The next morning, Richard worked with Lui on the question-
asking approach. Lui was a fast learner, and by the end of the day,
he was effectively leading the interviews. Several weeks later,
Richard played for me a voice mail message from Lui in which Lui
shared his success in landing a big new contract with a major Cana-
dian customer. “Funny thing,” Richard said to me, “I really learned
a lot in the process of teaching Lui. In fact, I feel that I was the big
learner in our exchange.” Now that’s a real L^2 at work! Richard
used learn-by-doing assignments not only to help others learn but
to help himself learn as well.
Whether it’s in a family, a friendship, a neighborhood, a busi-
ness, or a church, great L^2 s leverage learn-by-doing activities, like
job assignments, to help ordinary people do extraordinary things,
and they start with themselves.
Training Activities Work When They Meet
the “I’ve Got to Do It Now!” Test
Training sessions can provide valuable learn-by-doing activities,
provided the learning is immediately relevant to the individual’s
life. I recently visited a large warehouse location with another L^2
president. Before she joined the organization, people probably
managed their training activities in the typical way: the “suits” at
the top decided what people needed and provided it to them. For
instance, the warehouse site manager scheduled a teamwork train-
ing class because he felt that “they” needed it.
As she talked with folks in the warehouse, she asked them,
“What do you need to do your job better? Is it a tool? Is it training?
What kind of training?” Not surprisingly, teamwork was not high
on the list of frequently mentioned topics. For instance, the pro-
duction control manager said he needed an MRP (manufacturers’
representative profile) system in order to meet his performance
objective of 100 percent guaranteed correct output and reduced
turnaround time from forty-eight to twenty-four hours. Then he
said, “Give me a training day with all the associates who touch the
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