Learning from my children

I have two daughters who happen to be twins.  While they share the same birthdate, there are a number of attributes that they don't share.  One is rather quiet and enjoys reading and solitary activities.  The other is more social and enjoys team sports.  One is very attentive to detail and the other is, well, less attentive to detail.  And that's where I've learned a valuable lesson.

In my daughters' school the teachers use a teaching process called a rubric.  This is an advancement over my days in middle school.  Then again, anything after the adding machine is an advancement over my time in middle school.  A rubric is a set of expectations that the teacher has for the work a student completes for any assignment.  The rubric is often provided with the assignment so the students can check their project or presentation against the rubric to understand if the work they've done is "complete" in comparison to the rubric. 

What I've grown to like about the concept of the rubric is that the teacher can clearly provide guidance to the student about the expectations for the work, and what effort is necessary to achieve a particular grade.  The rubric also provides a checklist for the student to use to understand what a "complete" assignment should look like, what to include and what's not necessary to include.  All that I need now is for my kids to actually read the rubric before turning in assignments!

So I thought, why don't we have rubrics for work?  Rather than vague directions from our management team, why not give specific rubrics for the work we assign.  What happens many times is that a manager will assign work to an individual or team, and when reviewing the completed work note what's missing or incomplete.  I'd guess many times the work is missing or incomplete due to poor definition of the work or assignment.  Developing a rubric would force the manager to determine what makes an assignment "complete" and thorough before he or she assigns the work.

The rubric is also a teaching device.  Having been presented with the rubric, the student receives his or her grade and comments on their assignment against the stated rubric.  So it is easy to understand what the teacher expected and where the student achieved the level of work called for in the rubric and where the work may have fallen short.  After all, managers are often teachers as well.  We are responsible for helping the people who work for us grow in their roles and learn how to create great work.  How can we teach if we don't use the correct methods and communicate our expectations effectively?

Think about the work you are assigned.  If you are unclear about the expectations, ask for a rubric.  What would make the work complete?  What research is necessary?  How should the work and your conclusions or recommendations be reported?  This approach will help you understand the expectations of your management team and will help you identify items you may think are unimportant or inconsequential.

Now if I can only get my daughter to follow the rubric.

Comments

[Robert Hruzek]

Jeff, great post! In the engineering world (at least in MY engineering world), this is a way of life. We start with project objectives, develop a schedule, proceed to design deliverables, build the project, then are (sometimes) scored on how well we met the deliverables and schedule. We know the rubric before we start.

The more I read on this, though, I wonder how the non-engineering world does it. Is it normal NOT to have deliverables defined for work? From my limited perspective, I can't see how you can operate any other way.

[Jeffrey]

Hey Robert:

I'm from the IT world myself, but currently work in marketing. I agree with you that many items are "written down" as part of a project plan, like scope and timeframes. What I think is also true is that often times many goals and expectations are not communicated, or not communicated well, so that they are not understood as deliverables. How many times have you delivered a result only to be told that it was missing something you weren't sure was part of the original agreement?