Category: Thinking

Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction

28 Days of Writing, Mental ModelsPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction

A mental model that I frequently use is the Ladder of Abstraction. It was developed by the American linguist S. I. Hayakawa in his 1939 book Language in Action.

The model describes varying levels of abstraction (up) and concreteness (down) and helps describe our language and thoughts.

The higher up the ladder you are the more abstract the idea, language or thought is. The lower you are on the ladder the more concrete the idea, language or thought is.

You can also think about the ladder as scaling out (abstracting) and scaling back in (concrete). I often use the language:

Let’s zoom out for second. Why is this connected to other projects?

OR

What does this look like in the classroom? Zoom back into the day to day experience for me.

And of course there is a parallel to the ideas of theory Vs experience.

It is helpful to note that different types of questions or interactions move dialogue up or down the ladder.

Screenshot 2018 02 03 at 4.08.31 PM

Let’s look at some simple examples based on developmental work in schools. The first few illustrate how you can use the ladder as a way to think about problem solving. You can also use the 5 Whys mental model here.

*Remember that the ideas illustrated on the ladders below would each emerge during discussion and dialogue. Each idea might unfold as different questions are posed and pondered on.

The blue example below is simple enough to see it is a not a behaviour issue but a communication issue perhaps.

PGS Inspiring Me 1

The green example suggests the link between report writing and staff wellbeing. It not just an assessment issue but something that might have a negative impact on health.

PGS Inspiring Me 2

Yellow and purple below are slightly different as they might illustrate a more general use of the ladder. Not necessarily to understand the problem, as above, but to broaden our understanding of an idea.

When we ladder down into the concrete and back up into the abstract concept we have a much more rounded sense of the idea. This makes communication much more successful as you work both ends of the ladder.

Be mindful of which end you spend time in the most when working with your ideas or with your teams. Try and strike a balance.

PGS Inspiring Me 3

PGS Inspiring Me 4

The Ladder of Abstraction is commonly used as a model for interviewing and I have used this many times  during the design thinking process. As this piece from the dschool illustrates.

Often times abstract statements are more meaningful but not as directly actionable, and the opposite is true of more specific statements. That is why you ask ‘why?’ often during interviews – in order to get toward more meaningful feelings from users rather than specific likes and dislikes, and surface layer answers.

So it is great model for your design toolkit.

Take a look at these further thinking prompts to help you move in an agile way on the ladder, by Andrew Dlugan on the Six Minutes site. A great post that is well worth a read.

Moving Down the Ladder

  1. Embrace the phrase “For example…” .
    Provide real-world tangible examples for your theories and ideas.
  2. Use sensory language.
    Help your audience see, touch, hear, taste, and smell.
  3. Be specific.
    Provide ample details.
  4. Tell stories and anecdotes.
    Stories add emotion and realism to any theory.
  5. Cite data, statistics, and case studies.
    They offer support for your theories.
  6. Feature photographs and props.
    Remember that all words are a higher level of abstraction compared to the real thing. Use the real thing.
  7. Have a strong call-to-action.
    Show your audience how to put your message into practice.
  8. Answer “How?” questions.
    Questions like “How does this work?” force you to more concrete explanations.

Moving Up the Ladder

  1. Answer “Why is this important?”
    Give the deeper meaning behind the concrete facts and data.
  2. Provide the big picture.
    Explain the context and orient your audience.
  3. Reveal patterns and relationships.
    Help your audience see how the ideas connect — both to other ideas and their lives.
  4. Draw diagrams.
    Help your audience form mental models of processes, objects, etc.
  5. Use appropriate charts.
    Go beyond pure data to show trends.
  6. Reveal the lesson.
    Follow every story or case study with the key insights.
  7. Draw inferences.
    Apply sound logic to generalize from particular cases.
  8. Summarize into principles and guidelines.
    Help the audience learn from your experience by providing principles they can use.
  9. Appeal to shared ideals.
    Draw connections between your message and the ideals held by your audience, such as justice, truth, liberty, or freedom.

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Let me know how you get on with this little model, a worthy addition to your toolkit. This is a core activity for me, something I keep coming back to again and again.

Emerging leaders often find this difficult as they have to step out of just thinking about their own classroom.

I firmly believe that the capacity to move up and down the Ladder of Abstraction is a key skill for any leader.

