Chapter 13: A Learning Foundation for Rapid Progress

Chapter 13

A Learning Foundation for Rapid Progress

 We stand today on the edge of a new frontier . . .

a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils,

a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.

— John F. Kennedy

Help Wanted: Teachers of Exponential Success

Teaching isn’t a lost art,

but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

— Jacques Barzun

Where does the 400 Year Project go from what we’ve learned so far? I’ve been thinking about that subject a lot since the project began in 1995. Let me share with you what’s occurred to me so far.

Perhaps the history of drip painting can help you appreciate the remaining challenge. Until Jackson Pollock became interested in dripping, dropping, and splashing paint on canvases in the 1950s, painters had always sought to avoid messiness in their finished works. Even the seemingly unfinished Impressionist works were carefully planned and executed to give a certain kind of unfinished look to the final works. The Impressionist plan was to draw you into the paintings by encouraging you to see the works with your imagination rather than solely through the visual expression of the painter’s perception and thoughts. A carefully considered unfinished look helped to unleash the viewer’s imagination without casting the viewer totally adrift.

Drip painting is closely related to Impressionism in its intent. Many Impressionist fans don’t realize that and think the two styles are at opposite ends of a spectrum from composed bursts of beauty to random lines and splotches. Ironically, it was Jackson Pollock’s admiration for the Impressionists during the mania over his drip paintings that helped create the vast surge of interest in Impressionist works since the 1950s. What these painting styles have in common is that they are all about the viewer. Drip painting frees the confident viewer to roam more broadly across imagination’s boulevards than Impressionism can hope to inspire with its clear suggestions of images and subjects.

Ask most people about drip painting, however, and you’ll get one of two views: Drip painting was something that Jackson Pollock did that’s no longer important although the works are very valuable, or drip painting doesn’t make any sense. But in either case, drip painting as a living, evolving style is as dead as a dodo.

Impressionism, by contrast, is more popular than ever. And many current artists continue to produce works that are loosely defined as Impressionist. Yet each style was considered just as revolutionary and controversial in its day. One key difference in their developments is that Impressionism spawned many styles pursued by extremely talented artists. As you look at the works of each Impressionist artist, you better appreciate what the other artists have done. In addition, you get used to seeing unfinished paintings.

Drip painting has suffered from the perception of being a style that potentially anyone could do. But only Jackson Pollock has been able to use the style to produce works that inspire people and continue to captivate viewers. If Pollock’s work had helped establish a large school of talented drip painters, I suspect we would now have museums filled only with magnificent drip paintings. Part of the difference is in personality. Pollock was a solitary artist who struggled with many personal demons, while the Impressionists were very social for artists and enjoyed spending time with one another. Part of the difference can be found in Pollock’s limited ability to articulate a theory for what he was doing. Without such guidance, starting with an unprimed canvas and some paint to drip away can seem daunting to a well-trained, disciplined painter.

I see the 400 Year Project facing the same challenge at this point as Jackson Pollock did when he first began drip painting: My skill in creating and extending these insights is expanding rapidly, but there is not yet a large cadre of talented people who are primarily following the same path.

The opportunity for what to do is pretty obvious. If each person who knows how to create a 2,000 percent solution simply taught one other person each month, the whole world would be informed within two years.

I’ve found it to be fairly easy to teach people how to create 2,000 percent solutions: I don’t need to do much more than point them to the books, outline the output, share a few examples, and stay firm in insisting they shoot for a 2,000 percent solution. How much time does that take? It can be as little as 2 hours or as much as 20 hours. Unfortunately, those who learn to do the process successfully don’t provide the same teaching for others. So instead of being done with educating people on the first set of tools (something that could have been completed in 2001), we’re stalled; only a few thousand people know how to create a 2,000 percent solution. How many of them are actually out doing so at any given time is anyone’s guess. Of course, even stalled in that way, there is good news: The 400 Year Project is well ahead of what drip painting accomplished in attracting practitioners. That’s plan A.

Fortunately, there’s even more good news: The world is filled with talented teachers who want to build a better world for all of us to live in. Some of this group simply need to become involved in teaching about 2,000 percent solutions. This is plan B.

How might this shift in teaching focus happen? I don’t know yet, but I’m working on a number of programs to find at least one that will make the necessary difference.

Teaching Rewards

Education costs money,

but then so does ignorance.

— Claus Moser

Teaching how to create 2,000 percent solutions can be a breakthrough opportunity to reward those who help others learn best. Why? There are several dimensions to the answer:

• A single 2,000 percent solution can be worth billions of dollars; if you can’t pay top dollar for someone who teaches you that kind of a skill, you can’t afford to pay well for any teaching.

