Recently, I noticed that another new national initiative has emerged within our communities - Reading is Fundamental. Yes, reading is absolutely fundamental, but reading is not the only way we learn. Howard Gardner in his theory of multiple-intelligences has demonstrated that many human beings learn differently. Years ago when I was a young child, I observed a distant family member who had an ear for music. As I grew older, I experienced others who had such a gift including my mother-in-law. Both could not read sheet music, however this lack of reading did not impede their performance. Sometimes we hear of individuals who demonstrate performance in the arts without any formalized training. I believe Grandma Moses was one of those individuals. While we need to embrace reading or literacy for all of our citizens, we should not forget the desired end result. performance is everything because in life learning is fundamental for everyone or what I call the P.I.E. of L.I.F.F.E. I believe it is our continued performance as human beings that has allowed us to grow and evolve into the 21st century. During the last several years while sharing performance improvement strategies with individuals, educational institutions and businesses, I have come to believe that many of us equate learning with performance. These two words are distinctly unique and most definitely related, but should not be considered or implied as synonyms. When these terms are used interchangeably, I believe this may help to explain the lack of sustainable change. I would ask you to consider the following two simplified definitions for learning and performance. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge while performance is the application of knowledge. In school, we learn specific knowledge and skills. This learning usually is accompanied by textbooks that we read and why reading is fundamental within our educational structure. For example, we learn that a simple complete sentence has a subject, verb and object. We also learn that an essay has a beginning, middle and conclusion. Performance is where we apply knowledge such as complete sentences to complete an essay with 3 parts. Unfortunately, application is where many students demonstrate a perceived lack of learning especially with regards to the numerous accountability tools such as state educational exams, IOWA Basic, etc. To better understand the distinction between learning and performance, I employ a graphic tool called the K.A.S.H. Box for Sustainable Change. For many years, performance and organizational experts identified that knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) affect performance. Several years ago at a national conference, the speaker, David Herdlinger, applied his knowledge and reconstructed KSA into a quadrant. The upper boxes contained the letters K for knowledge and A for attitudes. In the lower left hand box was the letter S for Skills. To complete the quadrant, this creative individual added the letter H for Habits in the lower right hand corner. Hence, the K.A.S.H. Box was born. The purpose of this K.A.S.H. Box was to show that more often than not poor performance whether organizationally or individually is not only an issue of knowledge and skills, but rather poor attitudes and habits. Yet, individuals and organizations spend most of their resources (energy, time and money) developing knowledge and skills and fail to develop the necessary attitudes and habits for performance success. I, then, applied my knowledge about what I knew about cash boxes. This resulted in me drawing a rectangle under the quadrant and labeling it the Sustainable Change Drawer. For every cash box has a change drawer and the purpose of this drawer is to hold change. When dollars are spent on the left side of the K.A.S.H. Box without investing dollars on the right side, the money is not reinvested into the business or individual, but is drained away. Hence, a negative return on investment happens. When focusing on both sides of the K.A.S.H. Box, the efforts are reinvested into the change drawer and sustainable change happens. This simple graphic is now included on my business card and affords me the opportunity to quickly show why the desired results in education and business are not being obtained. In education, for example, enormous resources are spent in reducing absenteeism and other related at risk behaviors. However, most young people past the third grade know that they need to come to school on time and turn in their homework. So the issue is not one of do they know what they need to do, but rather do they want to do what they need to do. Focusing on the acquisition of new knowledge and skills will not build the desire to want to change. Efforts need to be addressed to both sides of the K.A.S.H. Box for Sustainable Change to occur. When educators truly unite learning and performance, our students and our society will experience incredible sustainable change and a K.A.S.H. Box full of untold riches. |
