It’s valuable to employ a multifaceted approach to learning. Whatever approach you take, in any substantial learning opportunity there are a few things you should consider before you begin. Why? Because haphazard learning is about as effective as not learning at all. It leads to the learn-lose cycle. 1. Understand how you plan to use the knowledge. Do you have…
Category: Customer Success
The learn-lose cycle of learning
Learning, or acquiring knowledge, is always followed by forgetting: Ineffective learning results in a cycle of learning followed by forgetting. It leads to the learn-lose cycle: In extreme cases, this style of learning is no better than not learning at all.
Four styles of business and software development
There’s only one sustainable model of business, it’s being in the upper right hand quadrant where both the provider and buyer profit. Especially in the long term. And the best way to ensure this in the long term is to make it the case in the short term. A checklist to increase the likelihood of falling into the upper right…
Four styles of business
How would you feel if you provided a product or service and your customer lost money? How would you feel if you purchased a product or service and your provider lost money? How would you feel if you both lost money in the process of transacting business? What if you both made a profit? Business is oversimplified when it’s framed…
Planting seeds of knowledge
Exposure learning is great for understanding the big picture. To understand concepts and benefits without delving into details that will be forgotten. To survey the landscape. Ideally you’ll walk away with benefits in mind and some understanding of when you can apply the concepts to attain said benefits. But that’s not always the case. And it need not be. Much…
Exposure learning – the big picture
Effective learning requires a multifaceted approach to avoid a learn-lose cycle of knowledge acquisition. Not every opportunity to learn requires the same technique. Recognizing the different ways you learn gives you the ability to fine tune your approach. Not recognizing the different ways means you’ll likely blend techniques and experience sub-optimal results. You might be in a learn lose cycle…
Strategic learning
Anyone with a modicum of passion for learning can become overwhelmed managing all the directions their mind would like to take them. You need a strategy if you want to manage your learning. Otherwise, your learning will likely manage you. Take a minute and think about three learning situations from the last month. Situations where you acquired knowledge. For each…
Defining quality
Mike Cohn recently asked the following question: Is quality best thought of as “conformance to requirements?” Or “fitness for use?” Or perhaps something else entirely? -Mike Cohn This subject is important because all too often the industry of software development thinks quality comes from the software itself. That would be the camp of people that think conformance to requirements is…
Streamlining your landfill
I was talking with a good friend the other day about priorities and demands within organizations. He expressed frustration with the amount of his time that has to be dedicated to work that is clearly not worthwhile. Or the worth hasn’t been made apparent. He said, and we’ve all done this, that he tries to streamline the process so that…
Every wonder why that project never took off?
As a consultant, I frequently have individuals come to me with plans for projects that they would like help with. They often have what seems like the start of a worthwhile endeavor. It’s hard not to be excited at the prospect of helping someone. Unfortunately, it’s pretty common that the individual is not in a position to authorize my involvement.…