Newsletter 043: The Learning Breakdown Diagnostic

Greetings and salutations!

You are working hard – the effort is genuine and the investment is real – but a gap is still there. Or, a gap has closed somewhat, but not at the rate the effort deserves. That nagging sense that learning could be compounding faster is not impatience; the sense is diagnostic information.

Two years ago, a friend named Cedric Chin asked me a question across a table at a Starbucks in Singapore. I had just shown him my Model for Learning – a conceptual model for how learning works. He studied the diagram carefully, then asked: "That's great. How does it help?"

I did not have a clean answer. The model showed how learning works; what the model could not yet do was tell a leader, teacher, or coach where the breakdown lived on a specific Monday morning. The gap between understanding a framework and knowing where to apply the framework was exactly what the model described – and Cedric had just shown me I was sitting inside that gap.

Almost every hour of work since has been pointed at that question … and today, the answer is live!

The Learning Breakdown Diagnostic is a twelve-minute instrument built for the leader who is already working hard. The diagnostic does not produce a score that measures how far behind you are; the diagnostic produces a location – a breakdown type and a breakdown level – that tells you where to start building.

The new website for The Learning Engine is live. The diagnostic is twelve minutes and two coordinates – that is enough to find the first move.

​Take the Diagnostic​

All the best!

Nathan