It’s late on a Friday evening. I am weary with a combination of frustration, muted rage and possibly some wine.
I am caught at an impasse in developing content for two very different projects I am engaged in.
First, a Project Management module for executive staff which was due to be at a first draft stage about 10 days ago (the irony is not lost on me).
Second, a session on ‘Professional Behaviour’ aimed at our upcoming trainee intake.
Now this isn’t to say that I haven’t made progress in both. While the slide deck for the Project Management module sits mostly blank, I do have a snazzy title page with some sweet graphics that read ‘JUST DO THE STUFF YOU NEED TO DO’.
My professional behaviour workbook is equally, articulately, poised, with a single lead sentence: “When at a client site, don’t be weird.”
Are the messages too brief… well, possibly.
Do they accurately convey the soul of the content and what is really important… 100 per cent absolutely.
And therein lies the heart of my conundrum – and it’s perhaps one you have faced yourselves.
Moving beyond obviousness
We know for training like this to generate meaningful impact, it (probably?) needs to include more than what I have described.
But, as a creator, it can be so difficult to think about and find that content, when one’s brain is frozen in a scream that roars “… but it’s so obvious.”
However, it is this screaming that we have to better understand and fight through before the good ideas will come.
Now, while not claiming to have all the answers (though I am very good at what I do … some even say gifted), what I would like to present are some simple ideas and reflections that I tend to save for moments like these.
Moments when I am paralysed by the obviousness of it all and desperately want to get unstuck.
The ‘this is obvious’ roadblock that our brain puts up makes it so much harder to really delve into the meat of our topic
Four questions to ask ourselves
The ‘this is obvious’ roadblock that our brain puts up makes it so much harder to really delve into the meat of our topic. “There’s no point in going further,” our minds protest, “there is nothing to be gained.”
When I catch myself in times like these, the first thing I do is challenge these notions directly. I do this by challenging my own ‘obvious’ labelling.
And it simply starts by asking myself the following questions:
1. Is this REALLY obvious, OR … Is it just painfully dull?
Things that are really boring create their own magical barrier. This is because their dullness makes them so painful to think about that the brain looks for a quick way out.
And what quicker way out than by dismissing the task as obvious and not worth considering anymore?
I suspect my Project Management course issues fall into this camp. Project Management is mega important (or so I am told), but dull as bricks. A notion further reinforced by the fact that I have never met anyone with a PRINCE2 at a party. Not EVER.
2. Am I just really amazing?
This notion stems from a wonderful training paradox known as ‘The Curse of Knowledge’. This dictates that the more knowledge you have on a subject, the more difficult it is to imagine what it’s like not to know it.
So our assumption of the topic being obvious is a result of our own superior knowledge blinding us to how not obvious it is.
Being Gen X, and therefore great at everything, I suffer from this one the most often. And it is likely the thorn in my side when trying to craft the Professional Development content. As I am both extremely professional and a joy to be around, the concept of not being this way is both frightening and alien to me.
The more knowledge you have on a subject, the more difficult it is to imagine what it’s like not to know it
3. Am I just dumb?
This path is just the classic Dunning-Kruger Effect in action; and I should know, as I am a total expert in the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
For those who don’t know, it can be paraphrased as ‘the less you know about a subject, the more you are likely to overestimate your knowledge of the subject’.
Or, in this context, you believe the subject to be obvious because you don’t understand it well enough to appreciate why it is anything but.
I would say the trickiest part of this cause is actually having the egotistical maturity to recognise that you may be the problem in this fashion. It can be too easy (and nicer on our own feelings) to assume our issues come from the above problem of being clever and knowing too much, rather than too little.
I have never suffered from this myself (obviously). So can only pretend to empathise as to what it must be like.
4. Is there a fourth variation question?
Possibly. I am well open to the idea. But from my own experiences, and those of my teammates, these three tend to be the usual suspects more often than not.
Stay tuned for part two in which we can turn diagnostic into cure, together.
Your next read: Why the real test of any training isn’t what happens in the room
