- Imagine traveling through your neighborhood to a morning meeting. You're entering the intersection at 28 miles an hour and see in front of you, a big yellow school bus, loaded with those eager elementary faces. Only this school bus is completely stopped and you're headed right into its side panels. You have less than one second to react. That's one second to think and react. What happens to you? To the children?
Fortunately, for six of us at PSG, this scenario is not a horrible past experience, but just that - a scenario from a recent advanced driving skills course.
For fun one day, we took turns driving old police vehicles through a practice course at the Highway Safety Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota. One course had an imaginary school bus in the intersection. We were challenged to maneuver around it, sans brakes, at speeds of 25-33 m.p.h. As we entered the intersection, the car would trip signal lights. Within the next second, the lights would indicate to us which of three lanes we were to use. We had approximately 70 feet to see the signal, react, and successfully avoid a crash with "the school bus."
We were all experienced drivers. Some of us could successfully conquer the intersection at 28 m.p.h., but not at 30 m.p.h. Others lost their ability at higher speeds. But, throughout the day, each of us improved. How?
First, we had the opportunity to drive through the intersection many, many times. After we learned to control our rising blood pressure (hey, it's realistic!) and the vehicle at 28 m.p.h., we ran the course a number of times at 30 m.p.h. After trying mightily to avoid "body bags" (i.e., far-flung orange cones) at ever increasing speeds, we went back to the classroom. There we learned new techniques, based on the mechanics of steering and physics. Armed with our new knowledge, we tackled the course again. Throughout, course instructors coached us. With each pass, we received helpful feedback about how we handled the car. The feedback may have been a quick quip over the radio. Sometimes, they called a halt and had a short intensive session with one of us.
We were fortunate to have had this safe place to improve our skills. No one wants to ram a Crown Victoria into a school bus in real life to learn how to avoid a collision. But what happens at work? Have you, like me, used the "crash course" to figure out the best approach to a new situation? Imagine how much better it would be to have available the key ingredients of our driving course: a clear objective, education, practice time, and feedback!
Each day, someone in your organization is asked to take on a task for which their prior experience does not adequately prepare them. Each of us is, too. Who dreads making presentations to city councils or state legislators? Meeting with an agency that's out of compliance with contractual standards? Giving someone feedback on their performance? Or, dialoguing with dissatisfied stakeholders?
What if, in any of these instances, you first set up a "practice field" in which you:
- Understood the results that were to be accomplished;
- Could "play" with different strategies and tactics for achieving those results;
- Had a chance to debrief on each practice session and receive feedback from an observer or participant; and,
- Knew how what was learned could be applied to the work every day?
Two recent clients have successfully incorporated practice fields into their change efforts:
- In Washington, D.C., an internal service is changing from an oversight model to a consulting model. They first held "practice fields" where employees could role-play the new expectations. Scenarios were written around a set of common service problems. Then an employee team prepared for, and met with, other employees who portrayed the internal customers. After much give and take, mutual service expectations were set. All participants debriefed the role-plays-from both the customer's perspective and the service consultant's.
- A state agency in New York regularly holds meetings called 'safe harbors' where people can expose their uncertainties or fears about organizational changes underway, explore likely 'what if's, and receive advice about how to proceed.
Practice fields aren't that hard to design. What is hard is to acknowledge that we all need opportunities to practice, to have the courage to establish a safe place to practice, and the discipline to use it. If you don't, our advice is: "Buckle up. It'll be a bumpy ride!"
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