Greetings! Here is your weekly edition of “Treasure Tuesday” with five quick and hopefully inspiring nuggets from the metro map of training. Please let me know what you think. What do you want more off? (if there is something that feels uninteresting, feel free to say that, too).
There are three ways you can enjoy this content:
- Most Complete: Watch the interactive video I made with Prezi (below)
- Fast & get all the visuals: Click through the Prezi presentation at your own speed (without my narration)
- Read/skim through the edited transcript
This week’s Treasure Tuesday In A Nutshell:
Greetings, Dr. Stephie here. Here we are on the third Treasure Tuesday. Here’s your treasure chest with five nuggets in it. Let’s get going.
Gratifying Brilliance Extracted This Week
I chose to feature Xcential Legislative Technologies.
Metro Map of Training
We put together a “metro map of training.” Xcential is a very sophisticated, cutting-edge software company. We had some fun and created a subway map or metro map with different training trajectories for different people in the organization:
- The yellow line is for subject matter experts.
- The green line for program managers, etc
Enlightening Visual
When we want to show what the software does, here is the graphic the company had initially. It’s complete and somewhat technical, which is appropriate in many cases. Still, it’s often useful for less technical people, or even as an introduction to technical people, to show something simpler.
Here is a simpler graphic showing the parts of the software. It has an editor that consists of three parts: The enforcer, the stylist, and the handyman. We essentially personified the functions of the software. Then you have a vendor, the librarian, and storage.
We also used analogies here. Both the founder of the company and I love LEGO.
We came up with an analogy using Lego:
- All of Lego corresponds to a “Schema.”
- A “document model” is comparable to a particular model of LEGO, for example, The “Millenium Falcon.
- If you want to refer to particular brick on that model, that’s what you do with a “referencing scheme.”
I invite you to think about how you can do that in your organization: Make complex information more accessible and readily absorbable by making it into simpler-to-grasp graphics.
‘The Brilliance Extraction™ system is unique. It taps into the organization’s innate wisdom and utilizes it in ways I have never seen before. It collects many years of experience and makes it usable and transferable. Training and collaborative learning become so much more effective. The possibilities from that are stunning.
One of the things I love is that Stephie has the unusual ability to convert complex information into much simpler explanations and graphics that readily drive the home to the student.”
Grant Vergottini, CEO, Xcential Legislative Technologies
Inspiring Book of The Week
The inspiring book of the week is ”The Successful Speaker’‘ by Grant Baldwin. I appreciate this book. First of all, it says if you have a message to share, you can do it, and you can get paid for it.
The author outlines a five-step process:
- Select the problem to solve
- Prepare and deliver your talk
- Establishes your expertise
- Acquire paid speaking gigs
- Know when to scale
He doesn’t sugarcoat the work that is involved. It’s not hard, but it’s hard work. Therefore, you have to want to do it (I do, see DrStephie.com, which is my evolving speaker site).
Bold Idea Implemented
The bold idea I implement this week is to ask for honest feedback daily, making it into a habit. I believe it was in the first treasure box I showed you this graphic. Except there’s one small difference. I wanted to show Brilliance Mining at a glance, and I got some feedback, and I replaced the word “draining” it had in the previous version with the term “leaking.” That’s the result of asking for feedback. Now, I’m using this new graphic to continue to ask for feedback.
– The truth is that most visionaries have trouble simplifying their vision sufficiently to explain it to others effectively. I find it much easier to do for others and much harder to do for myself. (That is normal.)
In the meantime, someone else said they didn’t like “leaking” and that the graphic had too many words on it. What do you think?
I highly invite you also to do that and get in the habit of asking for honest feedback frequently.
The Surprise
Last but not least, the surprise. I want to show you something fun, two T-shirts. The Yoda T-shirt says “Brilliance Extraction™ underneath, written with chemical symbols. Some of you know I’m a “recovering” Ph.D. chemist. I had some fun with the design. I chose Yoda because you become the other person’s guide when you pass on your brilliance. They are the heroes. You are the guide. It is just like Luke Skywalker, who is the hero, and Yoda is his guide. That’s the fun story behind that.
Then there is also another T-shirt that says “Leverage Brilliance.” That T-shirt is given to everyone who participates in our Brilliance Mining cohort.
I’m Curious
That brings me to the question I always ask. Which Treasure did you get from this Treasure Tuesday? Perhaps you are inspired to do some Brilliance Mining yourself. That doesn’t have to involve my help, but I’m hoping to inspire you. I invite you to start thinking about what you can do with the expertise, experience, and wisdom you have in your organization. It’s trapped in someone’s brain.
Perhaps you are inspired to create some visuals, so start with one. You can even draw it by hand. It doesn’t matter. The thinking behind the visual is the most important part. Then you can give it to someone else to make it prettier if you like.
Please remember each step forward is enough. One little step is way better than none. The sum of all tiny steps taken consistently is utterly unstoppable. Okay. See you next week. Cheers.
Dr. Stephie
P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this with others. Thank you!