Some further reading:

Method 19 of 100: Laddering Questions | Designing the User Experience as Autodesk

How/Why Laddering | The K12 Lab Wiki | dschool 

Abstraction Laddering: Clearly Define the Problem | Autodesk 

The Ladder of Abstraction and the Public Speaker | Six Minutes 

Why Am I Talking?

Discussion, Mental ModelsPublished onUpdated on2 Comments on Why Am I Talking?

I am always on the lookout for useful mental models, protocols and habits to improve the quality of dialogue and I discovered this little acronym to improve participation.

W.A.I.T = Why Am I Talking?

One of my favourite maxims and something I wrote down when I started Dialogic Learning is to “Listen twice as much as you talk.” This is based on a quote by the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus:

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

One of the strengths of this and the Why Am I Talking? protocol is that it encourages us to carefully reflect on what we are sharing and think about our thinking.

Any habits and protocols that encourage us to slow down a little are really valuable at improving the quality of our dialogue and discussion.

It was hard to find the original attribution for the idea but I did come across some useful questions that you can use to elaborate further.

Questions for Reflection

The following is from a post on the The Power of TED* website.

  • Am I talking for approval and to be overly helpful? (Rescuer)
  • Am I talking to control and take charge of the situation? (Persecutor)
  • Am I talking to complain and whine about all I don’t like? (Victim)
  • What is my intention behind what I am about to say?
  • Is there a question I could ask that would help me better understand what the other person is saying and perceiving?
  • How might I simply listen and let go of my urge to talk at this moment?

Perry Holley posted last year about the WAIT habit encouraging us to ask the following questions:

  • Is this the time to share? Is what I want to share on the topic? Don’t divert the conversation away from what they are speaking about just because “that reminds me of a time when…”
  • Is it my turn to share? Are you mastering the pause?
  • Is what I want to share going to add to or subtract from what they are sharing? The temptation here is to divert the conversation from them to you.
  • If you do interject, be concise. Add value and then shut up.

Strategies to Try

Perry goes on to share a few other strategies which I have come across before and are well worth including in the mix. His titles in bold, but my explanations:

  1. Dare to be Dumb – This is all about asking questions and being open to new ideas. Often a dialogue or discussion can falter because we halt, cut down or stomp all over other people’s ideas. When we ask questions we are also much more likely to challenge assumptions in a group setting. Our curiosity should be a guide.
  2. Master the Pause – This one reminds me of running interviews during design thinking processes and also during coaching sessions. Just because it is quiet does not mean we are not thinking or engaged. Every second does not need to be filled with talk. Pausing allows others to extend their stories and contributions and sometimes reveal new ideas. Also pauses and lower volume time encourages reflection and thinking.
  3. Don’t top someone’s story – My favourite. I have been a victim of this so many times. The other person is simply waiting for their chance to speak. This is the antithesis of high-quality participation and nowhere close to a behaviour associated with rich dialogue. Story topping is the closest thing to competitive conversation.

Why Am I Talking Chart

If an acronym is not enough then here is a handy flow chart to keep us straight from Alan O’Rourke over at AudienceStack.

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When I just reviewed those questions above I wondered if you can practically be referencing those in the midst of your interactions with others? I suppose you could be but it might slow things down too much and reduce everything to an internal reflection process.

However, these structures and protocols are not meant to be explicitly used ad infinitum – I have seen groups internalise and normalise similar structures over time and with practice. That is the goal here – to have high-quality dialogue and discussion by normalising reflective participation.

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Writing as a way to process our experience

Blogging, ThinkingPublished onLeave a Comment on Writing as a way to process our experience

Despite over a decade of enthusiasm for blogging I realise that writing is not for everyone – but reflecting on our craft should be.

Writing about my reflections forces me to make sense of my ideas. When writing with an audience in mind I have to communicate my thinking in a cogent way.

Writing is a reflective catharsis.

Developing a blog post quickly became a key method for processing my classroom and leadership experience. It filters ideas and tensions, encourages critical thinking and archives my experiences. Despite writing less these days on my blog, writing is still a vital part of the way I reflect on my professional experience and adopt the attitude of dialogue.

Every week I share a little email newsletter with 3 paragraphs about ideas I am exploring or experiences in schools I have had. With over 50 issues now and hundreds of subscribers it has been another successful medium for my thinking.

