Ep146: Two learning adventures amidst a crisis, with Ron Gantt

I talk a lot about learning because it’s the key to performance improvement for all of us.  Today, the previous guest Ron Gantt and I compare and contrast how each of us has been putting social and experiential learning into practice for hoards of people like you amidst the Coronavirus disruption. 

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.

Since you’re listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you’re in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

There are a few other interesting things you may want to check out either before you listen today, or afterward.  You’ve heard Ron before in Episode 110.  That conversation had a similar style, where Ron and I were really just thinking out loud together, comparing and contrasting our thoughts and experiences, and you got to listen in.  Through this, we created something called the Dialogue Manifesto, which I talk a little about in the conversation today, but you can read it for yourself over at safetyontap.com/manifesto.  I encourage you to consider our invitation to start some dialogue of your own using this as a guide.   

On to the discussion, here’s Ron: 

I mentioned that Ron also shared some insights with Todd Conklin, which is a great conversation you might want to listen to as well, that’s episode 278 of the Pre-Accident Investigation podcast.  I also made reference to some of my recent episodes explaining more about the Safety on Tap Togetherness project which captures most of the social and experiential learning activities Ron and I discussed.  That’s episode 141, and the following episode I called T1.  You can also read a bit of a summary of the Togetherness Project activities at safetyontap.com/together, including the Together Platform which is free and super useful for you to connect and collaborate with people like us.  

Now on to my takeaways from that chat with Ron Gantt.  This was tough because there are just so many! But here are my top three:

Takeaway #1: When it comes to trying to enable better learning, for yourself or your organisation, simply get started.  Too many people buy books, listen to the podcasts, follow the gurus, but nothing happens in practice.  Despite the major disruption to both my and Ron’s work and life, we leaned into the opportunity to try new things, in different ways, and not only help other people learn, we learned a lot ourselves through the process.  If you want better learning to drive better performance, stop thinking or talking about it.  The time to start is now. 

Takeaway #2: Build adaptability into your plans.  Both Ron and I started our learning initiatives with intent, and a plan, but we knew a) that the plan was unlikely to survive the first contact with reality, and b) the anticipation of the need to change our plans as we went allowed us both the freedom and permission to actually do that.  Knowing what to stick with, and what to quit along the way is a big part of adaptive capacity, which is a topic I will talk more about in another podcast soon. 

Takeaway #3: Monitor and respond to feedback in whatever you do, and know-how and from whom that feedback will come.  This relates to Takeaway #2: we don’t change for change’s sake, but we have a reason to change.  I mentioned how we used customer insights to tailor our live sessions and the Together Platform structure, and Ron had a bunch of great feedback from the people he was serving, not just in what they said but insights derived from who came back, the popular vs less popular topics, the level of engagement during a session – these are all examples of things to monitor, which feedback into how we learn and respond to improve.  Speaking of monitoring, learning, and responding, these are three of the four resilience capacities which Dave Provan and I discussed on episode 142, which goes to show that we can improve these potentials in any context, any system, for more resilient performance. 

What were your top takeaways from that episode? They could be different from mine, which is awesome.  They also get lost pretty quickly unless we create habits to solidify our learning, so why not use the comment feature on this episode, over at safetyontap.com/ep146, leave a comment sharing your top takeaways, which will help you, but will help others who read them too! You can also grab the transcript and handwritten notes for this episode there as well, safetyontap.com/ep146 

Thanks so much for listening.  Until next time, what’s the one thing you’ll do to take positive, effective, or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way? Seeya!