In fact, it’s not about just thinking. Or about just doing. It’s about better ways of thinking while doing and better ways of doing while thinking.

Is your work environment designed to combine thinking with doing? ….or are you just putting in your time each day?

How’s your driving?

Have you learned anything new about how you drive lately?

For the vast majority of people, learning to drive a car took place ages ago, back in high school. Since then, it’s generally automatic. Most people can drive to and from work and not even remember the details. It’s doing the work of driving without the thinking. There isn’t any increase in your driving performance in the future.

Occasionally, though, there are those close calls. The ones where the brain is suddenly forced into paying attention and doing something at the same time.

Have you ever attempted a lane change and been saved from a crash by the sound of a horn from a car that wasn’t supposed to be there? Or pulled out into traffic and suddenly realized you hadn’t seen that Eighteen Wheeler now milliseconds away?

If you are reading this you survived.

Maybe you still remember clearly what happened. You were suddenly way out of your comfort zone. Your nervous system made some instantaneous moves. Your brain quickly followed by connecting back to the real time work of driving. Assured of immediate survival your mind then went on to construct patterns for behaviors to avoid similar stress. The discomfort of that close call actually initiated the path to improved safety behaviors in your future.

How’s your working?

In a similar way, have you learned anything significantly new about how you get your work done lately?

Routines at work function in the same way as driving on auto-pilot. Those first exciting, days of learning that new job are now passed. You found your own ways to cope. You can stay in your familiar comfort zone. You can get through the day. Even the fire-fighting is mostly an expected routine. Your performance and that of your team or organization is staying the same and probably gradually deteriorating. Your doing and thinking are not deeply connected.

The trouble is ––market and technology challenges are still coming at you yet they moved you far enough out of your comfort zone. By the time they do, will you be able to survive? Will you begin learning and improving your performance fast enough to stay ahead of those demands? Can you convert knowing what to do into actually doing it fast enough?

The patterns you actually need are the same ones that result from that close call behind the wheel.

“Peak” by Anders Ericsson

Those are the thoughts that occurred to me in reading a new book called “Peak: Secrets of the New Science of Expertise”
by Anders Ericsson. Ericsson has spent a career studying people performing in a wide range of situations. These include memory competitions, world class musical performances, chess tournaments, Top Gun pilot training, surgeries, London Cab drivering and many others. His quest has been to determine what really makes the difference between those who learn to perform better and those who don’t. He has answers for the basic questions. Is it primarily talent? Or Talent + Practice? Are there rules for how many hours of practice? And what exactly is the best way to practice?

Ericsson’s Bottom line: Many hours of practice separate the very best from everyone else. What’s the real challenging part? You can expect to spend most of that time in a state of stress and discomfort.

The 10,000 hour Rule?

First, Ericsson covers how much practice time is necessary. It will vary by situation but Ericsson has found, for example, that world class violinists need 10,000 hours just to be considered a good prospect for a future with a classical orchestra.

Is it just that old story: “How can I get to Carnegie Hall?” —“Practice!”? Yes. It takes practice time but not just any kind of practice time will do.

Practice and its relationship to Expertise

Ericsson actually describes three levels of practice: Naïve, Purposeful and Deliberate.

Naïve Practice is practice without much of a purpose. It is mainly doing without thinking very hard. It’s like driving on auto-pilot. There is no immediate standard of performance for each small step and no de-briefing comparing actual to expected. It is just putting in the time. Ericsson’s research shows that this has little improvement effect. Practicing this way means improving slowly, if at all. It’s what happens to many professionals who achieve just enough performance to make it through each day and spend a whole career on that plateau. It is comfortable work but not effective work.

Purposeful Practice is, well, —practice with a purpose.

Alternatively, you can practice with a purpose. You can connect your doing to your thinking. There are well defined and specific expectations. Higher level goals are broken down further and further into micro-level pieces. Mastering the overall task proceeds by these “baby steps”. Intense practice to master fine details progresses to larger and larger action sequences until the whole process is raised to a higher level of performance. The work is uncomfortable but effective.

Purposeful Practice is also highly focused and demanding.

This kind of practice demands a high energy level with no interruptions or distractions. It means getting “psyched up” to a mental level similar to being in an actual game or in front of a live audience. In this state the same detailed actions are repeated multiple times. You make your brain uncomfortable so that it stays awake and connected to the work being done.

