How Structure Drives Behavior
Dr. Hossein Nivi describes how Structure Drives Behavior using a great and familiar example.
Why Traditional Training Fails
Pendaran uses the Virtual Workplace Simulator as the core of its learning environment. This operational learning environment works like a flight simulator for business, allowing us to transform learning by providing practical, real-time experiences.
The simulator creates an environment that supports learning by doing. No neurosurgeon ever read a powerpoint presentation then stepped into an operating suite. No pilot ever flew a jet after sitting through hours and hours of being talked at in a training class. No astronaut read a book, then headed over to a space shuttle.
But that’s how many businesses approach implementing change in the workplace.
A recent McKinsey & Company white paper, Experiential learning: What’s missing in most change programs, describes findings that indicate at least two-thirds of attempted business transformations don’t adequately meet objectives.1 Only one in ten companies actually sustains cost improvements beyond four years.
Traditional training fails because it doesn’t offer opportunities to learn through experience.
Again McKinsey, “In the workplace, experiential learning has a long tradition, having proved itself over time to be the most effective means to acquire skills.”
When it comes to the systematic acquisition of the knowledge and skills needed to support business transformations, success depends on a combination of intellectual comprehension and hands-on experience. In modern corporate settings, effective capability builders rely on dedicated experiential-learning programs to achieve the results they need. Our latest research shows, however, that too many companies struggle with capability challenges while leaving the path of experiential learning unexplored.
Problem solving itself is “The Mother of All Problems.”
Dr. John Medina argues “humans have evolved to solve problems related to their survival in an unpredictable environment while moving outdoors.“
Problem solving comes naturally to us. This is who we are. Yet we have brought everything indoors. People sit. The environment is predictable. There are no survival issues. And we expect to solve problems. We’ve lost our way.
We go to work and just work in the same way we always have.
But if you continue to do what you’ve always been doing, where will you end up? About the same as you are today, right? In today’s environment “staying the same” is losing ground.
More importantly, your competitors improve while you decline. Eventually you fall so far behind you go out of business, whether you are a privately held company, a publicly held company, a mom and pop shop or a government agency.
To stay in business you must improve faster than your competitors. To improve faster you must solve problems, thousands of them. The trick is the ability to first identify problems and then apply a repeatable method of solving them.
This is the mother of all problems: knowing how to accurately identify the problems, large and small and solve them.
Businessweek featured the Pendaran workshop
In a conference room in Ann Arbor, Mich., an ex-Marine turned helicopter mechanic introduces himself to the assembled group: “Uh, my name is Tinker Bell.”
He hasn’t lost his mind. He has been forced to give up his identity as part of a novel worker-training program conceived by Hossein Nivi, an Iranian-born mechanical engineer and 25-year Ford (F) veteran. In his last role at the carmaker, Nivi developed a worker-training simulation in which trainees work at a calamitous, pretend factory and try to accomplish tasks while actors strive to make life horrible.