• The scale of psychological rewards is huge also: Imagine helping create a valuable new industry that relieves human suffering as a result of your teaching.

• The door is opened for exponential progress by students: They are endowed with skills that can lead to breakthrough results in every problem the students focus on. Imagine how it would feel to help prepare such pathfinders.

With 2,000-percent-solution teaching, you can have the best of both worlds: doing good and doing well for yourself.

For the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with how a teacher might earn a desirable living by teaching about 2,000 percent solutions. In this experimentation, I’ve focused on opportunities that could be done by teachers who just wanted to work nights, weekends, and summers as well as for teachers who want to take this work up on a full-time basis.

In my case, I’ve been accepting individuals who want to learn how to work on rather substantial 2,000 percent solutions to see what’s involved in helping them, what seems like a reasonable price for the help, and how this process might be streamlined to make it easier for a teacher to do the same teaching task.

From these experiences, it’s apparent to me that most people will need individual instruction to master the material. Why? People vary so much in what their learning strengths and weaknesses are. With individual instruction, you can take the time to figure out each individual’s abilities and needs and cater to those characteristics. These assessments can easily be made through conversations (which can be done at a distance over the telephone) and by examining a person’s writing.

Many large organizations permit executives and managers to have personal budgets that can be spent to learn new skills and to access resources for working on important organizational issues. The amounts available vary from organization to organization, but I suspect that offering 2,000-percent-solution learning services at a price of $5,000 to $15,000 per student will be reasonably well received. Most teachers could handle 10 students at a time on a part-time basis, for a total of about 40 students a year. As you can see, this is a big financial step up from providing individual tutoring to youngsters on elementary and secondary school subjects for $50 to $100 an hour. With this kind of income from 2,000-percent-solution tutorials, a teacher could afford to retire on the profits from a few years of part-time work.

More importantly, those who continued to be full-time teachers would find their daytime teaching improved by learning the 2,000-percent-solution process and gaining the perspective of helping adults create outstanding solutions to important problems. In fact, some of these teachers would probably find ways to work the 2,000-percent-solution process into their daytime students’ studies.

Naturally, some teachers might want to just help adults learn to create and implement 2,000 percent solutions. Those teachers could earn a fine income for working just a few hours a day. This route could be ideal for single parents who need plenty of time with their own youngsters after school.

Or this route could be wonderful for teachers who really want to be able to write or pursue some other personal interest. Having a 2,000-percent-solution teaching business could be just the ticket to provide lots of income in a little time.

Interestingly, many of my first students at Rushmore University were language teachers, and they had no trouble identifying great ways to establish new types of schools to help students learn a lot faster at less cost and in fewer hours. Undoubtedly, some of these teachers will eventually realize that helping people with 2,000 percent solutions is even more highly leveraged for a business model than is teaching a foreign language.

Who knows? A true genius may emerge who can help others learn this process vastly better than I can. That would be great! Clearly, as soon as the number of 2,000-percent-solution teachers rises to at least 25,000, some remarkable successes will begin to emerge that can serve as best practice guides for others. 

Certifying Success

The mark of a good action

is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Having met many wonderful teachers over the years, I’m always struck by two fallacies about what is required to be a good teacher:

1. Learning how to teach by taking education courses is a common legal requirement for certification. Yet someone who doesn’t understand the subject matter very well can become certified by simply being coached enough to pass an exam in that subject.

2. Some principals pride themselves on selecting teachers for their prowess in the subject matter to be taught. But some of these “experts” have terrible interpersonal skills and drive their students away from the subjects.

I don’t want teaching 2,000 percent solutions to be hobbled by either fallacy. As a result, I’ve been working on a model for preparing teachers that relies on the tried-and-true formula of master-craftsman training. This is the process by which a base of general teaching competence can be built into high-level mastery for one type of teaching. In this case, teachers will learn at first by doing, that is, by creating their own 2,000 percent solutions. Those teachers who show aptitude and a good attitude will be invited to take the next step and begin teaching others under the supervision of a master teacher. In the earliest instances, I will be that master teacher. Later, there will be others to play that master teacher role.

When skill levels in supervising 2,000-percent-solution students are adequate, a teacher will be certified. Certification will assure the teacher and future students that the teacher is ready to help. Otherwise, all kinds of unqualified people will presume to offer courses in this area who won’t be providing the right kind of learning experience and support.

In the long run, I also suspect that certification can also help if those teachers create libraries of 2,000 percent solutions that students have produced for use as teaching examples, much as business schools share cases of real organizations facing challenges. Where the solutions come from students of certified teachers and are only available to certified teachers and their students, developing the knowledge can proceed more rapidly and effectively.

