Saturday, October 8, 2016

Is this a load of bollards?

I'm getting into my reading on Learning Organisations and I come across different models, theories, factors, principles etc etc. The short, sharp punchy '5 principles' approach or '3 criterion' explanations appeal to me - then I get to a '10 principles for explaining' such and such and my mind throws a cynical - really?
I can almost go with broad brush strokes to categorise behaviours but when you get to 10, why not go the whole hog and aim for 20? What is it about 3 or 5 or some smaller number that appeals but bigger numbers like 10 just seem ridiculous? Does a long list of 'factors' or 'principles' get in the way of understanding?
We're all familiar with trendy articles that try to entice us to read them with headlines like '3 ways to (lose belly fat) (gain confidence) (insert other title here)'. It works - for me anyway. I think I can handle that small amount of information whereas '100 ways to declutter' might just take too much time to read and leave me with decision-paralysis.
So, I'm trying not to dismiss the '10 principles' that I'm reading about and with my mindset, it's hard not to be cynical! However, I've decided to be positive about it and will try to look at a specific client's learning approach using '5 factors' and '10 principles' and see if the extra dissection helped me in my thinking at all.

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