Sharing reflections on a blog or in a newsletter is not just about the end result. It is not just about the published piece or the ensuing reactions and conversations. The true value is in process it takes to allow people to catch a glimpse of your thinking.

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Photo by Park Troopers

Change your thinking, change your mindset

Mindset, ThinkingPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on Change your thinking, change your mindset

A maxim that I have been testing, applying and thinking about a great deal over the last few years is that “nothing changes unless mindset changes.” On reflection, admittedly it is a little extreme, however it does present an urgent (and often much needed) provocation regarding the way we are thinking about learning in schools and other organisations.

Einstein has become a veritable one man maxim generator as people mine his missives and printed articles for quotable quotes. His reference (in the image) to the need for changing our thinking, altering the routines and habits of thinking that were present in creating the problem, to perhaps solve it, makes a lot of sense to me.

Thinking Wild and Free

In fact it gives us license. Changing mindset takes time, for many it is a long process of practice change coupled with ongoing coaching and reflection binding it all together. We don’t just wake up in the morning with a new mindset. Those habits and dispositions are baked in. I read today how long it takes to create new learning habits, on average at least two months for new habits to become automatic behaviours.

Thinking routines and activities can be picked up and used more flexibly. Although someone may have a particular mindset or disposition, thinking routines can still be practised and activities used. Rinsed and repeated.

Changing our thinking might just change our mindset.

To underline the importance of mindset or disposition on the work we embark upon and the relationships we have Bill O’Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance pointed out:

The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.

Perhaps he is referring to the disposition or thinking condition of those present, their mindset. We can have all the plans or ideas we like, but unless the mindset is synchronised, nothing changes, or we are at least limiting our chances of success.

Otto Scharmer refers to the lack of awareness of this interior condition (mindset) as a leadership blindspot. Something to explore further, not simply how reflective we are as leaders, but also how well we know the influence of our own disposition, and those of others around us, on our projects and ideas,

Get Out of the Swamp

Another logical and confronting part of Albert Einstein’s challenge is the conclusion that we know more now than we did when the problem was generated. We need to change our thinking to adapt to this new information. Dr Terry Cutler piqued my interest with a reference to conventional wisdom being the enemy of an innovative culture:

William Blake reminded us – in chilling words – that the person who does not alter their opinion in the face of new knowledge is like a “stagnant pool which breeds reptiles of the mind”

So if times have changed, we need to ask ourselves some key questions:

pablo (3)

I recently asked my newsletter subscribers about their biggest challenges in changing other people’s thinking habits. One of the biggest obstacles was resistance to change, people actively choosing not to engage in new thinking routines, persisting in defence of a particular problem generating mindset.

Let’s not beat around the bush, these ‘reptiles of the mind” are very much part of the problem itself. This touches on some of the intricacies of the work of culture change and relationship centred development. Learning is a complex and wonderful thing and sometimes it is hard to discern how much influence people have on the conditions for learning (+/-).

Don’t Expect A Paradigm Shift

An example, just as a thought experiment, might be that a class of Year 6 children are poorly behaved during lessons with a particular teacher. The behaviour has formed a discernible pattern and seems to be associated with, and in reaction to a highly prescriptive and didactic approach to teaching from the teacher. There is a mindset at play here. The notion of planing creative learning activities, and spending less time talking at the kids is an alien one for the teacher. Something to be guarded against. “Why change?” comes the defensive play. What would you do to help the teacher and the class?

Start with empathy.

  • How much do we understand the mindset of those in this situation?
  • How can we move to a closer appreciation of the truth of this experience for those involved?
  • What situations are similar to this and how might we draw on those experiences to inform our decisions here?

Dig deeper. Complex problems like this one are rarely anything to do with the surface signals. 5 Whys is a great activity to explore to help dig deeper when used in support of other data gathering.

  1. Why are children behaving poorly? They are not engaged in the lessons.
  2. Why are they not engaged in the lessons? They are not doing enough thinking for themselves.
  3. Why are they not thinking for themselves? There is too much teacher talk.
  4. Why is there too much teacher talk? Lessons are imbalanced towards lots of a didactic teaching method and this is poorly differentiated
  5. Why is there this imbalance and poor differentiation? The teacher has been designing learning on their own for a long time and has not had the same chance to work collaboratively with others, and have their work critiqued and reviewed.