Why go to all this trouble? People won’t want to study 2,000 percent solutions unless they almost always get good results from their first try. That’s because the challenge seems like a large one to those who haven’t yet done it, and those new to the process need to be reassured that they will have a positive experience. Unless teachers can use the process successfully with a reasonable amount of effort and have proven that they can help others do the same, good learner results are unlikely; there’s no point in creating expectations among students that will not be fulfilled.

This approach has another important advantage: If students all have great teachers, that experience will be the standard that everyone will try to live up to. Even if effectiveness slips a bit from the highest standards as more people are trained, having started with very capable teachers will help to end up with higher standards over the long run. Unlike many subjects, you probably can’t drill someone into being an expert on the 2,000-percent-solution process. Although some will benefit from memorizing common stalls, stallbusters, and the names of the eight steps in the 2,000-percent-solution process, that information alone is like memorizing an alphabet for a language you cannot read or speak. You need to be able to apply that abstract learning.

I also think that recertification should be required. Teachers should have to prove that they are doing good work in helping others. Recertification has another benefit: If the original certification standards were wrong, there is an opportunity to adjust and upgrade skill levels where appropriate.

I suspect that the teaching and certification processes will be simplified when we have enough teachers of the 2,000-percent-solution process so that teachers can specialize in just a few types of issues. I find that by the fifth time I’m helping a student with a similar problem, I can help them get much further in less than half the time than I could the first time around.

Over time, it will also help to create communities of teachers with related interests so they can share experiences and assist one another.

Visual and Hearing Aids

The more you say, the less people remember.

— François Fénelon

I had one unexpected educational insight from learning meditation: I discovered the power of receiving some instruction straight from the best teacher. While learning about practicing an advanced form of meditation, I was fascinated when video players were rolled out that allowed us to be instructed by a much more experienced meditation practitioner. Not expecting much from just watching a video, I was surprised to find that I soon felt like I was no longer in Massachusetts or Florida, but rather in a different room with the practitioner speaking only to me. As I think back over that training in 1995, I’m struck by how much more I remember of what the practitioner had to say on the videos than anything I learned by listening to teachers who were present with me. Because of his greater expertise, I gained much more understanding.

Another powerful lesson resonated with me when I realized that my other clear memories of this learning process relate to illustrations my teachers drew on a blackboard. Some of these images are so evocative that they can still be felt inside my body when I simply recall the illustrations. One particularly memorable sketch showed how meditation caused deep stress to be released like bubbles rise from decaying vegetation at the bottom of the pond.

The contrast to my Harvard education is amazing. From Harvard days I remember little other than when either a professor or I said something profoundly stupid in class. How much better it is to remember the key lessons of a discipline rather than what didn’t work in learning about the subject.

I began experimenting with additional ways to transmit knowledge about 2,000 percent solutions in early 2007. I started by holding a series of teleseminars where the key elements of the 2,000-percent-solution process were explained in 90 minutes, including time for questions. As background for the teleseminars, I asked those who would be attending to send me their questions in advance about how to accomplish 20 times as much. Then, during the teleseminars, I focused on providing answers in those areas to help ensure that the material was relevant and useful to participants.

From the initial 90-minute teleseminars, I designed an 8-hour telecourse conducted in 2-hour segments that focused on advanced stall identification and stallbusting by employing new explanations, assignments, and examples. From the interaction I had with the telecourse’s participants, I perceived that a whole new level of understanding was created. I also arranged to have transcripts made of these sessions.

There was good news and bad news from this experience: The participants seemed to absorb the material better by listening to it; however, they usually didn’t do the assignments. A better approach would have been to suspend participation until someone had both the time and inclination to do the assignments. Then participants could have moved on to the next lessons more smoothly and effectively. The worst news was that 8 hours of talking turned into a stack of material as thick as a book. Yet I could write a better book on the same subject in fewer words and with less effort than I could turn a telecourse transcript into somewhat usable prose.

From this experience, I became convinced I could create excellent video and audio programs along with assignments that would instill deep understanding of the subject. If the assignments were then reviewed by a certified teacher, even better results would follow. With testing, it could be determined whether such videos and audios work better with me conducting the lessons or by engaging a highly talented performer to teach. In either case, students who wanted to learn the process could obtain high-quality access to visual and auditory versions that could enhance their understanding of the written materials. At the same time, quality standards could be improved by providing more consistency in the way that the materials are conveyed. In addition, less effort would be required of teachers who could focus their attention on answering questions, reviewing assignments, and giving feedback concerning and further instruction about areas where students are having trouble.

