Average to excellent...

Spent some time this morning playing catch up. Last night I thought I'd nip upstairs and have 20 minutes at 5pm. I woke up at 9.30am this morning and I don't feel in the least bit guilty, I always look upon it as if my body needs the sleep, it can have it.

Again Nicola Vincent-Abnett had an interesting piece on her blog about A Star in the Making, which neatly coincided with Brad Howard's video yesterday about going from average to excellent.

About 15+years ago I used to lecture in Design at Central St Martin's. This is one job that I absolutely loved. The students were hugely inspirational and the lectures were brilliant, perhaps because I didn't have grades resting on them I could sit back and enjoy them. 

On my undergraduate degree at Ravensbourne they didn't really place much emphasis on the theoretical side of design. In my opinion it was all style with very little underpinning content. But because of that we all developed very good design studio skills: sketching, presentation drawing, model making and prototyping, which most designers lacked at the time.

At St Martin's we had some of the best professors and lecturers I have ever met. I remember a colleague introducing this concept very early on to our students. Not quite in this form but in one that most people would recognize as:

Stage 1 Unconsciously incompetent

Stage 2 Consciously incompetent

Stage 3 Consciously competent

Then he flipped the concept completely. He said that this was ok but you'd never be more than average to ok at best. We had so much information that these students had to ingest in a very short period of time, that we needed them to jump into the realms of excellent very quickly.

 He called the next stage:

 Stage 4 Professionally competent or Conceptually competent

Meaning two things. One you could actually earn money doing it, and the other was you understood what was going on as a concept.

I have always been a fast learner, show me once and its there. I don't think I'm any smarter than anyone else, in fact I would class myself as a fairly simple man who reduces everything till I can understand it.

This lecturer explained that each of us is already a professional at being OURSELVES. Underneath we already have our own philosophies and ideas and we generally move towards ideas we can 'get'. Once you understand yourself as a concept, it gives you a framework to hang absolutely anything on, basically you make the world fit your idea of it.This selfishness is also an amazing trait to have as a designer, because rather than let the world spin on by, you believe your world view would be better for everyone.

It's like you already know your hand, and all your doing is sliding a new glove on it, or a new ring on each finger. I don't need to know what the structure looks like because I understand the relationships of my fingers and thumbs to each other. It means you don't have to keep relearning new systems and then their specifics. You end up having one system (a concept that you can universally apply), that helps you understand and reapply to any situation.

Stage 5 Universally Conceptually Competent 

Means you can move your concept into any area and understand it very quickly. This takes you to a whole new level of excellence.

When I was small no one ever picked me for any team. So I grew up thinking teams were rubbish. Until I played American Football where your individual stats are kept (the team might lose but you could still be the best player in the league). Then there were things that were subjective, but it didn't seem to matter if you were any good, if the other kid was more likeable, they got a higher grades or marks. Again I thought this was rubbish.  

2 or 3 years ago this happened at Zack's school. One of the most popular kids in school was chosen for the lead in the school play, a really big role. I like the lad, and he was one of Zack's best friends. But there was another kid, tubby, mixed race, lazy and he would behave like he'd stepped out of Harlem. He was an EXCEPTIONAL actor / singer, this kid had talent oozing from every pore. He sang one line, and said a handful of words, and in those moments I could clearing see he was a star. But he wasn't popular. Shame on the teacher. She possibly just unmade someone special in our future by not affirming him. The nice kid on a scale of 1-10 was a 3. The other kid was a 10. I think it was clear to every parent in that hall.

My model at a very early age was choose something that was solo and first past the post. If I ran a race, I crossed the line first, you couldn't argue with the result. I'd go to the trials I'd win. So my model was always about crossing the line first, and to a greater extent being utterly ruthless doing it. I'd have no problem beating someone and shutting them out so they would never have a chance. Then I learned about teamwork from the Tour De France. I used my fat classmates to block while the skinny runners went on to win the cross country. The victory was a true team victory. So my model now had specific skills in specific places.

I sat there during this lecture thinking back on my life, my successes, my failures. If I'd known this idea at the beginning of my degree would I have graduated with a 2:2? Absolutely not. But then if I'd graduated with a first would I have gone on to do a Master and graduated with a Distinction? And those 2 years of my Masters threw my thinking on to a different level entirely. 

Tomorrow I am going to go into what my model looks like, why it works for me and hopefully you can create your own models from it.

...and go from average to excellent very quickly... who knows you might even become a star.