Making Small Adjustments

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Jessica Beckendorf: Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us for the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Jessica Beckendorf, along here with Bob Bertsch. Hi, Bob. How have you been?

Bob Bertsch: Hey, Jessica. I’ve been pretty good. Not bad, I guess would be the Midwest way.

Jessica: Not bad would be in Midwest is pretty good.

Bob: That’s right. That’s where I’m at. I’ve been working this week on a course, The Science of Well-Being course. It’s a free course on Coursera that’s taught by a Yale professor, Dr. Laurie Santos, and it’s been really helpful for me. Part of the point of the course is to engage in some challenges to increase our own happiness and build more productive habits. Obviously, that’s something that’s close to our interest area. That’s a little bit of what we’re trying to do with the Practicing Connection Podcast. It’s been nice to have sort of the accountability and also to hear from Dr. Santos about the science behind some of these practices. Yes, I’ve been really having a good time with that course. How about you?

Jessica: I’m doing great. I just want a quick comment on that course, because I’ve taken it before, back when it first was released. I found that course to be incredibly helpful at that moment in time. Actually, I’ve recommended it many times, and I would recommend it to anyone now, and I plan to go back to it. I think it’s super cool that you’re going through that course right now. I loved every minute of it.

Similarly, I’ve had a university-based thing that’s been giving me something to think about. The Cabrera Lab Podcast from Cornell University has been something that I’ve been listening to this week, and it’s been making me think more deeply. The current episode I’m listening to is Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking. It’s sort of a meta way of looking at critical thinking. Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera talk about different perspectives on different issues. There are only nine episodes currently. It’s a new podcast, but I’m really enjoying it. I think they have a really good way of talking about the research behind things without making you feel like you’re listening to research.

Bob: That sounds awesome. I’m excited to check that out. I’ll definitely take a look at it. It just occurs to me, as you were describing that, and as I’m imagining maybe what Cabrera Lab sounds like, this is a pretty exciting time, really, when so many researchers, especially researchers in psychology and organizational change, and some of the things that we deal with, community development as well, are out there either starting their own podcasts or appearing on other people’s podcasts, but talking about this in a way directly to the public and not just to academia through research papers. Yes, I’m excited to hear about this podcast, and I look forward to listening to it.

Jessica: Yes, it’s like we can all get an education in a way even without being a current student, right? Some of us really value continuing education, and I’m one of those folks.

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Let’s learn more about making small adjustments. Bob, can you tell us a little more about the practice that you’ll be sharing with us, and why you chose it?

Bob: Sure. the practice I’m going to share for making small adjustments is based on the continuous improvement process. Sometimes it’s referred to as the iterative process. It’s a process that’s pretty common in business environments. It started in software development, but has been applied to the development of other products and services in the business world. I don’t think it’s been used as much by family and community service providers. It really could be, and shout out to some of our colleagues like Nate Meyer who have written about some of these different ways of approaching program development and extension. I want to acknowledge that. It’s not absent from the conversation. I just think we could talk a little bit more about some of these concepts like continuous improvement.

In my experience in cooperative extension, what we tend to do when we develop a program is to start out by just developing it, right? We’re doing that internally with whoever’s contributing to it. Then we take it out, we implement it. We take our program, we go out into the public, we teach it, or we implement it in whatever way it needs to be implemented. Then we come back after all that’s done, program has ended, or at least hit a big milestone. Then we evaluate it, and we see if it worked and then we’re done. That tendency is changing, but it’s a little bit hard to change because it’s supported by theories of behavior change from decades ago. That don’t, in my opinion, really fully account for how complex human change is.

Over time, as institutions, we’ve built up practices and structures and systems developed on those theories, and they perpetuate that tendency to follow this develop, implement, evaluate process. The continuous improvement process is different because instead of evaluating only at the end of the process, we’re always evaluating and adjusting. We start development, then we test, then we improve, then we repeat the process, right? We develop, test, improve, and continue to do that even after we have implemented a program. We continue to seek feedback, make improvements, and adjustments.

Adopting that continuous improvement model is, as I said, easier said than done. There’s a case study out there about creating a culture of continuous improvement, and it was actually done for a project where Cooperative Extension professionals worked with folks from the US Department of Defense Education Activity, and they were trying to get this culture of continuous improvement into DODEA, that’s the acronym for Department of Defense Education Activity, into DODEA schools.

Researchers found five themes for a continuous improvement framework. First, a focus on purpose. Second, a recognition of change as a continuous and complex process. Third, utilizing data-based practices, structures, and systems. Fourth, capitalizing on relationships and professional collaboration. Then fifth, just generally building capacity for continuous improvement.

