A few years ago, there were several movements towards the notion of being transparent about your work. Arguably, it started with Dave Winer, who talked about Narrate Your Work. John Stepper started pushing Work Out Loud (and then trademarked it!?!?!). Jane Bozarth came out with her book Show Your Work. There is also the concept of ‘learning out loud’. Thus, it seems that there’s some there there. So what it is about this notion to narrate your learning that matters?
As I’ve suggested in earlier posts (e.g. here), there’re benefits to making it safe to share. Then the question becomes, what to share? We certainly can share our questions, and answers to others’ questions. But is there more?
The premise of these approaches is that what you should share is your work, your ongoing progress. This includes what you’re trying to achieve, and your steps towards it. This alone has benefits, in particular you can know what others are doing and better align with it. If there are overlaps, they can be explored and redundancy reduced. However, there’s more that’s useful.
The idea behind not just sharing your work, but narrating it, is that you’re not only sharing your work, but the thinking behind it. As Jane’s book title suggests, it harks back to your teachers asking you to ‘show your work’. What they really meant was ‘show your thinking’. And this is valuable.
In Collins & Brown’s Cognitive Apprenticeship, they synthesize several different pieces of work into a coherent model of instruction. This includes Alan Schoenfeld’s work where he shows his thinking as he works examples for learners, and Anne-Marie Palincsar’s and Ann Brown’s reciprocal teaching, where people take turns performing and the others critique. The subtitle of their work illuminates the rationale: making thinking visible.
When we can see other’s thinking, we get some benefits. We can learn from them if their thinking is ahead of ours. We can also provide feedback and course correction if we see their thinking has flaws. One of the reasons I blog, for instance, is for the feedback that can come and improve my understanding!
Of course, others can show their thinking, and get corrections from us as well. What’s required, of course, is that sharing our thinking isn’t held against us, but instead is used as an opportunity to improve. If it’s safe to truly share, the benefits accrue.
Entailed are some requirements. For one, you need a systematic way to narrate your work. Social tools such as Teams or Slack can help, as can some of the project management tools. Blogs work, too. I’ve argued that having two levels, e.g. a microblog and a larger blog can be good, because you can see their quick thoughts in the one, and then the resulting larger thinking in the other. That way, the individual posting can serve as a mentor and not even realize it.There’s a role here for L&D to serve as an instigator, as well as providing guidance about the process (including asking questions and answering them in ways that are helpful).
You may also need some policies about frequency, depth, etc. Some might spend too much time on it, others might be too terse. Finding the sweet spot, and reinforcing it, is another role for L&D. Providing assistance in how to capture work is another role, as Jane suggests. Ensuring that leadership is modeling it is also important.
Most importantly, I suggest, is that L&D should walk the walk. L&D needs to own these practices before they take them to the rest of the organization. There are benefits to L&D from doing this, as well as from learning how and sharing it outward. Thus, as L&D, you should start to narrate your learning (and work). There’s power here, and a step to a learning organization.
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