{"id":1250,"date":"2012-01-21T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T12:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2012-01-21T12:01:31","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T12:01:31","slug":"eureka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1250","title":{"rendered":"Eureka!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes who reportedly proclaimed “Eureka<\/em>!” when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose.<\/p>\n

Archimedies realised\u00a0that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged but this\u00a0was not why he was allegedly so delighted:\u00a0he 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.<\/p>\n

Hiero\u00a0suspected that his goldsmith was diluting the pure gold with silver and\u00a0Archimedes\u00a0 knew that the density of pure gold\u00a0was different from a gold-silver alloy. His bathtime revalation told him that he could now measure the volume of the crown and\u00a0with the weight he could\u00a0calculate the density – without damaging the crown.<\/p>\n

The story may or may not be true, but the message is important – new understanding often\u00a0 appears\u00a0in a “flash of insight” when a conscious experience unblocks an unconscious conflict. Reality provides the nudge.<\/p>\n

Improvement means change, change means learning, and learning means new understanding.\u00a0 So facilitating improvement boils down to\u00a0us a series of reality nudges\u00a0that change our understanding step-by-step.<\/p>\n

The problem is that\u00a0reality\u00a0is messy and complicated and noisy. There are reality nudges coming at us from all directions and all the time –\u00a0and to avoid being overwhelmed we filter most of them out – the ones we do not understand.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Occasionally a\u00a0REALLY BIG REALITY NUDGE\u00a0comes along and we are forced to take notice –\u00a0this is called a smack – and it is painful and has the downside of creating an angry backlash.<\/p>\n

The famous scientist Louis Pasteur is reported to have said “Chance favours the prepared mind<\/em>” which means that\u00a0when conditions are right (the prepared mind)\u00a0a small, random nudge (chance) can trigger a Eureka effect.\u00a0 What he is saying is that\u00a0to rely on chance to improve we must\u00a0prepare the context first.<\/p>\n

The way of doing this is called structured reality – deliberately creating a context so the\u00a0reality nudge has maximum effect.\u00a0 So to learn and improve and at the same time avoid\u00a0painful smacks we need to structure the reality so that small nudges are effective – and that is done\u00a0using carefully designed reality immersion\u00a0experiences.<\/p>\n

The effect is remarkable – it\u00a0is called the\u00a0Eureka effect – and it is a repeatable and predictable phenomenon.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0how the skills of Improvement Science\u00a0are spread. Facilitators do not\u00a0do it by delivering a lecture;\u00a0or by distributing the theory\u00a0in papers\u00a0and books; or by demonstrating their results as case studies; or by dictating the actions of others.\u00a0 Instead they create the context for learning and, if reality does not oblige, at just the right time and place\u00a0they\u00a0apply the nudge and …. Eureka!<\/p>\n

The critical-to-success factor is creating the context – and that requires an effective\u00a0design – it cannot be left to chance.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged but this\u00a0was not why … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Eureka!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,42,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-how","category-teach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}