What Happened at PSL
What happened at PSL? A lot of stuff. More than I will get into in this post. But the part of it that is on my mind tonight (one day after the event) is my behavior while participating in the three primary simulations during the week.
First, a little about simulations: A simulation, the introduction says, is "a model of some aspects of a reality about which we wish to learn." I had never before been a part of a learning situation that was set up as a simulation so I have nothing to compare it with, but it sure took me to a different place. And I would bet that most folks who attended the workshop would say something similar. I would also bet that if they told you what they took away from it, it would be quite different than what I took away from it. That is probably one of the most amazing things I saw about the simulations: everyone gets something different out of it even though they all participated in the same simulation.
The first simulation resulted in a major realization on my part about how I behave in a work situation. What I found out was that once a project gets going, I tend to focus on the immediate tasks at hand and the immediate results of those tasks rather than the ultimate goal of what I am doing the tasks for. I even discounted input from the (simulated) customer when it conflicted with what I was doing to accomplish the immediate task I was working on. This was somewhat shocking to me since it is something that I notice in my direct reports at work and that I explicitly talk to them about. How could it be that I behave the same way when I am the participant rather than the observer? Wow...
The second simulation was even more mind-blowing. It was less structured than the first one and so I immediately fell into my normal behavior in that kind of a situation: I scoped out an observer position and started to observe. But, unlike what normally happens at work, when I brought my observations to people in the group, they ignored me. This frustrated me so much that I left my observer role and went looking for something else to do. What I ended up doing was the exact same thing that I did in the first simulation: found a task I could focus on and did that to the exclusion of the ultimate thing we as a team we were supposed to accomplish. This was more than somewhat shocking to me. How could I embrace the very thing I strongly vowed not to do after the first simulation (less than 24 hours earlier)? I was so agitated I went right to my hotel room after the simulation and paced back and forth for about a half hour until I calmed down.
The third simulation put me into orbit. But it's time to go to bed now so more on that next time.
10:12:23 PM 
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