Learning and Communicating Complex Ideas

The business of contracting is getting more complex every year.

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The only way to keep up is to become experts at accelerating the development of teams

Reading List: Learning and Communicating Complex Idea. Tim Urban's 10 Point Scale of Understanding.

Training construction teams to learn, teach, prioritize then act is something we have been working relentlessly on since 2005.  It is one of six key strategies that we see contractors must execute to deal with the talent shortage that will become 3X worse in the next few years.  

The other day this article was sent to us by Tim Harris who works with several of our clients helping them shape their recruitment marketing strategies. In the article Tim Urban discusses his process for learning and communicating complex ideas. 

Tim’s scale of understanding (1-10) is an excellent way to even begin to understand what we know and what we don’t know.  One of the problems with social media and the speed which we all run today is that there is very little focus on the deep understanding of a topic.  We tend to believe that if you can’t make a complex idea simple enough to fit into a few hundred words then that is a failure. If only the world were that simple…


What if you looked at your job roles and rated your team on on this 1-10 scale? 

Where are the gaps?

How can you close them rapidly?  




Definition - Deliberate Practice
Practicing with a clear awareness of the specific components of a skill we are working to improve, and exactly how to improve them. It is not simply doing something repetitively for enjoyment or until it becomes mindless.
RFI Quality - The Foundation of a Good Project
Whoever said there is no such thing as a “Dumb Question” has never had their RFI quality dissected in excruciating detail during a construction claim. How effective are all the RFIs written by your company? How do you know?
Discipline = Agility
Far too many construction teams believe that standard processes, routines, training and disciplined execution will stifle their creativity. It is quite the opposite and when you flip that switch in thinking it begins to unlock amazing performance.