Often, we think the biggest opportunities to learn come from formal training. Sure, you might learn something useful at a conference or a workshop. But, although we loathe to admit it, the odds of you being able to return to work and put into practice what you saw at the conference or workshop are low. Usually, you must do a lot of prep work and a lot of follow-up. This might include study, preparation, reading the original research, etc. You should definitely do that, but when Monday morning rolls around and the emergencies start up, it is easy to forget these non-urgent opportunities.
In my view, our biggest opportunities to learn come from the direct feedback we get from our own practice. I learned this from my friend and mentor Alan. Alan isn’t a BCBA, or in the field at all, but he has taught me a lot. He suggests that big opportunities to learn arise when our expectations fail to meet our reality. We implement a behavior change program, organizational behavior management intervention, or other initiative. Of course, we have positive expectations that things will go well. If the intervention rolls out as we expect, it suggests we understood the situation well. But if the situation doesn’t roll out as we expect, there is usually a lot to learn.
If the intervention didn’t achieve the desired results, do we go back and ask, “Why not?” Rarely. But we should. Understanding why an intervention failed leads to big opportunities to learn. Unfortunately, we often just try a different procedure.
Sometimes, the intervention we attempt achieves much better results that we expected. In this case, we might cheer and immediately move on to the next thing. But the fact that the results were so much better than we expected suggests that we did not fully understand the situation. Why was it so much better than expected?
We tend to focus on immediate results. When something isn’t working, we often aren’t that interested in analyzing why we thought it would work, but didn’t. When something works better than we expected, we are too eager to celebrate the success. Anytime we are surprised should be a signal to stop, slow down, and analyze what’s happening. It is a huge opportunity we often miss. Alan teaches how to do this here.