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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

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Speaker 1: Today's tip is to be careful about learning from experience.

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Speaker 1: Everyone learns from experience, but different environments affect whether these

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Speaker 1: lessons are helpful or not. Today's tip comes from Before

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Speaker 1: Breakfast producer Lowell Berlante's new podcast, Prodigy. This podcast covers

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Speaker 1: the science of skill acquisition. As Lowell tells us, people

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Speaker 1: automatically learn through experience. We just can't avoid it. We're

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Speaker 1: tuned to picking up information we are exposed to. So

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Speaker 1: what information are we exposed to? Psychologist Robin Hogarth has

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Speaker 1: come up with a taxonomy of learning environments. These environments

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Speaker 1: are either kind or wicked. A kind environment is one

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Speaker 1: where feedback is immediate and obvious, the rules don't change,

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Speaker 1: and the boundaries are well defined. Sports like golf for

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Speaker 1: skill games like chess are examples. When you hit a

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Speaker 1: golf ball, you can see exactly where it lands. A

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Speaker 1: pawn always does what a pawn is supposed to do.

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Speaker 1: In kind learning environments, time spent practicing correlates directly with

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Speaker 1: how you improve. Wicked environments are something else entirely feedback

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Speaker 1: is delayed, infrequent, or not present at all. And here's

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Speaker 1: the particularly wicked part. It may be inaccurate, which reinforces

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Speaker 1: the wrong lessons. Hogarth cites an example of a doctor

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Speaker 1: who gained an uncanny reputation for diagnosing typhoid fever before

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Speaker 1: symptoms emerged, just by amining and manipulating the patient's tongue. Later,

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Speaker 1: it was discovered that the doctor himself had typhoid and

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Speaker 1: was transmitting it to the patients. Talk about learning the

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Speaker 1: wrong lessons. It seems obvious that we would want to

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Speaker 1: avoid wicked environments, but unfortunately we inevitably wind up in

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Speaker 1: some because guess what the world isn't like golf or chess.

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Speaker 1: Many workplaces, for instance, fall into the wicked environment category,

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Speaker 1: and this is true even if they are run by

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Speaker 1: very nice people. Employees get annual reviews once a year,

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Speaker 1: and these reviews are done by overworked managers, who thus

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Speaker 1: focus only on what happened in the last two weeks

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Speaker 1: or what the loudest and most available colleagues said. Misleading

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Speaker 1: feedback abounds. For instance, the corporate hierros might think that

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Speaker 1: a restaurant manager is amazing because sales are great. But

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Speaker 1: in fact he is losing good employees left din right,

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Speaker 1: and the restaurant is in horrible condition with deferred maintenance.

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Speaker 1: Lucky for him, he's just located across the street from

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Speaker 1: a really busy construction site. But that site won't be

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Speaker 1: busy a year from now. Unfortunately, in this wicked environment,

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Speaker 1: our incompetent manager most likely have been promoted by then.

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Speaker 1: In a wicked environment, it's easy to learn the wrong things.

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Speaker 1: So the lesson is to try to turn a wicked

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Speaker 1: environment into a kind one. This can be done through

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Speaker 1: data and feedback. Employees deserve feedback all the time, way

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Speaker 1: more often than once every six to twelve months. Give

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Speaker 1: feedback after every project, give feedback after every meeting. Ask

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Speaker 1: employees where they're struggling or what skills they'd like to develop,

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Speaker 1: and give lots of feedback. There. You don't want people

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Speaker 1: flying blind. You also want lots of data. Don't just

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Speaker 1: focus on one big number like sales. Yes, everyone wants

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Speaker 1: to make money, but in the restaurant example, the higher

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Speaker 1: ups should be looking at turnover, capital spending, employee evaluations,

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Speaker 1: anonymous shopper visits, and so forth, and all of this

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Speaker 1: should be widely available and transparent. Yes, this requires resources,

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Speaker 1: but it vastly improves morale in general. If you've got

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Speaker 1: a wicked environment, ask a few questions. Is their missing

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Speaker 1: data that could be important for me? To know? What

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Speaker 1: details are present that should be ignored. Being aware of

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Speaker 1: the answers to these questions can lead to big improvements.

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Speaker 1: If you're interested in learning more about learning environments, Robin

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Speaker 1: Hogarth recently released a book called The Myth of Experience,

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Speaker 1: Why we learn the wrong lessons and ways to correct them.

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Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more about the study

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Speaker 1: of expert performance, check out Lowell's podcast Prodigy, available wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts in the meantime. This is Laura.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of

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Speaker 1: our time. Hey everybody, I'd love to hear from you.

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Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.

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Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at

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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast Pod that's B the number four, then Breakfast

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Speaker 1: p o D. You can also shoot me an email

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Speaker 1: at Before Breakfast Podcast at i heeart media dot com

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Speaker 1: that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.

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Speaker 1: Thanks so much. I look forward to staying in Touch

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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio. For

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