Workplace Evolution – a Process of Natural Selection?

In recent months our organization has undergone some restructuring and our team has accordingly received a new mandate. Whilst continuing much of our existing work, we now have the scope to develop in new areas, including in the area of ‘leadership’. Thinking for some time now about what this might look like, we have been looking at ourselves – as individuals and a team – to see how we might better use and further develop our strengths. In this process, I have been struck by quite how quickly our jobs can evolve. And I have been wondering about the relationship between me and my job. Are my job and I evolving apace? And is there a process of natural selection at work, in which my job has increasingly played to my strengths?

I joined the organization almost four years ago on a short contract as an editor and soon became involved in a number of projects looking at strategic communication and learning. I have since gained valuable experience working with international, voluntary membership networks, developing websites and portals, using web 2.0 technologies, and more recently I’ve added facilitation skills and interactive learning design as ‘feathers to my bow’. In the course of all of this, to what extent have I sought to evolve in response to an evolving job? And to what extent has the evolution of my strengths influenced the evolution of the job? I am not sure of the answer. Nor am I sure of what would be the optimal balance for me and my organization. To the extent that we can influence the evolution of our jobs, how much should we?

Tapping Into Natural Talent: Bibliotheca Talent Shows

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was, last week, host to a couple of talent shows. One was that of participants in the Youth Employment Summit (YES). Amongst others, Dumisani Nyoni was on stage with his guitar performing a medley of songs from across the world – with his audience standing and singing along as he strums something from a part of the world with which they feel special association. Another, quite different talent show took place during the ‘New Learning for Sustainability in the Arab Region’ event.

Fayez Mikhail, an Information Technology Manager from a large, international environmental organization, took centre stage (well actually just off-centre so as not to obscure the images projected on the screen behind) and showed a talent he had never shown before in almost twenty years with his organization. Fayez has a natural talent for speaking in public. Discovery of this talent was quite by accident. He never signed up for a talent show. We needed a speaker on how developments in information and communication technologies have affected learning within our organization and how we are sharing and learning with others. The speaker would be before a largely Arabic audience. Who better than our Egyptian IT Manager! It didn’t take long for us to close the deal and before we knew it Fayez was on stage and displaying a talent he never even knew he had. (Conversely, during the event we were also presented with performances by that highly experienced public speaker who clearly lacks any natural talent at all and who would have been wise to ask another to do the job for him/her – after all if your lyrics and score are great but you can’t carry a tune you’re unlikely to convince your audience that you belong at the top of the charts).

How can we tap into natural talent in our organizations? Would bringing talent shows into the workplace help us discover talents we never knew we had? And would they help us identify others with the talents we lack who could help us for greater impact? If not a talent show, how can we provide other environments in which we can discover these things? Surely our talents shouldn’t go hidden for almost twenty years. And once discovered, how can we make sure we use these to their full potential?

How Is Networking Form Following Function?

‘Are formal networks pre-internet artifacts?’ - asked Gillian in her post of August 30th. For some time now, we have been dabbling in and experimenting with the ever-evolving networking technologies available online. Working with a formal membership network of over 600 people worldwide, we have been seeking ways to use online technologies to stimulate decentralized engagement and action.

In 2006 we progressed from a traditional website (in Dreamweaver) – editable only by headquarters staff – to an open-source web-portal. The portal provides all network members with the opportunity to login, edit their user profiles, search other members, and share news stories, coming events and resources. And yet already we can see that the speed at which online technologies are developing means that our portal appears a product of the past. Web2.0 social and professional networking tools have taken centre stage, offering ever-more informality, flexibility, functionality and fun. The burning question - What are the implications for our formal membership network? And yet maybe there’s a bigger question that we ought to first be answering…

For me, the question of a network’s ‘form’ (and related used of tools and technologies) cannot be separated from the question: What is the network’s function? (- For we have all heard the familiar ‘form follows function’ saying.)

The World Conservation Union has over 10’000 expert members in six formal networks (otherwise known as ‘Commissions’). What is the key, generic function of these networks? The Union’s website states that these networks ‘assess the state of the world’s natural resources and provide the Union with sound know-how and policy advice on conservation issues’. Is a formal, membership network the best form to support this function? I think this question deserves further exploration. No further exploration is necessary, however, to see clearly that the formality of these membership networks brings to the Union an essential scientific credibility without which the largest conservation organization in the world would certainly lack influence.

