In honor of the newest cohort of innovators-in-training in Stanford’s Design Thinking Bootcamp, I wanted to emphasize the importance of practice. I’m referring to “practice” here specifically in contrast to performance of the work one has practiced.

It’s a critical mindset for ensuring you get the most out of any training endeavor, and it’s worth implementing on a routine basis in your weekly rhythms. If you need support incorporating practice into your life, consider finding a community of practice.

It’s interesting to consider the ratio of practice to performance among professions. World class athletes spend 80-90% of their time in practice, and only about 10-20% performing under the lights, in front of the crowd, cameras on. The proportion is completely flipped for most business professionals. It’s likely that 10% is a generous guess at how much time a typical business professional spends in practice.

In a sense, the cameras are always on. The pressure of quarterly earnings, market expectations, etc seems to dictate that there’s no room for practice. And yet, should this be? No new behaviors can be meaningfully engaged without practice. Even the alley-oop that looks so effortless on the screen is painstakingly perfected on the practice court.

I wonder whether many org change initiatives — related to innovation, or otherwise — fail because of an expectation to perform perfectly in game-time conditions, without having had sufficient opportunity to practice new plays.

One way I encourage everyone who comes to bootcamp to think about their time at Stanford is to consider it a space to practice. The stadium is empty, so to speak. There are no reporters, and there are no fans. It’s just a chance to grow skills and confidence, test out new plays, and build team rapport.

Famed Canadian-American psychologist Albert Bandura pioneered a technique called guided mastery, which we have leveraged at the d.school. A few keys to a healthy practice routine include:

- an example — we leverage a network of world-class coaches who can model spectacular behavior

- feedback — we encourage folks to embrace feedback as a gift, especially when teammates may have gotten a better glimpse of your strengths and weaknesses in regards to exploratory behaviors than teammates back home have

- stretch work — it’s important to be out of your comfort zone, but not so far out that you’re in the panic zone. There’s a goldilocks-esque sweet spot, called the learning zone, which is all about stretching beyond current abilities for the purpose of growth.

- reflection — it’s critical to reflect on the intersection of stretch work, the example of a mentor, and the feedback you receive in a learning experience. It’s easy to assume the work is done at the end of a training session. But Don’t Forget Reflection.

Related: Practice in Community

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