The importance of Teachable Behaviors

Swarms aren’t like centralized organizations with structure, budgets and staff. During their early days, at least, they rely a lot on volunteer effort—and sometimes they rely on volunteers all their lives. Volunteers have to be able to do things for the swarm that are meaningful, both for themselves and the swarm: they have to have a sense of the meaningfulness of the activity. (It’s not like you can hire someone and give them busy work during the downtime. People who volunteer know when it’s just “busy work” and have more important things to do.) Further, they have to be able to do the meaningful things in their own time, at their own pace, generally in their own way and in their own context—and still have it be meaningful. The most successful swarms are those where different meaningful things can be done once a decade, once a year, once a quarter, once a month, once a week and once a day.

As an example of this, consider the Red Cross, which is despite its massive budget and staff (and PR issues) still a very swarmish organization. What are some things you might do once a decade? Donate to a major disaster. What is something you might do once a year? Donate blood. What is something you might do once a quarter? Volunteer with a Red Cross effort somewhere. Once you get into once a month and once a day, you start finding people really passionate about the organization, and there are far more things to do than I’m going to take time to list. My point is: the Red Cross has found meaningful things for people to do at every level of involvement, and needs all of them.

I call these “meaningful actions” Teachable Behaviors. This is the most important, most basic, most foundational element of a swarm. Once you have a Plausible Promise (which defines the goal you are going to reach), Shared Values (which define how you will and will not reach your Promise—the kinds of actions you will undertake and the kids you will avoid), the next step is to figure out which specific actions will fulfill the Promise. Consider, for example:

• If your “plausible promise” is to “know God and make him known,” some obvious teachable behaviors include learning about God, knowing God, and making him and his character known to others. This naturally results in, for example, the Discipleship Training School, the School of Evangelism, the School of Biblical Studies, and the School of Frontier Missions.
• If your “plausible promise” is to “re-abolish slavery,” some obvious teachable behaviors include praying and preaching against slavery, raising funds and recruiting others to give, teaching people to host a campaign (around the time of Easter!) to educate people on the use of child labor and human trafficking in the chocolate industry,  teach young people about slavery, and even become leaders mobilizing their communities to “end slavery in our lifetime.”

How can you identify the Teachable Behaviors related to your promise? Let’s think about it by way of an analogy: have you ever taught someone how to fish?

1.

My kids and I like to fish. (My wife is less enamored with the idea of fishing, but she doesn’t mind a few hours of quiet in the house to do her thing while we’re down at the lake that is near our house.)

Now, let me be clear. We’re not world-class fisher-folk. We got started because some friends of our family, the B’s, invited us one day to go fishing and crabbing with them at a salt-water inlet not far from our home. My oldest son, Josiah, loved to fish and after another fishing outing sometime later, a fishing pole went high up on the list of Things I Really Want For My Birthday. So once his birthday rolled around, he got one (along with some fishing gear), and then our girls thought this would be fun too and ended up getting fishing equipment with some money they had saved up over the year. And, considering how all this was going, I decided a fishing pole for Dad wouldn’t be a bad thing.

So we went fishing a few times, and caught nothing. (Josiah was getting desperate enough to catch something—anything—that he was laboring mightily one day to catch a turtle.) Then, about a week ago, we caught our first fish. We weren’t going to throw him back—but we had no idea what to do with him once we had caught him. So, I ended up calling Jason B. (who had got me into this to begin with) at about 9 o’clock at night. He had just been back from Africa less than 24 hours, I think, and I think he was fighting some jetlag, so I offered him the fine opportunity to stay awake by coming over and teaching us how to clean a fish. He was laughing, but he came over—and showed us both how to clean a fish, and by his example how to teach someone to clean a fish.

Now, this part is really interesting. Jason’s probably cleaned more fish than I’ve written blog posts—well, maybe a slight exaggeration, but only slight. He hunts, and grows vegetables in the garden, and teaches people how to run successful businesses (and he’s taught missionaries how to purchase, clean, and cook a goat by way of introduction to African culture). But he’s not at all condescending to those of us who don’t know how to clean a fish. Instead, he showed up (along with his eldest son and a sharp filet knife) and walked us step by step through the process.

First, look at the fish and admire it. Then, decide where we’re going to clean it. Find some newspaper to protect the table. Then, lay the fish on the table. Then he verbally walked us through the whole process, illustrating where the first cut was going to be made, how we would proceed from there, and what we would end up with. Then, on one side of the fish, he made the cut and did it, walking us through the whole thing. Then, he slapped the fish over on the other side, and offered me the knife, asking, “You ready to do it?” With a (slightly unsteady) affirmation on my part, he began guiding and coaching me through the whole thing: a little bit more pressure. Just saw right into the fish. Bring the knife down, feel for the bones, slide the knife along the bones. At one point he put his hands on top of mine and guided me, showing me just what to do. Once we were done, I knew what I was doing—both verbally, having seen it, and having done it. Next time I’m (mostly!) confident I can do it myself.

