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The Long Way Around

By Katherine Abbott

Your company installs a new computer system and they assume that you can teach yourself how to use it. You learn to use some of the software enough to do certain tasks, but you learn it by fumbling and stumbling through the steps. Yes, you eventually learn how to do certain tasks, but it probably takes you twice as long with a lot of frustrating moments along the way. And you are still not sure you are using it correctly or using all of the features. Learning on your own is usually the long way around.

Recently, I took the long way around riding the subway (Metro) in Madrid, Spain. I was in Madrid for 4 days. The subway system (Metro) was a spider web of various train lines. I was familiar with line 10 because I had ridden it from the airport to my hotel. I saw on the Metro map that it also went downtown. The challenge was the station nearest my hotel had 8 different entrances. The first day I walked above ground 10 city blocks just to get to line 10. The 2nd day I thought walking below ground might be faster. It wasn’t. I had to walk up this set of stairs, down that set of stairs, up another set of stairs to reach line 10. The 3rd and 4th days I thought using a different entrance might cut off some time. The afternoon of the 4th day going home line 10 was out of service. The only alternative was line 6. To my surprise, line 6 dropped me off right in front of my hotel. It never occurred to me that a different line might be more direct. I took the long way around in learning the most direct route and it happened by accident.

How can we learn more effectively? We can ask for help or take a class, ask for a simple drawing and remember that learning takes time.

Take a Class

Learning is faster and more effective with guidance. Because I have done a lot of traveling and have navigated other Metro systems, it never occurred to me to ask for guidance. In this scenario, it was a fun challenge to figure it out on my own, but taking this kind of time to learn through your mistakes in a work environment is a waste of your company’s precious resources.

True Story A - The administrative assistant has never taken a class in how to use Microsoft Word so she saves each page as a document. She doesn’t know how to make a page break or let it happen naturally when she types to the bottom of the page.

Ask for a Simple Drawing

A simple visual image will simplify a complex procedure. The Metro map was effective in giving me an overview of the entire Metro system, but I needed a simple drawing to show me that line 6 would take me from my hotel to downtown most directly. One reason I didn’t see line 6 on the map was because there were so many lines running in and out of each other and the light gray color was difficult to see. Let’s see the difference between the original Metro map and the simplified drawing.

Here is the simplified drawing.

The drawing needs to be simple showing only what is necessary to know. Make sure you use colors that stand out to help differentiate the parts and pieces. Use a legend to define what the lines and colors represent.

True Story B - The office manager creates a table in Microsoft Word by drawing vertical and horizontal lines. He doesn’t know he can insert a table by choosing insert/table and specify the number of rows and the number of columns.

Remember that Learning Takes Time

Even if one of the locals had showed me line 6 on the Metro map, it still would have taken me several days and several train rides to really understand the system. Which train do I take? Where do I catch the train? Where do I get off? In order to learn something we need to practice it over and over and over again. At some point we learn it so well that it becomes habit.

True Story C - The Vice President of Sales has never had PC training. He keeps losing his files. He doesn’t understand that he is saving them to a server located in Houston, Texas.

Learning on your own is usually the long way around. The next time you need to learn something at work, find a colleague who can demonstrate how the task is done. Ask them to draw a picture of the process. Do the task with their guidance several times, until you can do it on your own. This is the direct way to effective learning.

The next time I visit a new city I will do the same.

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