Your Labyrinth Walls are Invisible: A Presentation Review

Have you ever found your way through a labyrinth or a printing maze with a pencil? If you have, you know how important it is to see the walls of the path. Being able to see the boundaries of the course is so standard that it is taken for granted. But what if we couldn't see the hedges of the labyrinth? What if the maze we are trying to push our pencils through were to be invisible? How would we cope?

The truth is, we all have things we take for granted. And these things often become barriers we don't see when dealing with human performance issues. Performance psychologist George Hanshaw brought his years of wisdom to the table and touched upon this very thing through storytelling and interactive experiments throughout his presentation. The presentation was given through the learning design and development program at Purdue. His experience at Lockheed Martin permeated the production and provided excellent insight into how human performance operates in the workplace. The title of George's presentation was "P Cubed, People, Performance, Partnership." And his point was that partnerships are necessary for maximum performance by people. And while it is easy to agree, it is harder to put such a thing into action.

Navigating the complex factors that impact human performance is like finding your way through an invisible maze. The idea that one can jettison down a straight line path is an attractive mirage. However, expecting that mirage to prove accurate is not recommended. So, how do we make visible the things we can not see? Dr. Hanshaw highlighted a few "hedges" to make them visible and provided a few tools for doing such a thing.

The acronym TALC summed up the first "hedge" he made visibly. This acronym stands for Technically Acceptable Lowers Cost. And he illuminated this principle with a story about a contest in which his employer participated. Although his company devised a beautiful solution, the same task could have been accomplished with a much simpler method at a significantly lower cost. Hence, another company in the competition won the game. The takeaway from this story is that it is essential to ask yourself if the solution you have come up with can be simplified. "Is this a technically acceptable lowest-cost solution?" It is a question that should be asked when devising solutions to problems.

The second way to make invisible barriers visible is to think like a child. According to Hanshaw, children have less experience and cannot connect years of experience with what they see." That results in children being able to see more possibilities. To make things we take for granted visible, we have to suspend our experiences temporarily. But how do we do this? Hanshaw says that constantly asking "Why" is an excellent tool for getting to the root of the problem and bringing the source of the performance barriers to light.

People may view proposed solutions differently by remembering that a company has financial limits and considering the cost of solutions. Additionally, asking "Why is that?" and temporarily suspending things we take for granted is a tool for looking at problems in a new way. It is a way of spotlighting what we take for granted and rendering it "invisible."

References

Hanshaw, G. ( n.d.) Past Webinars - Summer 2022 EDCI 52800-013 DIS. Purdue.

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