When addressing the issue of form following network function - and the related issue of the most appropriate technologies- how can we address (and perhaps reconcile?) these explicit and implicit network functions for greatest impact? I’m hoping that both my informal and formal networks will help me here…

Having F.U.N.* with Vance Stevens

Vance Stevens, of the Petroleum Institute (Abu Dhabi) and founder of Webheads in 1998, gave a two hour Un-Workshop this morning at our Arab Region New Learning for Sustainable Development Workshop that he titled F.U.N. * Fair: Computer Mediated Communications Tools for Distributed Social Learning Networks. This was a face-to-face un-workshop, a veritable souk of activity, connectivity and interaction both in our training room at the Library of Alexandria, where we are now in Egypt, and with his online colleagues from Barcelona, the West Coast of the US, and so on, who joined us in Second Life, on skype and on worldbridges.net.

The Un-workshop had an open door policy, people were popping in and out. Laptops and terminals all on different pages, the clattering of keypads, exploring and trying out the URLs that Vance was introducing to us, talking us through, answering ten questions simultaneously. There were plenty of technical challenges, and at the same time lots of patient people who were excited by the possibilities, mystified by Second Life (one Egyptian participant said it should be called "Second Wife" instead), and eagerly starting their journey in the technology-mediated environment. It was great to have Vance as a guide. What you can learn from seeing it, trying it, and being able to query it in real time is so valuable, plus his enthusiasm is catching. You could tell that we weren't the only ones having F.U.N.*

* Frivilous Unanticipated Nonsense

Talking About Tagging: Finding Our Event

We are in Day 2 of our New Learning for Sustainable Development in the Arab Region conference at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. Vance Stevens spoke in our morning session titled, "Motivating Change: New Learning in Formal Education for Sustainable Development."

During his very interesting presentation (which I will blog more about later), he introduced a tag for our meeting IUCNALEX, which we will be using together to aggregate our comments and reflections.

In the presentation this morning by the Taking IT Global team they introduced the idea of "curiosity-based" learning. I think we have a rich mixture of participants here with us, some who are active bloggers and Web 2.0 enthusiasts, and some for whom many of these tools are new. So we can use our curiosity to experiment with some of these, use the resources and knowledge of our colleagues to promote further learning on these tools and the opportunities that they provide, and the tagging system will help people keep it all organized. I hear that Buthaina al Othman, who is one of our speakers this afternoon, talked another participant through how to set up a blog already, so we might have some new bloggers coming out of our meeting!

An ISO Standard for Plenary Speakers?

We have been talking about standards for social impact analysis today in a small discussion group. Has anyone thought of an ISO like this yet? That would be really helpful to those who are organizing workshops and for speakers as well.

You Can't Fight Furniture

No matter how hard you try to have a dynamic, interactive feeling to a workshop, if you are in a room where the furniture is all facing forward and bolted to the floor, people's assumptions are that they are there to sit still and listen, and not to look at each other and talk.

We have just launched our New Learning workshop, our room is a banked auditorium - very nice, very wired, not too big and very quiet at the moment. Of course, we are at the introduction and context setting part filled with short presentations. And we will get to work hard to change the dynamic once we move past this part to participants' introductions, which I will facilitate next. Needless to say, I was delighted to notice that the chairs do swivel.

Are Formal Networks Pre-Internet Artifacts?

This strikes me as a rather explosive question, and it would be interesting to hear different viewpoints. Several years ago I think I would not have considered it as plausible as I do today. Formal networks now are competing with personal networks that people set up for themselves, both social and professional. Why join a structured professional network, when you can use a ning or Facebook to bring into your orbit the people who are important for informal learning and exchange on your preferred practice, and use google or any other search engine to find all the relevant new information for your field. What can formal networks now provide as a compelling value proposition for their members?

I guess they can be filters and aggregators, but there are lots of organization providing clearinghouses and tailored information collections. There might be a few specialised niches left to populate here, but fewer and fewer every day. Maybe they can provide quality control? But voting and ranking functions can do that to, as well as checking the popular tags on del.icio.us or the public bloglines accounts of reputable experts. What is the most compelling offer for formal networks today?

