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Another important concept which you might want to think which links into what
i said before is this concept
of this hierarchy of learning where we start off at the bottom
And i go
back to my example of driving as well if you first get into a car and
you've never driven before you at the level of unconscious incompetence
You canít do it, you canít drive and
Youíre unconsciously
incompetent because you don't even know what it is you should know
then you start to realize well thereís three pedals there and thatís called a brake and thats an
Accelerator and thats the steering wheel and this is how you deal with it
so you become
aware of what you have to do
but youíre still incompetent
maybe think about learning about marketing though when you start off you
don't know what marketing is all about
Youíre at the conscious incompetent
level so you donít know what it is if you don't know suddenly all this information is thrown
At you and you begin to
become conscious of what it is that you don't know youíre still incompetent
but youíre conscious of what the incompetence is then you get to this great breakthrough
stage where you become competent
but its at this very conscious level of competence you have to
it's all in this the sort of
conscious part of the brain and you have to consciously think about what do i do
next
And thatís fine but it's hard work because you can only store so much in the sort of
conscious brain
most of what we know is stored away in the unconscious part of the mind
And thatís when we move up to that final sort of top level
of unconscious competence when we do things without thinking about it
think about your job you don't get a book out every day do you
to tell you what to do in your job
you might have to when you first started
perhaps you have a manual to tell you what to do what the processes were
now you do it unconsciously you drive a car now you donít consciously think I have to
change gear I have to brake I have to accelerate
i have to turn the steering wheel
no it's done unconsciously without thinking it's the unconcious part of the
brain
that actually is dealing with that
And thatís what that's the challenge i guess the challenge really is to say how do we
actually
moves
learning into the realm of unconscious competence in other words
when you look at the marketing scenario you look at the case that you look at
a question you don't have to trawl through the conscious
part of the brain to sort of work out what you should be doing
unconsciously
The answerís there you know what to do you know the approach
and if you keep that in mind and keep asking yourself what level am I at am I
still operating at the level iím competent
but it's very hard conscious its very hard work or is it at the unconscious competency
level and i think that's an important
concept to grab hold of which we will come back to, to levels
to later
So that's the challenge how do we actually move you up to the level
Of unconscious competence
as quickly and effectively as you can that
Really is what we have to do
okay so a few general points now and
when you look at CIM (chartered institute of marketing) examinations on all levels they are obviously slightly
different issues that crop up at CIM certificate CIM diploma CIM postgrad level
digital courses
whatever but i think some of the common issues that sort of
come through are
poor time management three hours or two hours whatever it is for the
Examination is not a long time most CIM Examinations are three hours one hundred
And eighty minutes
you do have to think very much about time management how many marks can I earn
Per minute if there are twenty five marks For that question
twenty five percent
doesn't take a lot to work out that you should be spending about forty five
minutes on that question less
reading time
And preparation thinking time as well but you don't spend an hour on it
okay
you would get behind you would not finish the last question then
strangely enough a lot of people who underperform in exams they don't read the
questions
Why is that? people see the key words and just
Dump everything they know
So its this knowledge dumping aspect isnít it i recognize that word i'll tell you all
about what i know about that subject because iíve
worked hard to revise this and i want to make sure that you know that i know it
people don't take note of the command words as well weíll talk a bit more about
command words later on what is it are you being asked to do are you being asked to evaluate
to define to discuss
there's a whole range of words, words that often get missed so
take note of what these command words are
and what people often don't do is produce answer plans
for the examination
i think it's worth spending
Sort of five or ten minutes at the beginning of the exam reading through
the paper
making sure you understand it
producing plans the problem we have in exams of course is that we go in with
this clear idea i'll sit down and all read it through carefully and iíll make a plan and
Weíre surrounded by people who start writing within two minutes of walking in the
Room donít they
and that's a bit disconcerting because if they're writing perhaps i should be
writing as well
well i have to say they've got it wrong
it's better spending that time at the beginning really understanding what you
have to do
putting a plan together
it's a bit like getting into a car without a map isnít it Iíll
go down the road and iíll see where i end up
if you have a plan it will take you time
Iím convinced when many people start answering examination questions
it's a sort of like mental warm up isnít it it gets the hand moving it gets the brain working
but the first couple pages are absolute
Letís think of a polite word they don't contribute to gaining many marks
its just
Itís just really pouring out words to warm up
Use that time to think about what you Are going to write about so
producing a plan i think is very important
and the evidence seems to suggest that people who do produce answer plans get
Better marks
And people only access the conscious learning and thatís linked up with the
answer plans as well because if we go through the answer planning process properly
effectively we allow our unconscious
mind
to answer the questions for us okay so we don't just rely what's there
consciously
we start to look at what's hidden away in the unconscious brain and that's where
the answer will be we can only carry so much in our conscious brain so it's about
Saying how do I access that sort of
unconscious knowledge that is there that i've learnt that ive stored away how do i get
to it
In an examination and that's the important
issue there
don't produce shopping lists people often
Under perform on the day because they just List things they say they'd missed
All they know about that and it does come out like a shopping list almost of
unconnected points it has to flow it has to link together so
Donít just produce lists in asnwer to questions
whatever level it is