Sims Learning Connections

One of the first topics I would like to explore in this writing is the roles of reflection and practice in performance improvement. I have a hypothesis that both are under valued, under facilitated, under promoted and (most of all) under utilized within the typical corporation.

Let’s start with reflection.

What comes first to me when I think about reflection, is the word pause — taking time to interrupt the immediate task and our frequently all to busy minds and schedules to slow down and ask ourselves questions like:

• What are our assumptions at this moment?
• Where does the current experience suggest about our prior assumptions?
• What is emerging?
• What needs interrupting?
• What needs started?
• What is worth capturing more formally?
• What have we learned so far?
• Who else might benefit from knowing about this?
• Could we apply what we are learning here more broadly or in areas where applicability is less obvious?
• etc.

How often do we, even many as learning professionals, take advantage of a formal training opportunity to only then return to our normal routine feeling all the more behind on our deadlines and never take the time to reflect on and integrate the just concluded experience? Or, we complete one project and then immediately rush head-long into the next without ever stopping to carefully think about how the just completed might inform the about to begin?

At the scale of team, the Knowledge Management discipline a few years ago borrowed the After Action Review from the U.S. Army (for example, Collison and Parcell in Learning to Fly) — a useful beginning, if the project manager and company culture is at all supportive.

At the scale of individual some have found maintaining a learning journal helpful. I will be exploring how this blog, in part, can begin to serve as my own learning journal.