Maybe they need to go back to F2F formats, that is something that many of these new tools don't provide. When they are virtual, then they are increasingly in a crowded space.

We are just about to kick off a meeting organized in conjunction with our international network of communication and education/learning experts on New Learning, no doubt this will be an interesting question for reflection...

What Can a Trader Learn from a Tribesman?

This is the new corporate ad that our organization has developed - I was so excited to see that out of the 8 words chosen so carefully to profile our organization, "Learning" was one! The tagline at the bottom is also interesting: "Bringing experts together to help solve our most pressing sustainable development challenges".

Earlier this week we had a programme planning session in which we explored our theory of change, visioned our unit in 5 years, and discussed the needs that we saw for learning and leadership within our organization, the greater union of partners and members, and externally. At the end of the day, we worked very hard to try to draw together the many strands of thoughts, ideas and goals, and we came up with the simple (in words if not in action) phrase that will help give our work direction: "Learning - Leading - Convening" (perhaps drawn as a feedback loop diagram). And that was before we saw the corporate ad...

What do you think? Too simple? Too narrow? How do you think learning and leadership go together? We would love to have your feedback!

When Do Facilitators Need Facilitating?

For professional facilitators practised in the art of designing and running effective group processes, skill in reading the underlying dynamics in a group ('The Orchestrator') and maintaining objectivity ('Under the Neutral Flag') are two of fourteen key competencies described in the June 2007 issue of The Global Flipchart.

I have marvelled at facilitators displaying these competencies par excellence and have no doubt about how hugely this has helped the group to progress and succeed with the task at hand, whilst also enabling some to find a little insight into their 'Johari's window'.

My question, however, is: 'In what contexts do even the best facilitators need facilitating?' What happens at meetings of the International Association of Facilitators? When doing their strategic planning, who facilitates? When do facilitators need facilitating?

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

For many bloggers, keeping up their blog is a vocation. They are completely devoted to keeping their blog warm, talk about it incessantly, obsess over their statistics, and celebrate when people comment on their posts. The only thing that can possibly keep a blogger away from her blog is perhaps.......vacation, vacation, vacation!

Thoughts from the Dentist’s Chair: Interactive versus Lecture-based Training

As I sat in the dentist chair, turning up the volume on my ipod to mask the drills and trying to focus my attention on the lyrics of carefully-selected sunny-day songs, I found my head filled with questions about dental training. When did this surgeon extract his first wisdom tooth? And how did he learn to do so? Did he learn by doing? (“Oh, so that’s how a jaw breaks, better not do that again”).

A couple of weeks ago, Gillian and I attended a three-day workshop: Performance Beyond Borders – Interactive Training Strategies. An interesting discussion arose around the pros and cons of interactive versus more traditional, lecture-based approaches to training, including:

• Improved ability to recall information is not always correlated with improved ability to apply and transfer learning;


• Interactive approaches usually result in a better ability to apply and transfer learning than traditional, lecture-based approaches. However;


• Improved ability to apply and transfer learning is not always correlated with increased confidence;


• Confidence in learning approaches depends largely on a learner’s self image, as well as their experience and perceptions about learning (most people think that you need to listen to a lecture from an expert, or read a book with the definitive theory, in order to learn something – that builds confidence, but it still might mean that you are not able to apply the knowledge as effectively);


• A well-balanced, blended approach (both lecture and interactive) is best.

How had my dentist developed the knowledge, skills, ability and confidence to pull my wisdom teeth? From where did he pull his wisdom and how? Unfortunately when I left the surgery my mouth was all mush and I was unable to ask. On second thought, if he did learn by doing, I might be better off not-knowing.

What Can You Learn from a Card Trick?

Last week we went to a fantastic workshop on gaming given by one of the gurus in this field, Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan, whom we have mentioned before in a previous blog post ("Bingo!") . His website on Improving Performance Playfully, is a wealth of free games, interactive training exercises and ideas for trainers and facilitators.

At one point in our workshop, we were taught a card trick. Well, actually we were taught two card tricks - one we were taught directly by Thiagi, and one we were taught by someone else (who had been taught by Thiagi).

What did we learn from a card trick? Well, there is an incredible difference between understanding how something is done and actually being able to do it yourself (let alone being able to teach it to someone else).

