I had picked up this book with the hopes of understanding the mindset I would want to take when I am purposefully trying to perfect a craft. What I got was insight into the relationship of practice to skill building, common misconceptions about expertise and the role of practice versus innate talent. Here, I dive into key lessons and related questions in this post.
Key lesson #1: Conditions of practice
The piece considers 2 conditions of purposeful practice, which is a form of practice that enables one to get to the very baseline of proficient in a skill. First, awareness of shortcomings and then mindfully pushing out of the comfort zone aimed at improving such shortcomings.
The condition for deliberate practice begins with purposeful practice and adds a third element - a mentor that is highly skilled in the field of choice.
As such, improvement can be hindered by self-study alone. A key application is to seek out mentors that can guide one quickly towards resolving shortcomings, preferably those that have been recognized for their skill.
Key lesson #2: The correlation between highly developed skills and highly developed mental models.
While the book primarily focuses on studies related to practicing under the conditions of well-established and measurable (i.e. highly standardized) fields, the relationship between mental models and highly developed skills stand out.
Highly skilled people (the 1% of their fields) can call upon a high number of mental models that aid in their decision making almost like a reflex in a figurative and sometimes physical sense. At the same time, the conscientious act of building more mental models through careful practice enables one to build skills.
Equipped with this knowledge it is possible to build proficiency in two ways - relentless development of raw skills or relentless development of mental models through immediate experience.
Key lesson #3: Not all experience is equal
All too often, we like to think that more years of experience = more highly skilled people. And while time can truly be a factor in development of a skill, it is not the end all if one does the same thing over and over again.
The particular study regarding physicians stood out to me. The result being those with 3 years' of experience performed better than those with 10-20 years' experience. Factors such as more up to date education, presence of mentors contributed, but more than anything, younger physicians were keen to consciously improve their medical practice.
More important than the years undertaken is the quality of experience - conscious efforts into building skills win. It is possible that those close to their peak regress if efforts are stalled as those that place more emphasis on continuous practice catch up.
And now.. what of teams?
This book has made me curious about whether the techniques on building individual skill can apply to groups of people, in particular product teams that spend a lot of time together. Can the role of the agile coach facilitate the development of "team skill" and "team mental models" so that groups of people can identify situations and coordinate solutions more effectively?
The analogy of rock climbers' brains mentally processing how to approach various holds prior to reaching them comes to mind. Can each member (i.e. finger) position themselves before a difficult situation arises? And is there a way to do this quickly for each succeeding similar situation?
My hunch is yes... so raises the question, how? and how do we measure it?
A best guess would be to facilitate retrospectives that make team members reflect on situations that build upon the mental models of how they collaborate. The facilitator (usually the scrum master) should intend to construct retrospectives in a way that is mindful and uses prior experience. Mental models can be created by examining and coaching different teams
Where I see an immediate way to measure is through either those models that measure productivity (burndown or velocity reports) or business value (quantitative measures of how the team has delivered value over a period of time).
And finally...
The case about how much the role of practice truly plays in expertise has been made. Seeming outliers have been debunked in one shape or form by this book. I don't think the evidence presented by this book is compelling enough and have chosen to leave as much out of this post.
I'm curious to hear about those that think this can apply to team-based learning. Many of the great human achievements are after all, a sum of collective efforts.