From Susannah -
A special welcome to all our friends who are now visiting our Blog after receiving our announcement post card. We love to drop real postcards to family, friends and those we've met on our Ah Ha! journey (you fall in the friends category to us). We'll keep sending out postcards to make sure your snail mail has something more than bills and sales pitches in it - and this blog is our way of keeping in touch too.
Thanks for visiting and be sure to post a comment with your ideas, questions or things you'd like to hear more about - or send us an email if you'd rather not post it (we'll keep your identity safe). info@experienceahha.com is the best place to reach us - or reach any of us with our first name followed by @experienceahha.com.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Your Questions Answered
From Susannah
In this entry - and hopefully many more, we'll provide our thoughts on typical questions that we receive. These are from a LearningConnect Trainee who has been out there in the field practicing. Names, Businesses and Categories have been removed to preserve confidentiality. I hope this spurs you on to share what you might be wondering about. So without further ado...
Q. We ran a LearningConnect and it was great! We got lots of good information but there was also an “impossible table” that really hated us and glared at us for making them cut out pictures, pictures and more pictures to represent their category experiences.
A. One thought on the glaring table issue is to be aware (for future session) who was hosting that table...not that there's always something that you can do, but the energy of the hosts or how confident they are in the instructions can affect the guests. You can coach your team - even in the moment - to just go with the exercise, and trust that it will be helpful.
Later, even if they didn't like what they were doing... you can, in the visual analysis, see if their pictures are similar or different to the other tables or to another table of the same segment of users in another session. It can be an uncomfortable and personal topic and any hesitation, glaring or silliness can be a cover to hide that discomfort. Just stay with that table (not to the exclusion of the others of course) and honor the participants, let them know how amazingly helpful they are and how much you appreciate them. It should help.
As an aside, not all activities need to require pictures. The conversation can be very powerful and when captured on a Graphic template can stimulate lots of ideas and draw out all guests into the conversation.
Q. Having done a LearningConnect and gone through the analysis, “Do you have any suggestions about how to present this learning? Right now, it’s just in a PowerPoint presentation with lists. The plan is to scan in the pictures that our guests had cut out … but somehow this doesn’t seem as descriptive. “
A. For analysis and sharing (Stages 5 & 6) - recall that the principle of how adults learn is to Experience, Reflect then Act... so in transferring the knowledge to others outside the team, the more you can help them to see and feel (create the experience) by sharing the stories and images and templates the more those receiving the new information will be able to integrate it with their existing knowledge base.
Some ideas include creating a gallery with lots of the data and summary charts for people to see and work with - to Expreience the learning for themselves. The Reflect part is having them really work with the new information - in small groups or pairs or individually.... do a gallery walk, see what they notice, what's similar or different about one group or another. You can overlay the recorded voices telling their stories, create summary models that visualize how your consumer guests see their experiences. The more immersive and experiential - and tapping into different learning modalities (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) the more your organization will be able to take in the knowledge.
And don't forget to have them Act on the information - have some conversation as a team or organization about what implications there might be for your business based on what they are seeing and hearing. "So what about that? - what should we do? and create a clear plan of action and next steps.
In this entry - and hopefully many more, we'll provide our thoughts on typical questions that we receive. These are from a LearningConnect Trainee who has been out there in the field practicing. Names, Businesses and Categories have been removed to preserve confidentiality. I hope this spurs you on to share what you might be wondering about. So without further ado...
Q. We ran a LearningConnect and it was great! We got lots of good information but there was also an “impossible table” that really hated us and glared at us for making them cut out pictures, pictures and more pictures to represent their category experiences.
A. One thought on the glaring table issue is to be aware (for future session) who was hosting that table...not that there's always something that you can do, but the energy of the hosts or how confident they are in the instructions can affect the guests. You can coach your team - even in the moment - to just go with the exercise, and trust that it will be helpful.
Later, even if they didn't like what they were doing... you can, in the visual analysis, see if their pictures are similar or different to the other tables or to another table of the same segment of users in another session. It can be an uncomfortable and personal topic and any hesitation, glaring or silliness can be a cover to hide that discomfort. Just stay with that table (not to the exclusion of the others of course) and honor the participants, let them know how amazingly helpful they are and how much you appreciate them. It should help.
As an aside, not all activities need to require pictures. The conversation can be very powerful and when captured on a Graphic template can stimulate lots of ideas and draw out all guests into the conversation.
Q. Having done a LearningConnect and gone through the analysis, “Do you have any suggestions about how to present this learning? Right now, it’s just in a PowerPoint presentation with lists. The plan is to scan in the pictures that our guests had cut out … but somehow this doesn’t seem as descriptive. “
A. For analysis and sharing (Stages 5 & 6) - recall that the principle of how adults learn is to Experience, Reflect then Act... so in transferring the knowledge to others outside the team, the more you can help them to see and feel (create the experience) by sharing the stories and images and templates the more those receiving the new information will be able to integrate it with their existing knowledge base.
Some ideas include creating a gallery with lots of the data and summary charts for people to see and work with - to Expreience the learning for themselves. The Reflect part is having them really work with the new information - in small groups or pairs or individually.... do a gallery walk, see what they notice, what's similar or different about one group or another. You can overlay the recorded voices telling their stories, create summary models that visualize how your consumer guests see their experiences. The more immersive and experiential - and tapping into different learning modalities (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) the more your organization will be able to take in the knowledge.
And don't forget to have them Act on the information - have some conversation as a team or organization about what implications there might be for your business based on what they are seeing and hearing. "So what about that? - what should we do? and create a clear plan of action and next steps.
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