When Thiagi first did the card trick, many people could not immediately see the "trick" part. So he showed us the trick and then how to do it in detail. He then handed us each a pack of cards and instructed us to practice and in 5 minutes we would do it for someone else, and then show them how to do the trick.

Let me tell you, it is very hard to turn explicit knowledge (knowing how the trick works) into implicit knowledge (being able to actually do the trick). And it is even harder to then teach it to someone else (explaining it to make it explicit again.) And that was just a card trick, imagine if it was leadership or environmental management. It is not that it is impossible to do. But often when we teach or train, we leave people with explicit knowledge (knowing how the tool, methodology, practice works) and don't go much further than that.

I came away from that exercise with one card trick that I can do acceptably well after lots of practice (at least to the delight of my 6 year old) and a much better appreciation of why watching someone use games will not necessarily make us better gamers, and reading all kinds of articles on leadership will not make us better leaders, and why saying "I know how that works" will not necessarily mean that I can actually do it myself.

Learning at All Levels: Boss Swap

I heard a great idea yesterday from the founder/owner of an innovative Dutch technology firm. He wanted to create an experiential learning opportunity for himself, the head of the business for nearly 20 years, so he organized a "Boss swap" with a friend in another company. For three days, he swapped roles with another CEO from a similar-sized, but non-competing business, to see what he could learn.

He said that he found the experience fascinating. Indeed, he got some new management ideas that he could effectively apply in his own workplace. And, by observing with a more dispassionate view on structures, roles and work flows, he found that when he returned he was able to look more objectively at his own business.

One of the most valuable parts of this experience he said were the discussions with his swap partner afterwards. Both in similar roles, they were able to help each other explore internal decisions and options for change with much more background that they could ever shared over (many) dinner conversations, creating a peer-learning opportunity that bordered on coaching that was equally valuable to both of them. He also said that, following his experience, he organized similar swaps for other levels of management in different offices, and that the Dutch media had been so interested in the exercise that they had covered it in the news (no doubt an added benefit.)

This strikes me as an excellent informal learning exchange for those at different management levels in our institution (even between our HQ and regional/national offices). It would give managers the opportunity to think differently about their own work, build relationships among senior staff (and with other workers), and develop a system of peer-support at the management level. It would also give people more information and experience with one another's programmes and might help identify practical ways to collaborate that were not obvious before.

Facilitators Notebook: "Experience in a Box" Application

Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post (Experience in a Box) about an interesting kit of materials that could be used to help people move through their learning cycle, from "analysis" to "experimenting", by building and simulating their ideas.

I used this on Thursday in our in-house Facilitator's Training Course (Module 4: Working with Space and Context). Earlier in the session we had given our facilitators scenarios to use to practice their introductions - the contracting piece - when you introduce yourself to the participants, share your goals, and frame of the workshop/meeting. Later we used those same scenarios with the Combi box to physically "build" the workshop rooms where those scenarios would most effectively take place. As they built their spaces (with sticks, wooden blocks, game pieces, modelling clay, etc.) each team talked through the various reasons for a certain room set up - based on the meeting's purpose, what they knew about the group, cultural considerations (given in the scenarios), etc.

We could have had general discussions in plenary about different kinds of room set-ups. However, that would have been passive learning for many, and perhaps too theoretical to be really useful. It would have been a few of us sharing our experiences, rather than strengthening the experience of others. The act of building the ideal workshop rooms in miniature with the materials allowed people to test different options together, talk about how one might work better than another, and make decisions, and then share the artifact of their discussion with the rest of us in a very short time.

This turned out to be an interactive, productive and fun exercise to give people more than just a notion, but some "experience" in setting up workshop spaces to contribute to their desired outcomes. Next step - moving those chairs for real! (Also, as a side note, not many of their final room set-up plans looked anything like those traditional ones in the image attached - they might have started that way, but in the process of their discussions their designs turned out to be much more innovative...)

Normative Forecasting versus Extrapolation - Big Words for Big Change?

In the last couple of days, I have been working with a core team in our institution on a strategic planning process to structure and organize a major upcoming event - a Congress of 10,000 people which will be held at the end of next year. We spent a good deal of our 14.5 hours together building a wall-sized work plan that detailed every aspect of the Congress that we could think of - and tried to understand how these all fit together in terms of sequencing and responsibilities, as well as the kinds of knowledge gaps or risks that we could identify now. The final, enormous visual result was less overwhelming than expected because we knew that everyone understood each other's individual pieces, and were there to help.

