Weekend Building Blocks - 22 JUN 2018


There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome!
First, Weekend Building Blocks has been in a lengthy state of hibernation. Again, there is lot of crap out there on the interweb...
  1. CTA: Brutal Attacks Rise As Trasit Crime Heads Higher For Third Year. CWB Chicago is a non-traditional news supplier in Chicago, specializing in crime, politics, and policing. As such, they were recently involved in some conflict with a major city traditional newspaper's editorial staff. This piece highlights their in-depth work and what should be a standard for reporting crime in a city like Chicago.
  2. PowerPoint Presentations Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis. This is an academic paper identifying some research studies on what are principles, laws, or standards of designing projected slides for a presentation. We're all going to get better slide shows now, right? (Thanks to Sara Wood for this piece.) 
  3. Developing Police Sergeants: Getting the Outcomes and Measurements of Effectiveness Right. My friend Fred Leland is a retired police lieutenant. He's been a significant influence in my journey of adaptability. While this particular course of his is for front line police supervisors, the concepts apply to virtually any supervisory role in any industry or field. 
  4. Nonlinear Causality. Complexity Labs posted this excellent and short article getting into: feedback; disproportionality; multiple causes; downward-upward causation; indeterminism; equifinality; reverse causation. I following it all...until they got to reverse causation. I felt as though my Space-Time Continuum was disrupted...
  5. Developing Adaptive Expertise: A Synthesis of Literature and Implications for Training. This 31-minutes video lecture by Rob Hutton is a great watch for anyone involved in training or developing adaptability in people or teams - regardless if police, military, or other. One (1) thing I appreciated about this was a separation of generalized adaptability versus context-specific adaptability. (Thanks to Gareth Lock for this piece.)
Second, I published three (3) blog posts this week:
  • On Medicine & Policing. Why am I so frustrated when evidence-based policing folk compare policing to health care? It's because of the predictability, consistency, and repeatability of the respective environments. 
  • When Is Good Enough, Good Enough? There is a dark side to seeking excellence. Basically, there is cost associated with trying to become the best. 
  • Presentation Hack: Evidence-Based Slide Design? What if there was research that identified what made PowerPoint-type presentation slides bad? Luckily, there is! (It's also linked above in slot #2.)
Third, my Presentation Hack column has been more successful than I predicted. Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Quite a few readers have sent me messages that they've employed the tricks and tactics I suggest in the column...and had a better speaking or learning experience in their particular space. I really enjoy hearing back from you like this!! What other questions do you have on presentation skills or practices?

Last, I'm tinkering with some ideas on bringing an adaptability workshop of sorts to Chicago for non-police audience and participants. If this is something you'd be interested in, please let me know! The current interest is from education, firefighting, tech, and finance sectors.

As for Weekend Building Blocks, I appreciate you allowing me to make these recommendations to you.
    ***

    Lou Hayes, Jr. is a police training unit supervisor in suburban Chicago. He studies human performance & decision-making, creativity, emotional intelligence, and adaptability. Follow him on Twitter at @LouHayesJr or on LinkedIn. He also maintains a LinkedIn page for The Illinois Model.

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