A couple of things to share about this scenario. First of all the disposition (of the teacher) is not suddenly going to change, we don’t get out of bed and suddenly all is reversed remember. So maybe we need to defer the paradigm shift expectation for one associated with the way we are thinking about the design of learning. Sure these overlap, but by changing the thinking routine, in this case through more collaborative planning, perhaps the situation will change.

Intentionally Creating Problems

My son pointed out that maybe when you create maths problems it is an exception to what Einstein is saying. This was affirmed by fully grown adults too on Twitter who shared a similar opinion. I wonder if it is something to do with how intentional the genesis of the problem was, along with the level of complexity the problem has.

Complex or wicked problems rarely involve single answers and are the product of a similarly complex, turbulent crucible of conditions. This would be true for coral bleaching as it is for poor collaboration in an organisation. In my book what Albert, let’s call him Albie, is referring to is the level of thinking needed for complex problem solving. Problems that are created in conditions defined by disparate and multiple dispositions pulling in different directions perhaps.

I wonder how much our intentions play a role here as well. We rarely intentionally create problems at work and at home (hopefully) and so it is with a lack of awareness that problem conditions set in. An increased awareness would be a good example of a change in thinking that might lead to a solution. For the teacher example above this may also be true, just increasing awareness of too much teacher talk may help to resolve things (in the short term at least).

Intentionally creating problems suggests a level of awareness of choice, causality and consequence. You might expect this awareness when solving such problems too. So maybe we need different types of thinking when we didn’t intend for the problem to occur.

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If I return to my original reference, “nothing changes unless mindset changes”, through writing this post it has helped me explore the notion that changing our thinking in aggregate might change our mindset. It has been good to define those key questions for unpacking problem conditions which I hope you find useful.

Name Your Perspective

Discussion, Leadership, Learning, ThinkingPublished on1 Comment on Name Your Perspective

If you have spent any time with me in small group development sessions you will likely have heard me talking deliberately about perspective. I am always keen to make explicit what can often be an implied understanding or concept. Trying to name up front and from the outset assumptions we might be making is a handy habit to get into. The same is true about the perspective we might be taking towards a discussion or dialogue.

I think one of the challenges we face is in our ability to zoom in and out in terms of our thinking and when in collaboration or discussion with others.

When I say “zoom in” I mean taking heed of the “Micro” perspective, the daily grind the specific, concrete things that might be happening in the classroom. Paying attention to the “Individual” would also be common with a “Micro” perspective. With this lens we are paying less attention to the larger more abstract goals at play and focusing on the concrete decisions and actions in the classroom. When we zoom in we might be asking “How” or “What” questions.

“Zoom out” to a wide angle lens and we bring into view the “Organisation” level goals and aspirations. They might be much less concrete to allow many people to get on-board, so our perspective is more abstract. We are thinking less about ourselves and the concrete stuff that might get in the way of whole school progress. When we zoom out we ask “Why” questions to get to the drivers of our actions and decisions. We have to be more comfortable dealing in a more abstract currency.

I typically signal the perspective I am taking to help set the expectations about a particular part of a discussion. I think it helps me make explicit my choice of perspective and also allows a group to quickly appreciate the expectations that come with that perspective. Micro = details, Macro = drivers.

“Let’s zoom out for a second and consider the reason why this programme needs to change in this way.”

“If we think about a wider lens for a moment we can see that this decision fits with what we are choosing to do across the school.”

“OK now let’s zoom back into what this means in terms of the day to day. How could we explore this everyday?”

“What about the learners experience of this? Let’s jump back into the classroom for a second and consider how this concept would be evidenced in the classroom.”

In most discussions we might move fluidly between the concrete and the abstract. So perhaps start with why but keep returning to it. By doing so we continue to rationalise our actions or ideas and ensure they are connected to a bigger picture.

Perhaps the challenge is not just zooming out to think in an abstract way or zooming in to consider the concrete actions, but more precisely how effectively, fluidly and quickly we can move between those perspectives. Another layer to this is of course how synchronised our perspective is with others we are with.

By explicitly naming a perspective in dialogue we are forming good mental cues to ourselves and external cues for others to gain a better understanding. I think we can all benefit from solid thinking habits that tether our concrete ideas to the drivers and the broader rationale.

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