The practice I’m going to share, I adapted it from this framework, and I’m hoping it’s going to help us with that building capacity for continuous improvement because if each of us gets more comfortable with the continuous improvement process, hopefully that will build capacity for this kind of approach in Cooperative Extension, in military family service programs, and in other places where we can be more iterative in our program development.

Jessica: Yes, we have many current states, we have many future states, and we don’t just have one current state, and then we don’t, as a group or society or whatever, need to decide what’s the one future state we want, and then we only go for that because along the way we’re going to learn more information. I love this idea and the example you gave is really interesting. Let’s actually get right into the practice. Please walk us through it.

Bob: What I’m going to ask you to do for this practice is to choose a very simple change that you want to make and practice making small adjustments in it. We’re going to use that continuous improvement process to do that. Practicing in this way will help us apply that process on a broader scale in our work or at least get ready to apply it on a broader scale in our work.

Start by choosing a small change that we want to make. It can really be anything as long as it’s small. We can think about changing the time that you exercise each day or changing how often you check your email or changing the way that you track your to-do list. Just whatever small change you can think of. A reminder again, keep it small, because you’re going to be working alone on this.

Once you’ve chosen that small change, we’re going to go to that first step of the continuous improvement process and think about the purpose behind that change. If you’re changing the time you exercise, for example, your purpose might be to be more healthy. That’s why I want to exercise. If you’re changing how often you check your email, your purpose might be to be more efficient or effective in your work. Try to get to the purpose that you can connect to on an emotional level. We’re trying to get a little bit deeper here and bigger with the purpose.

If you’re coming up with purposes that don’t feel big enough, try asking the question that I learned from Jessica, what does that make possible? That can be really helpful, right? If you’re thinking, I want to change the time I exercise, the purpose is to avoid a conflict with something else that might not feel big enough, right? What does avoiding that conflict, what does that make possible? Then you can keep asking that question until you get to that purpose that you can really connect with.

Next, take time to acknowledge that all change, no matter how small, is continuous and complex. One way to do that is to think about some of the things outside of your control that might affect your effort. What if I use an online program to track my to-do list, and then that, freemium program goes away. Those are things that are outside your control. Recognizing that and accepting that change is continuous and complex is sort of the next step in the continuous improvement process.

Now we need to think about how we’re going to know if our small change is working or not. Not just whether it’s working in the moment, does it feel right or am I accomplishing something, but whether it’s helping us achieve that bigger purpose that we defined behind the change. Think about how you’re going to gather data to evaluate your change and inform the small adjustments that you’re going to make. For example, you might commit to a weekly reflection on the change, right? Think about, hey, how’s this going? Try to think of at least one data source outside yourself. That can be helpful. You could maybe ask your family, hey, I made this adjustment. How’s that working for everybody? Ask a coworker for feedback or use an objective data point, like the average time it takes you to get through your emails or something that is objective and not just your impression of it.

Now you’ve gathered all that data, and we’re going to use that to tweak your change to improve it. Then we’re going to keep gathering data. Gather data, make a small adjustment in your small change. This is getting meta and complex, right? We’re making this change in our behavior. What’s a small adjustment we can make to make it more effective? Then we’re going to gather data on that change, right? Is that tweak, that small adjustment that you made, is that working? Are there other ways that you could tweak your process to improve it?

Try to make only one tweak or small adjustment at a time, so you know that the reason something is working or not working can be attributed to that small adjustment. If we make a bunch of adjustments all at once, our data might change, but we have no idea why or which adjustment to attribute it to.

I feel like having said this, Jessica, it sounds super complex, but it’s pretty simple, right? It’s just the idea of changing from, develop, implement, and then evaluate to this continuous improvement process, just using something small that we can control. Hopefully, as we get more comfortable with this idea of continuous improvement, we can think about how we might use it at a bigger scale.

Jessica: The idea that I found really useful in this, the one thing that really stuck out to me was the take time to acknowledge that all change, no matter how small, is continuous and complex. It’s almost sort of a relief to think of it that way because it’s a thing that can maybe stop you from beating yourself up when maybe it doesn’t work out. Okay, so this little change is going to be complex. It may not work. Okay, that’s all right. I’ll just keep figuring out until I find something that works for me.

Bob: Yes, and I think that’s really helpful when we talk about a bigger scale, too, because I think that’s part of what we are losing sight of when we aren’t using the continuous improvement process. If we’re just developing, implementing, and evaluating, we’re not acknowledging the fact that there’s stuff we don’t know, and that can affect whatever change that we’re trying to achieve.

Yes, knowing that, and then realizing that, hey, well, one way to address those things that do come up is to make small adjustments. Yes, that does take some pressure off, but I think hopefully in the end, then it actually helps us be more effective in achieving whatever change we seek.

Jessica: Yes, thank you so much. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a new episode for you. Until then, keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One Op, and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under Award Numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.

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