We did not start this exercise with extrapolating what needed to happen from today (that started after lunch). Instead we started with what kind of a Congress we wanted. We talked about what we wanted to achieve in terms of strategic objectives, and our most energised discussions were around how to have a healthy and happy Congress for everyone involved. These Congresses happen every four years, and are increasingly marathon events, with thousands of participants, hundreds of staff, hundreds of different activities happening concurrently, and - because they happen in a different place and with a different team each time- a steep learning curve. Our conversation about a healthy Congress (which is actually one of the sub-themes, although it is meant more in a global sustainable development sense) tapped people in to what they wanted their Congress to look like and be, not only for participants, but for them as the people who devote their lives to it for the two years preceding it.

During those 14 days of the Congress they wanted features both simple and complex. They wanted regular break times and meals, for sustenance and reflection; they wanted fresh air and some exercise (besides running around an enormous conference centre). They wanted clear responsibilities and lines of communication; and they wanted recognition for great work (and not just those emergency calls when things fall apart). They wanted the ability to participate in the substantive discussions to be built into their terms of engagement, so that they also could contribute to the debate. All of these things would help create the Congress they wanted to see, and would give them something to aim for. This is a more normative approach, describing desired future (I read an interesting definition of normative as being "one step beyond normal"). Normal, is what you might get if you use an extrapolative approach - one that infers or estimates the future by extending or projecting known information.

These two choices for developing future pathways, whether using extrapolative or normative approaches, are equally valid whether you are planning a major event, reorganizing an entire institution, developing a new programme, or trying to figure out what you want to do with your life - all four types of conversations I have had with people over the last week. The tendency seems to be to use extrapolation. How far can we get if we tweak this or that? What kind of different outcomes might we get if we experiment with normative forecasting? This might be a better way if your goal is big change.

Experience in a Box?

This week we went to a meeting of a Swiss-based Knowledge Management Community of Practice called "Think Table". This one-day gathering was packed full of games, experiences, discussions on topics such as storytelling (Story Guide: Building Bridges Using Narrative Techniques" prepared by the Swiss Development Cooperation-their webpage has many other related free documents to download), facilitation (our contribution), monitoring and evaluation for knowledge management, and "rapid prototyping".

Rapid prototyping was a particularly interesting tool, and it fit in with our recent preoccupation with getting people at work to be thinking about their Learning Cycles. This tool presents an opportunity to go further with the experimenting/experience part of the cycle through actually building a process and then simulating and walking through the various steps, before documenting them more formally on paper after the experience.

Manfred Kunzel from the University of Fribourg presented the activity, asking four small teams to each construct the following scenario: "opening the door to sell black ThinkTables to schools in our community". He gave us each half a box of supplies, small blocks, game pieces, sticks, post-it notes, other representational objects, and instructed us to build and then simulate the various seps in the process. After our initial "what?" reaction, we got to the task, and the discussion which followed helped us move through the essential stages of both project planning and execution (simplify the task, organization and set up, exploration and modelling, develop the plan, and execution). Apparently you can build any process in about 40 minutes, although then it can take several hours afterwards to formalise the process (map it, write down the steps, assign roles, etc.)

I have one of the boxes on my desk now, and already have plans to use it (you could probably create your own box). I thought it was a brilliant way to get people to think about something they want to do together, agree on it, build it, and then practice how the various stocks (money, people, ideas) flow around their system. It doesn't replace real life, but sometimes you can't practice building a bridge, or running a Congress of 10,000 people. At least this way you can create that environment on a much smaller scale and then run around in your simulated environment, saying what you would say, going where you would go, and seeing what kinds of things you might run into on the way.

Getting Some Help in Letting Go: Online Communities, Nings and Del.icio.us

This title might sound like the start of a self-help entry, and in some ways it is. We have written a few blog posts in the past about seeing information as flow (rather than a stock). These posts included How is Information Like Electricity or Water? and Knowledge Has Changed: 6 Big Ideas from George Siemens. And we have even tried to experiment with this notion in our own lives, for example in our office, which we wrote about in the blog post No Trees Were Harmed Setting Up This Office. However, when you come right down to it, people just want to keep things, bits of information, papers, books. No doubt there is some deep psychological reason for this (did my family move around alot when I was a child?) or maybe I just don't have enough time to read all these things in the first place (so I imagine that I will have more time later?)

