Practice, Rehearsal, and “The Show”
If you have participated in any kind of team sport, drama production, music concert, or just about any social activity, you are likely familiar with some core concepts. The first is “practicing” which is typically a solo or individual effort to put in the reps for exercising your individual part or role in a larger group event. Afte that it progresses to bringing that solo work and effort to join forces with a larger incorporated practice or rehearsal where you run all the parts together to become performant as a larger unit consisting of many parts. Once that activity is smoothed out you are ready for the final step of performing in whatever final “show” the desired format is in, whether a game, a play production, playing or singing in a concert or coordinating for pulling together the neighborhood block party.
Having a checklist of catering items to pick up does not get the block party started any more than throwing pitches in your backyard gets you into the game. It’s easy to want development and performance be some version of “just add water” like we are making instant soup in a single simple step. Information broadcast is the main course in most trainings and workshops, or worse, online content bundles of PDF’s or pre-recorded videos with the “secret sauce” to whatever you are perusing. These things just create a starting point. It is enough to get you to practicing something, but it will not move you through rehearsal and not to “The Show”. Actual growth and development requires more. It takes more than an information vending machine where you put in the money and pull the right know or push the corresponding button.
No one has success when they sign up for a class, grab the syllabus, and ahead directly to the final exam, skipping the classes, the discussion, the labs, and the time put into working through and exercising content. It’s interesting that organization often approach talent development in such a manner. Organizations genuinely want development for their people for retention and for valuable contribution to the company, but incentives are often not aligned to time investment but instead to activity completion on a project timeline. Professional development works differently because it’s not a factory, it’s more like putting a plant in good soil, maintaining water and sunlight, to someday down the road have a bloom or a harvestable byproduct appear to then benefit from. Organizations struggle to design and build organizations for people development that is often intangible and requires a different set of tools and a new mindset to measure.
To get to “The Show” you have to make it to rehearsal first.