This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes who reportedly proclaimed “Eureka!” when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose.
Archimedies realised that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged but this was not why he was allegedly so delighted: he had been trying to solve a problem posed by Hiero of Syracuse who needed to know the purity of gold in an irregular shaped votive crown.
Hiero suspected that his goldsmith was diluting the pure gold with silver and Archimedes knew that the density of pure gold was different from a gold-silver alloy. His bathtime revalation told him that he could now measure the volume of the crown and with the weight he could calculate the density – without damaging the crown.
The story may or may not be true, but the message is important – new understanding often appears in a “flash of insight” when a conscious experience unblocks an unconscious conflict. Reality provides the nudge.
Improvement means change, change means learning, and learning means new understanding. So facilitating improvement boils down to us a series of reality nudges that change our understanding step-by-step.
The problem is that reality is messy and complicated and noisy. There are reality nudges coming at us from all directions and all the time – and to avoid being overwhelmed we filter most of them out – the ones we do not understand. This unconscious habit of discounting the unknown creates the state of blissful ignorance but has the downside of preventing us from learning and therefore preventing us from improving.
Occasionally a REALLY BIG REALITY NUDGE comes along and we are forced to take notice – this is called a smack – and it is painful and has the downside of creating an angry backlash.
The famous scientist Louis Pasteur is reported to have said “Chance favours the prepared mind” which means that when conditions are right (the prepared mind) a small, random nudge (chance) can trigger a Eureka effect. What he is saying is that to rely on chance to improve we must prepare the context first.
The way of doing this is called structured reality – deliberately creating a context so the reality nudge has maximum effect. So to learn and improve and at the same time avoid painful smacks we need to structure the reality so that small nudges are effective – and that is done using carefully designed reality immersion experiences.
The effect is remarkable – it is called the Eureka effect – and it is a repeatable and predictable phenomenon.
This is how the skills of Improvement Science are spread. Facilitators do not do it by delivering a lecture; or by distributing the theory in papers and books; or by demonstrating their results as case studies; or by dictating the actions of others. Instead they create the context for learning and, if reality does not oblige, at just the right time and place they apply the nudge and …. Eureka!
The critical-to-success factor is creating the context – and that requires an effective design – it cannot be left to chance.