The Pick-up Sticks Model of Teaching Concepts

This is a chapter from The Amplio Consultant Educators Toolkit. The book covers the content aspects of Amplio University - a new type of live, affordable training.

This chapter is modified from the corresponding chapter in Al Shalloway and Paula Stewart's book Being an Effective Value Coach: Leading by Creating Value.

This is the third of four chapters that make up a learning strategy for talking to people:

1. What's the difference between experts and those with less competence?
2. Don’t conflate ideas
3. The Pick-up Sticks Model of Teaching Concepts
4. How to talk to someone who just doesn’t get it

“You can’t teach someone something unless they already almost know it.” – unknown

In a nutshell,

When you want to teach someone something complicated,

• Be clear about what you want to teach them
• What are the distinctions needed for them to understand?
• Which of these are they missing? Find enough so there’s a path from what they already almost know to what you want them to know.
• Teach these distinctions in this order

What do you do when you want to teach some concept that seems beyond the grasp of someone’s current understanding? They can’t see this new truth in terms of their existing knowledge. While realizing this may be frustrating, it provides valuable insights into creating a teaching strategy.

Years ago, I was in a situation where I had to teach advanced concepts to people. I had no idea how to do this. What I wanted to teach felt buried under several concepts they needed to know first. While reflecting on this, a flash of insight from the game of pick-up sticks occurred to me.

When I was a kid, my older brothers always beat me at the game of pick-up sticks. I always went after the high-scoring sticks at the bottom of the pile because I could get more points. It occurred to me that I needed to teach foundational knowledge before I taught the concept based on that foundation. 

I noticed that when you remove the top stick from the pile of pick-up sticks, which is easy to do, another stick becomes the new top one. Removing this one is also easy. It occurred to me that these “easy to remove sticks” were like the concepts people already almost knew. Therefore, an effective strategy to teach a difficult concept would be to walk through those things people already knew until I got to the concept I was trying to teach them.

I call this “the pick-up sticks model of teaching concepts.”

Consider a concept you want to teach to someone. Consider the ideas needed to understand this new concept you want them to learn. Instead of discussing this concept, consider the steps required to go from where they are to what you’d like them to understand.  Formulate a step-by-step path from what they know to the concept you want to teach by presenting these distinctions.

Take this approach when teaching complex concepts. If there is disagreement about any idea, it is much easier to discuss one by itself than the entire set. This approach can make a daunting task manageable.

The question, of course, is “what do they already almost know?” To discover this requires understanding what makes one person more competent than another. We often talk about one person having more experience, but that’s akin to saying “birds migrate because of instinct.” Notice that that doesn’t really tell you anything, however. Although it does sound like it does, “instinct” is still a black box.

The options are not just letting your teams figure it out or telling them what to do

If you read discussions about what it is to be a coach you’d think your choices would be between telling people what to do or having them figure it out on their own.

With the pick-up sticks model we’re talking about telling them, but in a series of steps that’s easy for them to grasp. But there is a third way – guiding them to discover things. This can be done presenting enough information to figure things out – either by presenting things they already know or by asking questions.

An example of using the "pick-up sticks model" by asking questions.

When considering what the pick-up sticks are for Agile, consider the two endpoints -“What do we want them to know?” and “What do they already almost know.” Here’s an example:

• end goal (bottom stick): overloading people causes delays
• what they already almost know (top stick): interruptions in workflow cause waste

Most people already almost know that delays in workflow cause waste. Just ask them, “What happens when work is interrupted?” They’ll likely answer “multitasking,” which everyone knows is wrong.  Ask them if something else happens. They may see that this causes them to delay giving things to others, which may cause them to multitask. Ask “what other side effects may happen.” Point out that slowing down the completion of work means we will detect errors late. This is especially bad for software developers, who now will take more time to find errors when they are caught.

Now, we can move on to what causes these delays. What has made us put work down? It’s clear that the multitasking we can see is being caused by working on too many things.  While multitasking is the first thing noticed, it is a symptom of working on too many things. Working on too many things correlates with too much work waiting to be done (e.g., long work queues). Therefore, the root cause is that long work queues cause waste.

Attending to the rate of change, not just the path.

We must also attend to the rate of change for people. Some like jumps, and some people need small steps. While we should always have a target in mind, we need to consider if it’s useful to expose that to people. Do if it’ll help them. But be aware that it might make them nervous and that one step at a time is better.