Weekend Building Blocks - 08 SEPT 2017

There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome!

On-task students. War against expertise. Playfully drawing systems. Reductionism. EQ in the military.

1. The Tyranny of Being On Task. Andrew Miller is an instructional coach (and former classroom teacher). He discusses the pressure for teachers to ensure students remain on-task. This is a futile attempt to increase learning efficiency. While this article is mostly about children and adolescents, there are outside arguments that the same lessons can be translated to adults as well. How can workplace training benefit from these theories? 
2. The War on Experts. Dr Gary Klein argues there are five distinct communities fighting against expertise: decision research, heuristics & biases, sociology, evidence-based performance, and information technology. How or can experts learn from and contribute to each of these communities?
3. Nicky Case: Seeing Whole Systems. This is an 80-minute video talk by Nicky Case on explaining systems in a "playful" way. Nicky uses the term chaos to describe what I normally refer to as complexity (I separate those two terms to describe two different environments, based on velocity). I really like how Nicky draws out different relationships between parts and traits of systems. 
4. Shifting From Parts to Patterns. The Capital Institute published this piece on systems. They argue the opposite of complexity is reductionism. The key quote of the piece is "Yet we pretend to believe we can manage complexity as we manage what’s merely complicated, with our rules and protocols, and our key performance indicators designed through reductionist logic." This is, of course, a fallacy. Again, there is a difference between complexity and complication.
5. Emotional Intelligence: Thoughts for Military Leaders. The Field Grade Leader published a piece on emotional intelligence. They address four specific domains of EQ: self awareness, self management, social awareness, and relationship management. While these categories names differ slightly from other theories of EQ, they are similar enough and are the more popular aspects of it. 

Lastly, here is a piece I wrote and published this week:

• EQ: The Diversity of Emotional Intelligence in Policing. Emotional intelligence can help policing in a variety of ways: on the street with citizens, in investigative followups and interrogations, in supervisor/subordinate conversations, and in training.  

I appreciate you allowing me to make these recommendations to you each Friday.

Lou Hayes, Jr.
thinking & adapting like a Tactical Philosopher
at The Illinois Model in Chicago.