Before We Build, We Meet

This morning, our Fall Level 3 Master Craftsman cohort began its Design Intensive.

They arrived from different parts of the world, different organizations, different industries, and very different learning environments. Over the next five days, they will question assumptions, wrestle with design problems, test ideas, give and receive feedback, and begin turning their individual projects into learning experiences that can hold up in the real world.

But before we asked them to do any of that, we asked them to have coffee together. Or breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Depending on which side of the planet they happened to be sitting on.

Why Start There?

The final Countdown Challenge before the Level 3 Design Intensive was simple: meet with at least one other member of the cohort in our virtual LV3 Coffee Hub. No more than three people. Thirty to sixty minutes. Bring something to eat or drink. Skip the weather and traffic reports. Come prepared with a few things you genuinely want to talk about.

Get to know the people behind the projects.

When we design professional learning, we spend a lot of time thinking about content, objectives, activities, technology, and outcomes. All of those things matter. But learning, particularly the kind of learning that asks people to expose unfinished thinking, take risks, question their own decisions, and accept feedback, also depends on trust.

Trust is difficult to manufacture in the moment you need it. It begins earlier.

That is why this wasn't simply a fun pre-course activity. We were intentionally creating an opportunity for relationships to begin forming before we asked participants to do difficult work together.

The Person Challenging Your Idea Is on Your Side

Level 3 is not five days of sitting back and listening to someone teach advanced gamification. It is a Mastermind.

Participants bring real projects for real learners and real organizational challenges. They share ideas that are not finished. Some will work. Some will not. Someone may ask the question that exposes a hole in a design another person was convinced was brilliant.

That is exactly what we want.

Constructive challenge feels very different when it comes from someone you have begun to know. Instead of hearing, “She doesn’t like my idea,” you are more likely to hear, “She’s trying to help me make this better.” Instead of protecting the work, you can become curious about it. Instead of trying to prove you are right, you can ask, “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

That shift from defending our ideas to becoming curious about them is where some of the most valuable learning happens.

A Global Cohort Gives Us Something We Cannot Manufacture

Our Fall Master Craftsman participants are joining us from around the world. That creates some scheduling gymnastics, certainly. One person’s morning coffee may be another person’s lunch or evening meal.

But the differences among us are not obstacles to work around. They are part of the value of the experience.

A designer working in one country may recognize an assumption that seems completely normal to someone working in another. An organizational practice one participant takes for granted may be completely foreign to someone else. Different industries, cultures, learners, technologies, constraints, and experiences change the questions people ask and the possibilities they see.

A group in which everyone has similar experiences can reach agreement very quickly. That is not always an advantage. Sometimes the person who sees the world differently is exactly the person you need at the table.

That is one of the things I love most about this cohort. We don't have to manufacture diversity of thought through a hypothetical exercise or a carefully constructed scenario. It is already in the room.

So Why the Coffee?

When our cohort came together this morning, we wanted them to arrive as more than names on a screen. We wanted people to recognize voices they had already heard and faces they had already spent time talking with. We wanted them entering their first Mastermind conversations as colleagues rather than strangers.

The coffee meetup wasn't separate from the learning experience. It was part of the learning experience.

It was a small piece of intentional experience design that prepared people for what we would ask them to do next. Because over the coming days, they will need one another. They will challenge ideas, offer alternatives, ask difficult questions, celebrate breakthroughs, and sometimes help someone figure out why an idea they love simply isn't working.

By the time the Design Intensive began this morning, they had already started becoming a crew. And crews can do things collections of individuals cannot.

Who Is in Your Crew?

There is a lesson here that extends well beyond Level 3. Before asking people to collaborate, have we given them an opportunity to connect? Before asking for candid feedback, have we created enough trust for people to give it? Before asking someone to reveal unfinished thinking, have we created an environment where unfinished thinking is welcomed?

And before we design another icebreaker simply because the agenda says we need one, perhaps the better question is: What relationships will these people need in order to do the work we are about to ask them to do?

That is a very different design question, and one worth asking long before the learning experience begins.

For our Fall Master Craftsman cohort, the intensive began this morning. But their learning began before we ever said, “Welcome to Level 3.”

If you have been thinking about earning your Sententia certifications, perhaps it is time to begin your own journey. Level 3 may be the destination, but becoming a Master Craftsman is a progression. You build the knowledge, practice the craft, apply what you have learned, and eventually find yourself sitting alongside other designers who are ready to challenge your thinking, share what they see, and help you make your work better.

Find your crew. Then build something worth building.