#4 | Real-life Experiments

Adult learners are a myth. We grow by experimenting.

Hello,

How Programs Fly is our 3-weekly humble contribution where we aim to share our knowledge and toolkits to help your developmental programs fly further, higher, and for longer.

We begin this edition, on the topic of 'Real-life Experiments', with two riddles:

1. What is the most commonly used phrase in media interactions by athletes and coaches?

2. If the great psychologist William James was an HR leader, how would he have run L&OD programs?

Answers, and a lot more, coming right up!

Both of us (Cyrille and Rishabh) have spent countless hours of our lives watching sport. As a result, sporting references and metaphors find their way into many of our conversations, and into this edition, too!

When sportspeople focus too much on the outcome, they lose it: batsmen chasing a big hundred play premeditated shots and get out. F1 drivers focused on gaining a position on a certain lap are aggressive at the wrong time, on the wrong turn, and crash. And there are similar tales in every sport.

In sport, it's easy to get wrapped up in results, numbers, and outcomes. But these become unwanted distractions to focusing on the right actions and the process. This is how "Focus on the Process" became sports biggest cliché.

The phrase is equally relevant to L&OD programs. They have well-defined outcomes and it's all too easy to get wrapped up in results and numbers, which, again, become unwanted distractions to focusing on the process.

But what is the "process"? Not attendance. Not module completion. And not assessments. These all measure "learning". But we know that people don't learn by learning. They learn by doing.

The number of experiments a participant individually runs in order to rapidly try on new life and leadership habits... is the best statistical predictor of your program's success.

In the current paradigm, participants go through experiential learning and then are asked to 'apply'. But replace 'apply' with 'experiment' and it yields more ease, more risk-taking, and less guilt when 'application' takes time to emerge.

Enable your people to run experiments, don't run behind outcomes. 

That's the gist. Now, let's substantiate it for you.

A quick recap: We're saying something William James (the father of American Psychology, who also first identified action as a feeder for reflection) advocated many decades ago: enable people to run experiments. Because people learn by doing. By trying. By failing. By tweaking. By constantly experimenting. If this also sits well with you, then there are three thought questions to address:

1. "What will my people experiment towards?" Here, it's all about self-discovery to blow the dust away and reveal innate desires and 'self-concordant goals'. These are goals that people connect to at a deep emotional level and feel motivated to work towards without any external pressures or rewards. Edition 1 featured a deeper look.
   

2. "Now, they know what to experiment towards, but what precisely will their experiments be?" A lack of ideas here is troublesome because a limited menu of experiments hardly covers the diverse needs and situations of people. On the other hand, a rich, substantial, and well-organized content platform, like Potentialife's, throws up multiple ideas a minute through bite-sized content pieces... Something for everyone! Hat tip to the scientifically-generated field of Positive Psychology that is universally seen as the science of well-being and human flourishing.
   

3. "Finally, they're committed to running experiments, but how will they stay on track?" It’s all too easy to commit to it... and then not do it... because the habit usually lies outside of the comfort zone. And besides, busy lives just take over. Acknowledging this, the question is how does one hold participants accountable in a gentle way? What’s the frequency of nudges? One of the best ways of helping participants stay on track is small peer groups that provide support and encouragement.

There's no overstating the pivotal role of peer groups in keeping experiments on track. Participants of one of our cohorts talk about the many roles their buddy group has played for them. A program sponsor of another cohort adds to it below.

"The essential part of any program consists in conducting small experiments to try out new learnings and concepts. In our program, even for a new topic like 'Coach-like Leadership', the implementation rigour was embedded with an overlay of peer group conversations to provide a gentle nudge for leaders to try out 3-4 new experiments and talk about their learnings from them."

If we overlay the three question-thoughts from the previous section on to the program that Meghna ran at the Murugappa Group, it would look like this:

1. What will they experiment towards? What surfaced organically for participants became the chosen direction, ensuring it is self-concordant

2. Precisely what experiments will they run? Free-flowing discussions in the workshops helped Potentialife crystallize practices as experiments that participants could then individually select and run in their own lives

3. How is experimentation kept on track? Each participant's peer group has weekly huddles to discuss, share, and appreciate the experiments each one is running. A Community Board keeps a tab of all experiments being run and wins being declared

Now, a dampener. Not all habit formation experiments end with declaring wins. There are many, if not more, that just don't pan out as imagined. Maybe the experiment felt joyless, or lacked in meaning, or was just difficult to sustain.  

But is a failed experiment the end of the world? Hardly so, if you ask Tal.

Tal Ben-Shahar, our co-founder and a well-known Positive Psychologist, is okay with failure. He's more than okay with it. In fact, he cherishes it as much as success.

“Those who understand that failure is inextricably linked with achievement are the ones who learn, grow, and ultimately do well. Learn to fail, or fail to learn.” 

Quite a catchy phrase, isn't it! Well, that's just great because the message it carries is so very important: Experiments aren't all supposed to succeed because they are experiments! Tal is almost warning us that getting thrown off by a failed one and then not trying any more is a recipe for a much larger failure.

So, what makes failed experiments equally valuable? 

"The loop of Action and Reflection. Each time a person reflects on an action, and acts on that reflection, they enjoy growth." Tal advocates scheduling routine "time-ins" to analyze the experiment, see what worked, what didn't, tweak it, and maybe even drop it. When a participant drops an experiment, it frees up bandwidth to select a new one. 

Now, let's talk about something that makes all of this a smooth process!

Participants of a program typically have access to a substantial body of knowledge thanks to the program content and other outside information. 

• How do participants assimilate all of it and individually select a list of experiments to commit to? 

• How are 'time-ins' to analyze experiments ritualized for participants?

• Where do participants go to select a new experiment after they've decided to drop one?

An Experiments Workshop does all this. It can ramp up impact for any program you're currently running or about to launch. You may download this Potentialife Toolkit for a broad skeleton.

As stated earlier, program participants have access to enough and more ideas for experiments they can run. But what about everyone else? Where does the average person find scientifically-researched ideas?

We have two suggestions:

1. Joy of Leadership: Honest disclaimer: it's co-authored by Potentialife's co-founders. Filled with ideas for leadership habits, it's really a handbook for individuals or groups. In one instance, CEAT Tyres gifted copies to their senior leaders and sparked stimulating conversations around the book. Note: We'd happily source bulk orders for you at no extra charge.

2. PositivePsychology.com: Think of it as the Wikipedia of Positive Psychology. It's a fantastic resource with hundreds of experiment ideas to build positive life habits, each with a strong scientific rationale.

Let's sum up this edition with three ideas:

1. Habits are sustainably formed only through trying, failing, tweaking, or in other words, 'serial experimentation' 

2. A rich pick list of experiments and peer-group accountability helps an individual stay on the track of serial experimentation

3. 'How many experiments are we enabling participants to run?' ought to be the #1 metric of an L&OD program, irrespective of the desired outcome

Edition 5, we offer a deconstructed view of how programs with a 1:1 focus are programs that don't leave a single participant behind.

We love playing the role of thought partners, so if you need more information or have something to ask, we're happy to set up an informal interaction with you, no strings attached.

Until the next edition!