Educate

You’ll remember that the last 2 stages of the Maker Movement we spoke about were ‘Leaders’ and ‘People’ - We’re now moving on to ‘Educate’ - What do we mean by that? Well read on, fair reader, and we’ll find out 😁

Firstly let’s think about WHO we’re trying to educate, and WHY?

Who - Our audience is our leaders (Organisation Leaders, and Influencing Leaders,) and the people we identified in the last module (anyone, anywhere in the organisation!).

And why do we want to educate them about the transformation we’re trying to drive through getting people to adopt our platform, be it Power Platform, or AI / Copilot. We want to enable the behaviours that we inspired in them in the previous steps.

We inspired them to encourage their teams, or their colleagues, or themselves, to start on their own Power Platform or Copilot journey. We want to give them the knowledge and skills to start on that path. Initially it’ll be enough to help them understand how to begin - to crawl. But after teaching them the basics we need to educate them not WHAT to learn but instead to teach them HOW to learn these technologies which are rapidly evolving so that they can FLY and become SUPERHEROES!

To support development of these Superheroes we need to help them understand HOW to learn. We can put a bit of structure around that HOW and suggest some of the WHAT to get them started so they can get an idea of the learning path they might need.

The reason I talk about teaching them HOW to learn and not WHAT to learn is that once you’re past understanding the basics of how the platform works, and the framework that you’re operating in, your next learnings will be dependent on what you want to achieve and what problem you’re trying to solve… Is it a particular connector or plug in? Is it related to a. Specific process in your organisation? We can’t create bespoke materials for all of the different scenarios and maintain them as the platforms we use evolve and mature.

We can break down the ‘HOW to learn’ in different ways and use a common learning model to describe the balance of them. The model is based on a ratio of 10 : 20 : 70 and is shown in the image below

10% is formal learning. These are the training course we might go on where an expert teaches us through a structured set of materials or exercises. These could be theory, they could be practical demos, they could be hands on exercises that you walk through together. You may even get a certificate at the end of it you can hang on your wall or post to LinkedIn or even A BADGE!!! We all love a badge, don’t we!

In it’s simplest form this could be through Microsoft Learn, a Power Apps course like ‘App in a Day’, or another ‘In a Day’ course, or it could be the Microsoft PL-900 Power Platform Fundamentals certificate, or it could equally be other supporting skills like Design Thinking, or Change Management, or whatever other skills you’re trying to develop to help you towards your goal.

20% is Learning from Others. There is a HUGE community and network out there around anything that people are passionate about, but especially around the Microsoft tools and platforms. There are conferences organised by Microsoft or by the community (like South Coast Summit and Scottish Summit in the UK, or the European Power Platform Conference (in Brussels in 2024), or Dynamics Minds in Slovenia, or Baltic Summit in Poland, or all sorts of other events all over the globe!, in person and virtual user groups, YouTube channels, Blogs, people posting great content on LinkedIn, or X / Twitter, or other social platforms.

You may have noticed that some of these materials may look primarily ‘Self Service’ or ‘Pull’ sources (Blogs, YouTube), whereas others (User Groups) may look more interactive with live contact with the provider of the information. However - even with those first ‘Pull’ types… You’ll generally find that those same people producing content will also be passionate about their subject to also be presenting at User Groups or community events and conferences, and are a really approachable bunch who are happy to share their passion and talk with you about your thoughts and ideas. We all learn from each other!

In this category I include story telling as being a key way of learning from others. Understanding what they’ve done, why they did it, how they did it, is hugely valuable. You may know the saying

“Walk a mile in another man’s shoes…. As you’re then a mile away…. AND you have his shoes!” 😁

I’m not sure the second half is that valuable (unless you’re involved in Grand Theft Footware) but the first half gives us a way to understand what someone else has been through and a path that we could follow and hopefully get similar results and success!

A fantastic selection of these story resources are collated by our friends in Microsoft’s Power CAT (Customer Advisory Team) group - Different industries, different people, different org sizes…. They’re all there! Go take a look! Power Platform Customer Stories

70% Continual Learning Whilst Doing - is the rather catchy wording I used - This is to describe that real growth mindset of finding that rubbish process you think could be better, or identifying an idea for something that no-one has done before and thinking ‘RIGHT!!! I AM GOING TO DO THIS!!!’

You get yourself ready and perhaps do some 10% and 20% learning and sit down to create the most beautiful solution anyone has ever seen…. You feel ready! You feel confident! You know everything that you need to do! You start……………. And you hit a roadblock…… ah…. This isn’t how it looked in Azure McFarlane’s Flow demo….. and that Power Apps screen doesn’t look the same as when Shane Young showed it…… Hmmmm….

This is where that growth mindset is needed… Yep, you don’t know everything you need… perhaps you don’t understand the examples of how that connector works from the Microsoft site… Now is when the real learning starts! The Googling! The talking to people! The experimenting and testing and exploring…. The grumbling about “Microsoft said this is No Code…. No Code my a$$! What do I have to put in that expression box?!?!?!”

Take a deep breath, don’t panic, don’t worry…. It’s all part of the journey of learning how to learn. You’ve got this! And there are a LOT of people who have created content to help, or who are at the end of a message, to help…… And remember…. That stuff that you’re learning is also valuable to others too! By being an active part of the community you can help others too. #WeRiseByUpliftingOthers

Crawl, walk, run and soon you too will be able to FLYYYYYYYYY!!!