cheap structural changes that build leader thinking
made w/ midjourney
Doug Lemov observed outstanding teachers in action and created a catalogue of their go-to moves. This playbook is called Teach Like a Champion. One of the concepts he highlights is “think ratio”. Great teachers build lessons and uses lines of inquiry that give the students the chance to the do the important cognitive work instead of the teacher. In classrooms where kids learn a lot, the ratio of student cognitive load to teacher cognitive load is high.
These high ratio lessons sit in stark contrast to the classic college professor “sage on a stage” model, where the instructor has all the answers and simply gives them out, while students passively listen or transcribe.
Workplace leaders who build their bench and delegate by default also achieve high think ratio with their teams. Here are a few cheap structural changes that nudge think ratio in the right direction, ie, get your leaders-in-training doing more of the most interesting cognitive work.
The leader enters meetings for only the last quarter of their run time to take recommendations and proposals arrived at in the first ¾ of the meeting.
The leader requires proposals and recommendations before a meeting with them can begin, limiting their time present to 2.0-ing those pre-sent ideas and highlighting their judgment and decision-making. Ideally concluded with questions and remarks like those in this post.
The leader encourages folks to give them no open-ended questions (only yes/no and multiple choice) throughout meetings.
-ben