Controlling access to these videos, audios, and written materials could provide another way to discourage those who are not adequately prepared to teach from misleading those who want to learn. Access could be limited by having students view online materials from encrypted sites using passwords that only certified teachers have.

This solution is also helpful for loosening the limitation of having only one master teacher at first. If a tidal wave of students appears, I could handle a larger number of them by limiting the amount of time I spend with each student by making what time I do spend more valuable.

Trotting Ahead

He admits that there are two sides to every question —

his own and the wrong side.

— Channing Pollock

One of my few lasting lessons from law school was to note how many strong arguments could be made from the same set of facts, laws, and prior decisions: The “right” answer in many situations was entirely unclear. In the same way, I’ve come to appreciate that there are many different potential 2,000 percent solutions present within the same opportunity. You can find more solutions by having more people consider the situation.

I learned another valuable lesson from my fellow students that has amused and informed me well ever since: There’s more than one way to arrive at a good answer; and the professor’s method usually isn’t the best one.

At the time I attended Harvard Law School, the teaching model that most professors used was to have us read some appellate cases (where trial and lower appellate court results were affirmed or found to be incorrect) and attempt to distill the legal principles from those cases. That method is not unlike developing a theory from the facts, the opposite of what most scientists do. I followed along that path and kept being amazed to find the professors relying on principles that were invisible to me from reading the assigned cases. Of course, those professors also knew hundreds of other cases that we didn’t cover in class, and presumably the conclusions were correct. But the professors weren’t playing fair: The process they were assigning us to follow was seriously flawed.

A few students figured out that weakness in advance and began to study so-called horn books or trots (summary books used to make learning easier) in addition. These sources summarized legal principles that were well accepted while citing a few cases. You could summarize and memorize those horn books pretty quickly and simply relate the principles back to the cases due for that day’s work. All you had to do was remember not to refer to principles we hadn’t studied yet when you responded in class. With this alternative approach, you could cut out about 90 percent of the studying time and come closer to meeting the professor’s expectations.

I felt offended by that horn-book-assisted approach and preferred to try to distill the principles for myself. But eventually I found a way to do so that I liked better. If students focused on courses where we knew the most and did some additional study on our own, we could create outlines related to our courses that were better than the horn books. In the process, we learned the method the professors wanted us to use. If we then swapped our excellent outlines with other stars in those courses, we could gain other perspectives we had missed. We could read outlines that others produced, correct our errors, and add helpful notes that were missing from our outlines. Those resulting super outlines could, in turn, be swapped with stars in other courses for their super outlines of those subjects. Before you were done, you had absorbed most of the learning that any student had gained from any course, along with your own keenest observations. It was like being in a seminar involving detailed discussions with each student. Naturally, it then became pretty easy to be a straight-A student while doing much less work. Since I was employed full time at other things, I liked that approach.

I was impressed to learn that Harvard Law School later validated this approach by providing online chat rooms and note-posting bulletin boards where the professors and students could freely exchange such materials. Little did they realize that a similar method could have been employed long before there were computers. All that was missing from the method I used was to have professors comment on the super outlines.

As I think today about creating 2,000 percent solutions, I’m struck that this law school learning lesson applies. While I would certainly be happy if people figured out their 2,000 percent solutions without much help, clearly the world will make faster progress if we provide some extra assistance in the same areas that the law school students found helpful.

To that effect, I plan to create a series of variations on The Portable 2,000 Percent Solution that look at particular classes of 2,000 percent solutions. One could be based on expanding benefits by 20 times with the same time and resources. Another version could look at reducing elapsed time by 96 percent with the same effort and resources. A third version could examine how to reduce costs by 96 percent and produce the same results. A fourth version could describe ways of accomplishing the same results with 4 percent of the effort. With the permission of students, some of these books could be enriched with examples of actual solutions.

If these books turn out to be helpful, they could be followed by variations that look at common classes of organizational challenges such as starting a new business, reducing cash needs, encouraging employees to be more effective, and directing changes. I was struck that many of the questions that people shared before the teleseminars about 2,000 percent solutions related to personal effectiveness. A series of personal 2,000 percent solution books could address issues such as creating focus when attention and energies are scattered, getting more done when you have a poor memory, and making steady progress on complicated tasks despite having lots of interruptions and distractions. If enough interest is generated, specialized workbooks could also be created for each type of problem.

If we eventually have enough great examples of how to succeed in a given task, we could create solution books that just contain examples of 2,000 percent solutions. A master teacher could then distill the key elements of those solutions into problem-solving outlines that could guide readers to faster results.

