With today’s dizzying pace of change and the need for constant innovation, the willingness and ability to learn quickly may be the single most important characteristic for success. The research on high-level performance has a secret about how to motivate people to learn -- and it is remarkably simple.
International-level soccer players have birthdays in January, February, and March at a much higher rate than would be expected by chance. The statistics are dramatic – what would cause such an anomaly? The cutoff date for participation in children’s soccer leagues in Europe is December 31. This means that youngsters born in the early months of the year are slightly older and therefore faster, stronger and more agile than their teammates and competitors. That slight advantage leads to early success at the game, with more playing time, attention from coaches and encouragement by parents. But, most importantly, that early success creates “rage to master” -- a desire to succeed and work hard that drives the future world-class performers to put in the time and energy it takes to reach the highest levels of performance.
So what do soccer players have to do with learning in organizations? We can see in their experience a fundamental truth about all human beings -- we like to do things that we are good at; we do not like to do things that we are bad at. People are not reluctant to learn, they are reluctant to fail. Of course, learning by definition requires failing – imagine a child learning to walk. The secret is to structure the learning and practice so that there will be more success than failure.
The Prodigy Method teaches people several different techniques for creating development and practice strategies that are inherently motivating. Some of these are:
- Critical stretch - attempting something new that is slightly out of your current range of abilities, but not so far that you can’t master it quickly.
- Sequencing - mastering simple skills first and moving to increasingly difficult and complex skills
- Root cause analysis – identifying the precise skills to practice that will have the biggest impact on performance
You can see the principles of critical stretch and sequencing executed brilliantly in most video games. They take the player systematically to increasingly more challenging activities, but only after they have mastered the current level of play and are likely to be successful at the next level of play - that is why they are so addictive. We can teach people how to use these same principles to structure their learning in organizations so that old dogs eagerly learn new tricks.