The practice must be linked to direct and immediate feedback. It must be easy to see whether the immediate result is success or failure compared to what was expected. The session is set up to take the person beyond their own comfort zone as they are faced actions that fail. It is this stress that ultimately forces the brain to develop new thought pathways and patterns. The sophistication of these mental representations is the determining factor in progressing to higher levels of expertise and performance.

With a Coach or Teacher

This kind of practice also benefits from coaching – whether by another person or by “self coaching”. Sometimes a person can find ways to “take a step back” from the actual activity and analyze what is working and not working. Video and audio recordings can greatly aid this mental detachment. The coaching role also includes maintaining motivation in face of the stress needed to generate the development of those improved mental representations.

And It’s work…

Obviously, Purposeful Practice is not recreational. The stress is to be endured rather than enjoyed. Because of this, Ericsson recommends that these practice sessions be a maximum of about an hour with a chance to take a break or rest in between.

There is an old saying that you learn more from failure than from success. The failures during these Purposeful Practice sessions often cause people to think about their performance frequently between sessions, trying to come up with an approach that will get them through to the next level of achievement. Most of us know that feeling after a Job Interview or project presentation when we know we could have answered the questions much more effectively. Many times, I’ve driven home from such a meeting rehearsing what I would say if anyone asked me those questions again!

And then, Deliberate Practice – “The Gold Standard”

The third level of practice is named “Deliberate Practice”.

It is an informed “Practice with a purpose”.

It is informed by a pre-existing role that has been well developed into a defined body of knowledge and behavior. It’s not about trailblazing on your own or with your coach. Instead, you are following closely in the footsteps of those who preceded you along a known pathway to the top of that performance mountain.

For example, orchestras playing classical music have been around for hundreds of years. The instruments and the skills needed to master those instruments are well known. There is a defined skills hierarchy. You start with fundamentals as the agreed upon foundation for further progression.

The practice involves the same focus, the discomfort of frequent failure, the same immediate feedback as in Purposeful Practice but it also requires much more detailed mental representations. Practice techniques and experienced coaches are already available. All of this makes possible a level of informed practice. There also must exist significant rewards for pursing the kind of practice it takes to develop such highly focused expertise.

Let’s get practical – what about Process Improvement?

Process improvement is a skill. The field is still developing. Some skills need the structured path of Deliberate Practice. Others require the more general approach of Purposeful Practice. We all need to progress from knowing, to doing and from newbies, to skilled and then to expert levels.

Following Ericsson’s research, Process improvement could benefit greatly from an environment that continually activates the connections between doing and thinking.

It’s a Team Sport

No Black Belt or Green Belt has ever ridden into town like Chuck Norris and succeeded as an individual. It’s always been a team sport. It’s always been a full contact sport, as in full personal contact. Or at least it is when it works. Within that team environment, coaches can arise who share their discoveries and coach others down the path toward higher performance. We need to develop expert Teams not just individual experts.

You might begin to realize that it’s already been done. The Toyota Production System itself is an artifact of thousands of people practicing together for over 60 years. It’s all there: the focus, the feedback, the constant challenge, the hard work of developing an expert organization, 60 years of Purposeful and Deliberate practice. Those organizations that are really succeeding at Lean Six Sigma and Process improvement are the ones that are doing that and doing it will.

One of the most powerful ways prevalent at Toyota and similarly managed companies are the routines of the daily huddle meetings. These form the Lean Management System (LMS). The LMS has all the characteristics of the Purposeful and Deliberate Practice models. There is immediate feedback with a focus on small increments of time and activity. Goals are updated regularly and the team expected to find ways to raise performance. Staff is continually moved to a useful level of stress that keeps working and thinking connected throughout the day.

Any organization can learn these methods and make faster progress toward improvement! Don’t just put in the time each day protecting the same routines. Move yourself and your people into that zone of Purposeful and Deliberate Practice.

To Learn More…a call to Action on your part

To learn more, first give a listen to this Freakonomics Episode
that features the work of Anders Ericsson. Then get your own copy of Peak: Secrets of the New Science of Expertise at Amazon or at a bookstore of your choice.

There’s much more to know and put into practice, including the role of Mental Representations and how they enable performance but can also get in the way. More of that soon.

Oh, and you might need just benefit from having a coach. Contact me at AptoLean.com to talk more about that!

John Muka