STUDENT SUCCESS

The Power of Students Studying Their Mistakes

A Columbia University-affiliated study explored innovative learning methods by comparing traditional teaching to a strategy where students focus on reviewing their mistakes. The intriguing findings suggest that actively engaging with errors can significantly enhance learning efficiency, challenging conventional educational approaches.

• Traditional vs. Error-Based Learning: While both methods resulted in a 12% improvement, learning through errors demanded half the instructional time, doubling the efficiency.
• The Power of Errors: Engaging students in identifying and understanding their mistakes amplified learning productivity, challenging the conventional emphasis on direct instruction.
• Transformative Teaching: The most effective educators employed a Socratic method, fostering a dynamic environment where students actively explored and rectified their errors.

This study underscores a pivotal shift: embracing errors as a catalyst for growth and efficiency in education, moving beyond the red-ink mentality of simply highlighting mistakes towards a constructive, engaging, and profoundly effective learning process.

🦁 Leadership Lessons »

Effective leadership, like effective learning, thrives best in a culture that acknowledges and deeply analyzes mistakes. Not to punish but to learn and grow.

It’s about creating an environment where errors are not stigmatized but seen as a catalyst for innovation and progress. Leaders should foster this mindset at all levels, ensuring that the organization’s drive for excellence is matched by a commitment to learning and adapting.

🎯 Cabinet Conversation »

• In what ways can we shift our organizational culture to view mistakes as valuable learning opportunities rather than failures?
• What specific actions can we take to ensure that learning from errors becomes a foundational practice in our leadership and team development? (hint, see the RAW Review below)

PRESENTED BY LEAD YOUR STORY

The RAW Review Process

Great leaders are always collecting ideas and strategies to achieve better outcomes. Maybe you can relate — you have lists, bookmarks, and exhaustive improvement plans and can talk for hours about how to make things better.

But how do you implement these ideas for improvement? Most leadership teams in higher education are constantly under demands and deadlines with limited time and scarce resources to deliver.

The answer is the RAW Review. It simplifies continuous improvement and empowers your team to learn and grow daily.

The RAW Review

For nearly two decades, we’ve successfully implemented the RAW Review across diverse groups, from prisoners and top executives to small family businesses and large corporations. I’ve even taught it to my kids. In short, it works, and here’s why.

The RAW Review is modeled after the military’s After Action Review (AAR). It’s a simple process that empowers individuals to critically assess their work and create a game plan for incremental improvement.

Case Study

Problem: A large publicly traded company faced serious safety issues with its front-line staff.

Solution: We gave front-line staff blank Field Notebooks and 10 minutes off early to complete a daily RAW Review.

1. Recognize (+): List a few things that went well today.
2. Acknowledge (-): List a few things that didn’t go well or could be better.
3. Work (=): List ONE workable action you can take tomorrow to improve things. Important: Only select ONE workable action for tomorrow!
4. Morning Huddle: Managers facilitated discussions on the RAW Review during morning huddles. They listened, acknowledged successes, and encouraged staff to continue identifying practical improvements.
   
   Through habitual micro-feedback loops, they created higher self-awareness that drove deeper engagement and learning. Over time, the best workable solutions became new SOPs and company-wide policies.

Results: A 64% reduction in workplace incidents. It was achieved with an investment of less than $100 in notebooks and 10-minute morning meetings using the RAW Review process.

The Power of RAW Reviews

Implementing the RAW review process promises more than incremental improvements; it offers a shift in how teams engage with their work, fostering a culture of continuous learning and proactive development.

It’s about breaking free from the ‘hamster wheel’ of repetitive, non-productive activities and moving towards a future where every team member is empowered, accountable, and aligned with the organization’s mission.

Where To Use The RAW Review

• After Any Meaningful Action: I conduct at least six RAW Reviews daily, with a mix of mental notes and voice-recorded observations for reflection and action.
• Project Kickoff: Most projects fail not because of bad planning but because of poor adoption and engagement. You should see much higher adoption and engagement by giving members a clear set of actions to take and empowering them to improve with a RAW Review process.
• Running Meetings: According to the Harvard Business Review, 71% of senior managers report that meetings are unproductive and inefficient. Bain & Company found that 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings, and 50% of those meetings are deemed unnecessary.
  
  😠 In short, most meetings suck! But by implementing a RAW Review process, you can streamline discussion, break free from endlessly talking about the same thing and going nowhere, create higher levels of accountability, and build a culture that rewards innovation and continuous learning.

How to Facilitate RAW Reviews

If you’re running the RAW Review process with a team or in a meeting, we suggest adding an additional “A” for advice. As a leader, you may want to help shape the conversation and strategically point your people toward specific areas of concern.

However, there’s an important consideration regarding your advice. Make sure to do it after team members have completed their RAW Review. This way, you encourage them to own their internal process, build more confidence, and develop their critical thinking by evaluating themselves and the situation. Only then should you gently nudge and support team members who need it.

For RAW Reviews, it’s important to think “less advice is more.” By providing less advice today, you encourage more growth that will pay off tomorrow. Ideally, a senior leader’s job isn’t to advise; it’s to make high-level decisions based on the advice given by the team. But the catch is, how can your team learn to advise if they don’t practice advising?

🐓 or 🥚: While you may want the very best outcomes today, we believe it’s best to tread lightly with your input. Be patient and help the team grow because the alternative is that they never learn how to think, build, and execute without you.

Download The RAW Review OneSheet

Whether you adopt the RAW Review for yourself, your team, or your staff, know that it’s a powerful asset in driving continuous improvement and better outcomes. Best of all, it costs virtually nothing to get things going.

Download The RAW Review OneSheet

Brought to you by Lead Your Story – a higher-ed communications firm that helps leaders grow enrollment, reduce equity gaps, and drive student success.