Who will learn from this?

Inevitably, if I dig hard enough, the answer to the question “What specific change do I want?” will be to learn something. Or help someone else learn something. Usually both simultaneously.

I can have other good reasons to share something, like asking for help or even self-promotion. I can have other good reasons to give feedback, like improving overall efficiency or communications. I can have another reason to build something or write some code, like creating something that people can enjoy and use. But if ultimately it doesn’t come down to learning, it’s just pointless drivel. Even the jokes I tell should be in the service of some opportunity to learn.

Answering “Who will learn from this?” radically affects how I choose to communicate an idea. There are critical questions that I simply cannot answer unless I know the who first, like…

• What is being learned?
• How is it being learned?
• Why should it be learned?

When the answer to “Who will learn from this?” is people that I do not know, then it signals to me I am using my own goals to motivate some lesson I am sharing. For instance, I may be giving a presentation at a conference, or conducting a workshop. I can make some assumptions and generalizations about the audience but I’m not able to speak to them on a personal level and that completely changes what is possible to take away.

What do they need to know?

If I’m giving a lesson, I’m asking people to meet me where I am. While I can introduce some ideas from more basic concepts, I’m ultimately continuing some conversation on a topic from the middle, from my point of view. This is why lectures are often hit-and-miss for me both as a speaker and as an audience member. I need to be very clear on what the prerequisites to joining in that conversation are.

I’m putting something out there and those people who are where I am in that conversation (neither ahead nor behind) will understand what I’m trying to say. Those that aren’t, won’t. The prerequisites for lessons aren’t simply technical, they also include the mental model of the audience.

What step can they skip?

Lessons are shortcuts. What I need to be doing is saving the audience time. Two important questions I should always be able to answer are:

• How do you quickly replicate my results, to your satisfaction?
• How do you quickly eliminate the same options I’ve eliminated, to your satisfaction?

Where can they take things further?

I want to provide something for someone else to build upon. I need to remain conscious of the fact that with any lesson, I am inviting others to take things further than I have, not simply to get where I am.

What is unique to my experience?

Lessons are usually most effective outside the reader’s personal domain. Most specific is better.

It has been my experience that people in general will happily map your specific experience to their problems, but if you try to generalize for the audience, it’s easy to turn people off.

What I want to do is suggest something from my specific, unique experience that the audience may be able to connect to their specific, unique domain and experience.

What’s the most useful thing?

Good lessons teach one thing that the audience is ready to hear and invite the audience to dig deeper.

By way of example, I aspire to the level of specificity and clarity @saint11 brings to his lessons.

If you know just enough and have just the right problem, his lessons are exactly what you need.

When the answer to “Who will learn from this?” is people that I do know, it’s important that I speak to those things that have the most direct value to them.

What are their goals?

Trying to help someone I know is more personal. More specific to their needs. It requires a certain amount of empathy for their world view. Not simply what problems they need to solve, but how they conceive of those problems in their head.

In order to effectively help someone learn something, I need to understand their goals, so that I can understand what the value of the lesson could possibly be, for them.

What are they already doing?

If I want to help someone else get where they want to go through sharing what I know, is about meeting them where they are. I need to make the effort to understand what they already know and what problems they are trying to solve.

Effectively helping requires that I am patient. Maybe it’s years before I can find just the right way to shape an idea so that it’s useful to someone.

What can I see from my point of view?

Good help shines the light on one blindspot. Perhaps nothing more than a single question to help them see an issue or perspective that is easier for me to see from my point of view. Help is usually most effective in the form of a question. A single question. Rarely advice.

If I catch myself giving advice, I need to ask myself if it is actually appropriate (sometimes it is), or if I’ve lost sight of what their goals are and what I can see from my point of view that they might be missing.

Who could learn more from this?

In practice, deciding what problem someone on the team will solve will be significantly affected by how much they could learn. Sometimes the best person is the most expert, because they can dig just a little bit deeper than anyone else and possibly move the bar of what we believed was possible. Other times, the person who could do the work the fastest or most effectively right now is precisely the wrong choice and giving someone else the problem to learn from can increase the team’s overall bench strength.

Answering “Who will learn from this?” in either case, is hardest when I’m sure I’m right. It’s easy to be impatient. Hubris is always something I need to be wary of. It’s important to remind myself that it’s simply not about being right. It’s about moving the ball forward. I’m not just throwing an idea over the wall, I want to make a difference and offer something that can be internalized and put into real practice.

Jordan Justice asked how we can “foster an environment or culture that enables people to be creative and grow when you ask them to do something?” Staying focused on who will learn from the experience and reinforcing a culture which helps them to do so, is a good first step.

When the answer to “Who will learn from this?” is me, I can increase my chances of learning by being more rigorous about it.

What am I trying to learn?

I will learn a specific skill or technique I didn’t know before. I will use this as an opportunity to practice and improve a specific skill. This is a chance to reflect on an unconscious approach and articulate it to my own satisfaction so that I can repeat it and improve upon it in the future.

Whatever it is, I need to have a goal in mind so that I can judge what’s actually valuable and what isn’t.

What did I learn?

It’s valuable to remind myself to consider whether or not I’m learning what I need or expect to learn. Am I learning the most by doing whatever it is I’m doing right now? If not, I definitely need to consider doing something else.

This is why I make games. It’s something that interests me deeply, not only because they’re entertaining or fun, but because there’s still so much to learn at every level of the process.

When the answer to “Who will learn the most from this?” isn’t me, I’m probably missing something big. PS to self: See note above on hubris.