by Clark Quinn

The LDA theme this year is unpacking thinking. There’re several reasons for this that we think are important, and so we want to show our work about asking people to show your work!

First, the research shows that showing your work has benefit. In Jane Bozarth’s valuable book Show Your Work, she documents a case study and numerous ways showing your work can benefit organizations. We also see it as a component of John Sweller’s research showing that worked examples are valuable mechanisms.

I think it’s important to take it further: to narrate your work. It’s not just showing what you did, but the underlying thinking behind it. That is often masked, and yet it’s important to see. For you, there are opportunities for others to see your approach. The benefit there is for others to be able to provide constructive criticism. For the others, it’s a way to stay in touch with what’s happening, and to learn how others are thinking. That’s a reflection opportunity!

There are multiple ways to do this. You can have blog posts for longer reflections, and messages for shorter thoughts. Together, people can track your thinking, and progress. It does require moving beyond a Miranda Organization (where anything you say can and will be held against you), to a place where it’s safe to contribute.

In particular, it’s important to show mistakes. Not for the mistake’s sake, but for the lesson learned. If everyone hears that, it lowers the chance that anyone else makes the same mistake, which is a good outcome. As long at the original choice was well-intentioned and informed, it needs to ok for it to not have worked. Innovation requires experimentation, and experimentation makes a risk of failure. Making it ok to make new experiments, and sometimes having bad outcomes, is the price of continual progress.

In a sense, showing your work is learning out loud. Which. Is. Learning! Which is what we should be about. So, we’ll ask you to show your work, and we’ll do the same. It’s clear that unpacking thinking is one of the important ways we can learn to do better, and that’s what we’re trying to accelerate. We hope you’ll join us.