This morning, we headed out early for morning fishing at the lake. I took my two oldest and my youngest son with me. Karston, the youngest, had never fished before. When we got to the lake, he took the pole he was going to use, and came over by me. And—using the same model Jason had demonstrated—I began walking him through what we were going to do to cast the line. Here’s how you hold the pole. Here’s the button you press to release the line. We’re going to hold the pole—just so—and we’re going to push the button—with our thumb—and hold it!—and then draw the pole back like this—and we’re going to cast it out. Good job! Then, we’re going to reel it in just a bit, and now we’re going to let it set for a while. Then every so often—this is the experimental bit for me—we’re going to reel the line in, jerking it a little, to try and attract a fish.

Pretty soon he, all of 6 years old, was casting all by himself. I was looking on, feeling the proud papa. Jason, if you’re reading this, you should be proud of yourself too. You’ve been multiplied to two generations of fishermen.

2.

For us, fishing is just a hobby, really. Some months, we only go once. Sometimes we go once a week. It’s mostly just a time to have some fun, bond with the kids, have some time to talk one-on-one. I don’t expect to regularly catch enough fish to have an entire meal for the whole family—although that could be nice for the grocery budget.

There are many activities that swarms undertake which really only appeal to those who are highly passionate about them. There are far fewer people who are involved with the Red Cross on a monthly basis, for example, than who donate to a disaster or who give blood once a year. But there are a few reasons for figuring out the behaviors and continuing to propagate them.

Think of it in terms of fishing. The basic behaviors of fishing are passed on from one person who is passionate about it to another person who might be passionate about it: from Jason to me, for example, or from me to my children. In this way the knowledge is preserved within the ranks of those who are passionate about it, and who are most likely to put in the effort to become proficient (and even, with time, perhaps expert) at it—those who are most likely to improve the activity over time. You can’t expect that everyone will be interested in fishing all the time, but you can expect to find people who are most passionate about it and that they will continue to be passionate.

But—what if there were a famine? What if, God forbid, some horrific event or disease or whatever swept the place where we lived, and we were cut off from most forms of food? What if fishing suddenly became very important to the community, for some reason? What if, for the very community to thrive, we needed to feed lots of people with fish—but industrial fishing wasn’t available?

Suddenly, it would become very important to take a bunch of novices—the people in our neighborhood, who perhaps had never fished before—and make them into people who, even if they weren’t experts, were at least capable of catching a few fish. Some of them would catch more, and some would catch less, but perhaps together the community would survive. Almost immediately the community might become very “swarmish.” And those who had been fishing all their lives would be passing on skills to the others, just as Jason passed on a skill to me and I passed on what skills I have to my son.

You would need to identify the skills required:

• How to identify where to fish.
• How to not pre-judge a fishing “hole” until you had tested it a few times.
• How to tie a hook, bait, sinker, bobber.
• How to cast the line.
• How to reel the line in and lure a fish.
• How to hook a fish once he bites onto the line, and successfully reel him in.
• How to land the fish and keep him safe while you go back to try and get more fish.
• How to transport the fish back to where you are going to clean and cook him.
• How to clean a fish.
• How to store a fish until you are ready to cook him.
• How to cook him.
• How to dispose of the bones, etc., or use it for bait for the next time.
• What kinds of fish to not keep.
• How to fish sustainably so that there is fish tomorrow.
• How to teach someone else to fish.

And so on. Each of these skills are critical to the overall mission of fishing. Now, one doesn’t necessarily need to write them down—although a great many books have been done doing so. However, when it’s time to get everyone together to fish, you need to be able to teach these skills to someone else—someone who has never fished before, and who may not fish as often as you, and who may not be passionate about it.

3.

So, if you want to create a swarmish organization, and you know the “plausible promise” you are after, here’s the simple way to figure out the Teachable Behaviors.

• How do you identify where you are going to fulfill the promise?
• What are the character traits necessary – e.g. for fishing, perseverance.
• What equipment do you need, and how do you prepare it?
• How do you use the equipment?

And so on. Think of every step, every process, every action that you undertake to fulfill a promise. If you’re the Red Cross, what’s involved in a successful blood donor drive? If you’re an abolitionist, what’s involved in a successful screening of an anti-slavery movie? If you’re a mission mobilizer, what’s involved in successfully holding the Perspectives course?

If your swarm is to be successful, it hinges on (1) identifying these steps, and (2) reducing them to the simplest set of instructions—no more than 9—which can be passed on to people who have never done them before, and who may rarely do them again, and who are not as passionate as you are about it.

Yes, I know you’re probably not going to get someone who’s not passionate about it to hold a multi-week Perspectives course. But you might get them to help you recruit new members for it. Breaking the steps down allows you to figure out what the low-commitment and high-commitment parts of the process are.

So here’s the exercise for the day. Write down your plausible promise, and try your hand at identifying and writing down the six to ten actions involved in fulfilling the promise. They may not be sequential. For the bold, jot them in the comments in our online version of this article.

Tagged as: Swarms, teachable behaviors