Post-it-notes and Bandaids

Marjorie and I are sitting in the office chatting as she edits the PULSE Advanced program which she will present in Kansas next week. Post-it-notes … I forgot to pack them for her.  She will pick some up.  We use post-its for the parking lot items in class.  Participants post their unanswered questions so that we can deal with them after breaks.  It is interesting that few participants take advantage of the opportunity.  That may be because we encourage dialogue in the learning conversation…..

We were also talking about bandaids because Marjorie has mine in her kit for next week.  We print the skills for changing cycles on bandaids, defining a bandaid as something that covers a wound so it can heal from the inside out.  The Bandaid or skill represents the solution that is needed to allow for the healing.  We do an exercise where people decide what skill to apply, and how.  Scenarios are described and bandaids applied.  First Aid for conversations, you might say.  It is a great exercise that provokes a lot of discussion.

“Sometimes it doesn’t fully load” is what Marjorie just said about the footers that for some reason begin on page 39?? in version 2 of the Advanced course.  We spend a lot of time figuring out the program language so that we can have the computer do what we expect.  Computers and people need clear instructions and expectations.  Computers are less forgiving and will not do something you haven’t asked them to do in a way that they understand.  People will pretend to know or think they can figure it out and then get it wrong, not out of bad intention but out of a desire to please and to appear knowledgeable. 

There is this wonderful creative energy that is only resident in people.  People will try to use Bandaids as Post-it-notes and vice versa.  Computers would never think of doing that.  Would you?