has generated an output, and that output has been used without sufficient human judgement.
Think about it - if I use AI to create an output, and that output is good, would it be referred to as ‘slop’?
Nope. I’d have been perceived to have used AI appropriately.
So, slop is only a thing because my performance using AI is substandard.
And this isn’t just an AI thing. This dynamic has been going on for decades. It’s just that AI is forcing us to address it.
Let’s use an example…
Whatever your opinion of McDonalds, you can't deny they provide consistency. It's what's helped them succeed.
But compare them to your local café. When an employee quits the "Golden Arches", the product won't change much. But if an experienced employee leaves the café, there'll probably be a dip in service while their replacement learns the ropes.
This isn’t luck, personality or motivation - McDonalds have designed a system that doesn't tolerate inconsistency. They’ve built their business on carefully designed processes and tools.
Whereas most local cafes rely on individual competence.
And so, before we can change how people work, or encourage others to take seriously the importance of changing how they work, we have to make them care.
And how do we make them care? Via a learning experience.
Thankfully, we’re pretty good at that :)
Yours,
- Ant
