An Essential Tool For Continuous Improvement...

Most of us are aware of the impact of compounding – usually in terms of the compound interest we have to pay on our credit cards although of course we see it on our savings as well.

Compound learning is the knowledge equivalent of compound interest. If compound interest can be viewed as “interest-on-interest,” then compound learning can be viewed as “knowledge-on-knowledge,” where both can make an amount grow at a faster rate. 

Another term applicable here is incremental marginal gains. The goal of the FSN Team Knowledge Hub  is not to give you magic bullet answers that promise to improve efficiency by 20% overnight – such things rarely exist.

Instead, the FSN Knowledge Hub Framework is designed to empower your team with the ideas to establish marginal 1 or 2% gains regularly – and with each gain compounding at the same rate as your teams knowledge base, these small but consistent wins will become increasingly powerful over time. 

The instruction for your team members to take written notes when reviewing their allocated resource is an important one. We even provide your team members with a dedicated notepad and pen (both made of recycled materials) sent to their home address specifically for this task.

So why are handwritten notes so vital?

Several studies have reported that although writing on a computer saves time because it is a faster process, taking notes by hand improves memorization and word recognition. One of the advantages of handwritten notes is that reading and writing on paper improves conceptual understanding. 

These studies indicate the importance of visual and tactile signals for perceiving physical sizes and spatial locations. Paper material provides physical spacing through spatial-temporal signals to measure the text.

Ultimately, handwriting notes improves our retention of the material, which boosts our ability to learn with less need for review and study. This is ultimately a more efficient process, even if the process of note-taking itself is more time-consuming.

In the Knowledge Hub Framework your team members are encouraged to take handwritten notes during the hour they are to spend each month reviewing their allocated resource, to maximise the time they can commit to developing their industry knowledge. 

So if handwriting notes is a more effective memory aid, what is the purpose of adding notes via the Knowledge Hub page? 

The answer is simple, the process of adding comments to a visible timeline plays into the fundamental commitment and consistency biases we all share – two of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s famous six key biases baked into all of our thinking. 

By having to commit their comments to the timeline before the next meeting is in place, this gently ensures that your team members will not let their monthly knowledge hub resource slip through the cracks. 

As we know, field service management is a mission-critical role that has a fresh set of challenges everyday. If time is not set aside for developing industry knowledge, then it is all too easy for that task to always get stuck in the middle of the to-do list. 

This is why we have baked gentle elements of commitment bias into the FSN Knowledge Hub framework including the visibility of commenting to your dedicated team timeline and putting the Knowledge Hub meeting in your team diary each month. 

Similarly, by sticking to the same date each month both for resource allocation and your Knowledge Hub Meeting, we can access the natural consistency bias we all share so that driving industry knowledge becomes a well established habit across all members of the team. 

Multiple studies including a comprehensive study from the University of Washington, show us that active learning driven by human interaction and collaboration leads to higher rates of achievement for learners. That’s why, in contrast with traditional passive learning methods, organizations of all kinds need to embrace Collaborative Learning techniques.

Collaborative learning is useful in developing your team members’ ability to increase their knowledge while reenforcing the skills needed for working in an effective  team while the applied learning focus of establishing clear action points to be implemented not only take the learning from theoretical to real-world practice, but also underline the positive impact their efforts are having on their working environment – an exceptionally powerful motivator.