I am not one to argue with Leonardo de Vinci, who must be one of the most diversely talented people to live (Mona Lisa, designing helicopters, inventing reversible crank mechanism etc etc etc). His view on theory was that it is critical to base what we do on theory.
He said: “He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards a ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”
In terms of growing and developing individuals, and teams within our organisations, theory certainly has a part to play. Theory helps us to indentify and test concepts and ideas. Yet too much time and effort is wasted by organisations who rightly want to change some habits and improve results, because of the failure to turn theory into practical tools that make a difference.
Business leaders are looking for action and results, and what individuals are looking for are proven ways to improve their own performance – tools, approaches and answers that deliver and can be implemented tomorrow.
Over the years at Innergy, we consistently get told by people who work with us or come on our training programs that one of the one of the main reasons that what we do works is that we turn well researched theory into simple tools that make a difference. Irrespective of what level we are dealing with – senior executives, management, or non management – they want to take away and apply simple techniques which impact performance and deliver results.
We understand the theory and why it works, but that is not what people are after. Most of us know what we want to accomplish, the missing piece is the how we are going to do it. The theory behind the tools and approaches is often irrelevant and unimportant to most people.
Millions is spent on training and development in this country. Business leaders are looking for a return on their investment. We will only get the return on any investment in training, developing ourselves and our teams when:
Einstein’s theory (theory is useful!) of ‘keep it as simple as possible but no simpler’ is spot on.
If you are going to develop your people, and great people is often the only real differentiator we have, make sure the focus is on simple proven tools/approaches not models, results not learning, action not theory.
Published by James Osborne January 5th 2015
James Osborne
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