I have been active recently on a new community social networking tool called a ning. One in particular is devoted to informal learning, run by Jay Cross, called the Internet Time Community. On that site, the community of 90 members (this number has tripled, it was only 30 last week) discusses community building, blogging, PLEs (personal learning environments), and more, all at the same time. Here is where I found something that helped me take another step in letting go of paper. I shared with this community my urge to print things (I had just started a physical folder of interesting articles on web 2.0 and somehow it seemed very anachronistic) and asked them for some advice.

Several members of the community answered this question. Here is what Jay Cross (author of Informal Learning) said: "Try using Del.icio.us or Magnolia. When you see something you like, click and you have a breadcrumb back to that item. You can tag it for retrieval by any terms you want. And you can even see who else has tagged the same thing. "

So I just spent the last hour setting myself up on Del.icio.us and I must say, it's satisfying to go back through those many emails I sent myself with URLs to useful sites and documents. I was able to annotate them, and tag them for future reference. I won't lose them and I won't print them. And it feels good knowing that they are there - just like those community members in the ning; they helped me take one more small step towards letting go...

Giving Feedback That People Can Hear

We have been on the giving and receiving end of feedback recently and that has inspired us to think a bit more about this artful communication process. How can we give feedback that people can actually hear, and even potentially use as a part of their learning process?

A couple of questions come to mind when thinking about this often delicate transaction: First of all, why am I giving this feedback? What are my motivations? Is it to help the person do something differently, to improve a process, to establish myself as an expert in the area, to register my reaction to some behaviour? Or a combination of these things? How close can you come to the core reason for giving the feedback in the first place, and can that help you package your feedback in a way that helps the person understand your motivations, and therefore make your feedback welcome?

The second question is how can I give my feedback? We asked this question to our group of trainee facilitators two weeks ago during our course. Many responses came up, and fundamental to the means they picked (writing, orally, face-to-face, etc.) was the question of trusting the giver to provide the feedback in a way that was appreciative and balanced (so what worked and what could be different).

Ultimately, the best result of giving feedback is that the relationship between you and the recipient is ever better than it was before. After all, you care enough about her/him (the process, the work, your relationship) to think carefully and share your reflections, and genuinely work together towards constant improvement. Think about the last time you gave someone feedback, would you say that your relationship is even better now? If not, then you could have had a communication misfire. Thankfully, feedback is not necessarily a one-off event, if you really want to help, think about it and try again.

Happy 100th Blog Post! What Blogging Has Brought to Us

Today we are celebrating - in the last 7 months we have written 100 blog posts! What is this practice contributing to our work? Here are some of the things that we have identified...

Making Space for Reflective Practice – Many people say they are too busy to think or be creative. For us blogging has created a space for reflection, and reflection is an essential part of our learning process (see Kolb’s Learning Model). In writing our blog posts, we are not skipping that essential step: taking an experience, reflecting on it, then applying our learning to new experiences. Our blog helps us map our learning on a daily basis, which encourages us and focuses us on constant improvement. No learning gets lost or goes unnoticed!

Capturing our Knowledge as it Develops – Our blog is a way to synthesize and record our knowledge and ideas as they develop. It is a way to capture and create new knowledge and meaning for ourselves. It is a means of analysis (in a most non-scientific way.) And it organizes these ideas for us so that we can track them and refer back to them later.

Fostering Creative Thinking and Writing – Our blog helps prepare us for conversations where we need to articulate new ideas. It helps commit our learning to memory, helps us develop our story, and practice telling it (albeit in writing) as the message is already "chewed over" in our heads.

Developing our Personal Knowledge Management Systems – Through exploring blogging and the theories behind it, it has introduced us to new thinking about personal knowledge management while at the same time providing a new tool in our personal knowledge management tool box. It also helps us practice what we preach in terms of experimentation and creativity.

Connecting Us for Quality Inputs – Our blog has enabled valuable comment from others in the blogosphere through a self-selecting mechanism (comments are opt-in) which in our experience been about quality versus quantity.

Even now, writing this 100th blog post has given us an opportunity to reflect again on what we are learning to help us consider what we can change, do more of, or explore further to improve our learning with this tool.