Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?

If you are not smarter than a 5th grader it may not be entirely your fault. It turns out that most of us just can’t remember the things that were told to us many years ago. It is probably associated with the fact that most of our schooling is lecture based. Twenty or more kids are lined up in rows facing an instructor that proceeds to tell them a bunch of interesting facts as they frantically try and capture notes so that they can pass the exam at the end of the semester.

Unfortunately it is fairly difficult to gain knowledge by merely listening to a lecture, reading a book, and/or taking an exam. That doesn’t mean that study of this sort isn’t important. It just means that you won’t likely be able to remember a lot of it as time progresses.

Here is my non-scientific theory on this. Our brains are like those machines I used to see at the county fair where you could strategically drop in a penny and a little bulldozer would move back and forward pushing other pennies off the edge. We might only have so much capacity in the brain alone so that when we add more stuff it knocks the other stuff out.

In the penny game there are always a few of the pennies that get so well lodged in the machine that no matter how many new pennies you jam in they never get knocked off the edge. In learning there are also some things that need to be jammed in so well that they won’t get knocked out over time. The way to keep things from being knocked out again is to follow a principle that is often overlooked by overzealous organizations in their attempt to develop people. It is based on the old proverb:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

In human development you give a man a fish when you just tell them the right answer in the beginning. On the other hand you teach a man to fish when you help them find the answer on their own.

If you tell them the answer they will soon forget. If they discover the answer they will likely remember forever.

So if we know that knowledge transfer is facilitated when the learner can discover their own answer, why do we continue to tell them the answer?

I recently visited Georgetown, KY to talk with some folks at the Center for Quality People and Organizations (CQPO) who learned first hand how to fish. These were men and women that had been associated with the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky TMMK startup some 25 years ago. Most of them came in as Team Members, Team Leads, or Group Leaders and then worked through the system. One of them was even a Plant Manager before leaving Toyota a few years ago to give back to society. They partner with Toyota and the Scott County School System to develop the entire human supply chain.

I asked them how they learned about Lean and the Toyota System. They described a process that has been handed down over thousands of years in the world but still hasn’t caught on. It is the concept of Learn by Doing. It involves the Socratic Method. It requires patience and humility. It is why so many companies fail at Lean.

There were 300 senseis in the early days of TMMK. Over time that has dwindled to very few and will eventually be zero by 2010. But those first 300 senseis were hand picked from the best of the Toyota Motor Corporation and sent to Kentucky. I can only imagine the culture shock.

The senseis were not sent over to give TMMK a fish. They were instructed to teach them to fish. Their primary job was instruction. In fact, they told stories of times that the US employees were allowed to fail many times only to be shown an A3 completed by the sensei with the answer after they had reached the same point themselves. In the meanwhile the US employee would learn from each successive failure and the subsequent reflection process.

The sensei did not resolve the manager’s problem nor did he subvert his authority by rebuking or questioning him in front of his team. It was important that the chain of command continue through the local leadership. It is a slippery slope if the sensei starts to give fish instead of teaching to fish.

The end result of the years of patient instruction was that a Group Lead could move up to Plant Manager in five years when normally that process took twenty-five years in Japan.

I’m hoping my organization spends more time teaching me how to fish instead of giving me a fish. And I’m not just saying that because I hate fish.  ;-P