Record Books

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right;

if you don’t get all the facts, it can’t be right

— Bernard Baruch

One of the biggest hurdles many people have with creating 2,000 percent solutions is that they are blissfully unaware of the most effective methods people use today and are intending to implement tomorrow. I’ve had students propose solutions to poor performance that were outdated in 1890 (Yes, that’s right, over 100 years ago.). To fill in these knowledge gaps, I suggest contemporary examples the student can learn about that will point closer to the right direction. That suggesting takes a lot of my time, and I’m certainly not aware of all of the best practices either. As a result, the investigations some people do into the future best practice (step 3 of the 8-step process) can lead to underestimating what’s coming. In addition, many people don’t have research skills good enough to come up with their own conclusions even if pointed in a promising direction. How can we simplify solvers’ lives and make them more effective in identifying the future best practice?

If you want to know how many people can be stuffed into a standard-size telephone booth, the people at Guinness who publish their world record books can certainly tell you. Instead of focusing so much energy and attention on accomplishing inherently valueless feats, imagine what could be accomplished if someone began keeping track of world records in fundamentally valuable tasks. I don’t know if the people at Guinness have any interest, but it’s a wonderful opportunity for an organization that wants to get a tremendous amount of free publicity and do some good in the process.

I could also see a foundation choosing to underwrite a version of this book that just covers best practices in the nonprofit world. This project would provide a chance to gain priceless visibility for such a foundation’s mission and to enhance the value of its philanthropy for all time to come. The royalties from such a book could be used to pay for the costs of updating and publishing new versions. So an initial grant is probably all that would be required to set a timeless improvement process in motion.

If a school wanted to establish competency in teaching 2,000 percent solutions, publishing such a record book on subjects related to what the school teaches would be a wonderful way to gain awareness among potential teachers and students. For instance, a music school that wanted to reduce the drudgery of orchestrating symphonic themes could develop a book of the fastest, most reliable methods to use.

With enough segmentation of what is being tracked, the job of keeping up with best practices would be reduced for everyone. Those who already provide databases of best practices would be the natural first publishers of such materials.

Translating Success

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing. …

It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning

for transformation that underlies every act involving speech,

 that supremely human gift.

— Harry Matthews

Of the books I’ve coauthored for the 400 Year Project, only The 2,000 Percent Solution has been translated into more than one language so far. Fortunately, that book can be found in Mandarin Chinese printed in softcover as an electronic book in Japanese. In addition, a Finnish publisher hasacquired the sole right to translate the book into that language. But those who know only Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Bengali, Malay, French, German, Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, Vietnamese, Tamil, Wu, Javanese, Turkish, Telugu, Korean, Marathi, Italian, Thai, Cantonese, Polish, Burmese, Swahili, Hausa, and other less commonly employed languages are in trouble. Ideally, such translations should be done by people who know English and another language intimately and have completed a 2,000 percent solution of their own. Such students exist for Russian, French, German, Italian, and Thai.

Clearly, there’s a lot of work ahead. I suspect that in many cases, an individual company that wants to use these materials will have to make the commitment to create another language version of the books for the less-often used languages. The benefit, of course, is that such a company’s employees can reach mastery of this critical discipline much earlier than would otherwise occur. If the company is a manufacturer or a retailer with a large body of customers, partners, suppliers, customers, and end users, the cost to create such translation will be quite affordable on a per-person basis. Organizations that do a lot of training in a given industry with lots of employees (such as those offering airline training) would have similar opportunities to efficiently add translations.

In addition, such translations are potentially projects for foundations and governments to speed versions of these books into various languages where 2,000 percent solutions and the other methods could help ensure progress that would otherwise be unattainable. That foundation-led approach would make particular sense in sub-Saharan Africa where there are so few books to begin with, large companies are fewer, and many governments have limited funds. Providing books along with translations could be an important way to accelerate self-help efforts in those countries where English is not spoken by many poor people.

* * * *

As this chapter demonstrates, turning the subject of creating 2,000 percent solutions into an educational discipline can greatly accelerate the 400 Year Project. Much work remains to be done, but it’s all work that millions of people either already know how to do or can quickly grasp. All it takes is for the necessary base of people to realize that by mastering this discipline, they can achieve breakthroughs in most of the areas where they want to make progress. The payoffs will be enormous when focus shifts from learning how to make incremental improvements into the more rewarding field of making breakthroughs.

My estimation is that a few forward-looking companies and countries will eventually see the 400 Year Project as a simple, inexpensive way to leap ahead of the rest of the world. As soon as those realizations are acted on, the race will be on to create mass learning for the valuable skills and methods that have been developed by the project.

Copyright © 2007. 2012 by Donald Mitchell.