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Disorienting Dilemmas and Your Aging Brains
Design Considerations for Your Training Deployment
 As another year slips past, we’re once again faced with the uncomfortable truth: our brains are aging. True, we know more (and are perhaps wiser), but when it comes to learning new stuff, studies show that our adult brains absorb and store knowledge differently from when we were in grammar school or even college. Does your adult training account for this factor?We know from recent studies on Blended Learning - those courses that use a combination of online and classroom delivery - that the blended model is better suited for adult learning for many reasons, including flexibility, control, and time for reflection. This morning, in a New York Times article titled "How to Train the Aging Brain"(Jan 3, 2010), I found an additional argument for employing blended training: by the nature of its design, a blended model places students into unfamiliar and ambiguous learning situations, which is how adults learn best.  Back to the Flaw of Averages
When the Picture Tells a Different Story
 A recent WSJ article posed the simple question "Is the current economic slump worse than the recession of the early 1980s?". It should be a straightforward answer. The catch is that anyone familiar with descriptive statistics knows that different answers can be supported depending on how you present the data. In order to understand the counterintuitive conclusions, you have to understand Simpson's Paradox. Simpson's Paradox demonstrates that conclusions drawn from a large data set can be in conflict with the conclusions drawn from individual subsets of the data. Read the WSJ article to learn more about Simpson's Paradox in real life.
MoreSteam in 2009
A Retrospective View
 Happy New Year, and good riddance to 2009! But while many companies and individuals may look back and see little to smile about, we at MoreSteam had an excellent year, marked by new product releases, new customers, and an enduring focus on quality. With 2010 speeding ahead, it's worth taking a moment to look back on the accomplishments of 2009.RESOURCES
Starting Off the New Year: A Quick Refresher on Affinity Diagrams
By Smita Skrivanek, MoreSteam's Principal Statistician
 The Affinity Diagram tool is used to consolidate a large amount of information into groupings or clusters of ideas that have a natural ‘affinity’, i.e., that have a common thread running through them. This is a great tool to use when sorting Voice of the Customer data under broad ‘Issues’ categories.It can be used very effectively to organize the ideas extracted from a Brainstorming exercise where people from diverse and unrelated departments might come together to solve a complex problem. Read more and see an example from the hotel industry. Recommended Reading: Change By Design
 Tim Brown, CEO of the global design consultancy IDEO, works with organizations on everything from developing work furniture that automatically adjusts to body posture to addressing societal issues in developing countries. In his new book, Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations And Inspires Innovation, Brown introduces the concept of universal design thinking. "Nobody wants to run a business based on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as dangerous. The integrated approach at the core of the design process suggests a 'third way.'"
Change By Design, published late last year by HarperBusiness, was named one of the "Best Innovation and Design Books of 2009" by Business Week. In addition, Fast Company listed it as one of the "Best Business Books of 2009." The book is available at Amazon.com.
Back to Brunel's Approach: Desirability + Viability + Feasibility
 Isambard Kingdom Brunel intuitively practiced design thinking. Rather than limiting his scope to designing a particular product, he set his vision on designing a solution. He sought to ease the formidable, and seemingly impossible, journey from London to America in the nineteenth century. Along the way, he designed and built a transportation system that included the Great Western Railway, viaducts, bridges, a tunnel, and a steam boat. Somewhere along the timeline, design became a profession and many designers seem to have lost sight of the big picture. Design thinking calls us back to the big picture, back to Brunel's way. Learn a little more about the concept of design thinking: watch Tim Brown's appeal for design thinking in a short video from TEDGlobal.
Building a Bridge Between Design Thinking and Six Sigma
 Can design thinking be used in conjunction with Six Sigma? A recent New York Times article suggests that many businesses will have to figure out how to incorporate both approaches in order to survive. The article notes that it's not a natural convergence. A Whirlpool executive likens design thinkers to quantum physicists, able to consider a world in which anything — like traveling at the speed of light — is theoretically possible. Whereas he views the majority of people, including the Six Sigma practitioners, more like Newtonian physicists — focused on measurement along well-defined dimensions. Success lies in organizations using interdisciplinary teams with both types of skills and both ways of thinking. Read "Welcoming the New, Improving the Old."
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