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?  




Building a Systems Development Team - Mistakes
While there are many benefits to contractors starting their own internal Systems Development teams, there are also many risks.
Effectively Leveraging Trainers, Coaches, and Mentors
Contracting is a high-risk sport and the training of yourself, your managers and your craft labor should be as rigorous as a professional sports team. We are facing a massive shortage of critical talent yet most spend very little on talent development.
Cascading Goal Setting and Management (Objectives and Key Results - OKRs)
Successful outcomes begin with goals being integrated across all parts of a construction business, including multi-company project teams. Management is what ultimately ensures these goals are regularly reviewed and adjusted to stay on track.