Hardwiring

“Curmudge, when a fact or concept is ‘hardwired,’ does that mean that it will never be forgotten?”

“To me, Jaded Julie, the term ‘hardwired’ (which most of us learned from the writings of Quint Studer) is not an absolute. Without reinforcement, most of the professional stuff we learned years ago will eventually slip away. However, it’s interesting that sometimes personal experiences will stick with us forever. An example is when my older playmates kicked me out of the sandbox because I was only four years old.”

“I must admit that during the years we have worked together I’ve become impressed by the leakiness of your memory. Is it true that you tell your educated friends that their advanced degrees expired after 40 years?”

“Although I’m just kidding, for most people the concept is probably correct. Exceptions would be some professors and physicians who teach or use their professional knowledge on a daily basis. They support my contention that reinforcement is essential.”

“If as you say mental ‘wiring’ comes in varying degrees of hardness, you must know some convincing examples.”

“At the extreme end of hardness are the connections between the mind and fingers of the professional musician. These people are able to see a multitude of notes on a score and translate them into actions of their fingers (and sometimes feet) at a frequency of several per second. It takes years of practice to develop those connections; and if they stop practicing, they lose their performer’s ‘edge.’ But they never totally forget basic fingering.”

“Do we see some of this in the practice of medicine, Curmudge?”

“We know that it takes years of residency to train a specialist, but the Army is finding that their special skills begin to erode after about four months of deployment away from their specialty. (1) Thus it’s a bit of a surprise when an OB/GYN volunteers to serve a year in a battalion aid station.”

“What about the other end of the ‘forgettable’ scale? We all recall from our formal education years that information in which we had little interest was pretty transitory.”

“Julie, my retention of some courses—especially those that were required—is zilch. In fact, I suspect that when I walked out of the final exam, my brain dumped the whole course content right there in the hallway.”

“I hate to disturb your reverie, Curmudge, but how can we apply these insights to Lean training?”

“Our goal, Julie, is to impart a Lean mindset to everyone and to help them retain and use what they have learned. It’s pretty lofty, but it is expressed well in this quote from Masaaki Imai (in the 6/22/11 posting of leanblog.com), ‘engage everybody in improvement every day, everywhere in the organization.’ We’ll talk later about how to do that.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon

(1) Deering, S. H., et al. Am. J. Surgery vol. 201 (May 2011)

Note: We last wrote about hardwiring three years ago (May 22, 2008). The current posting is consistent with our belief that some repetition of principles is necessary to reinforce knowledge.