This month’s field note explores three ideas from Fans First that are making me rethink my own design decisions.

📓 Field Note: Banana Ball has a surprising amount to teach us about intentional design!
📍 Sparked by: Reading Jesse Cole’s book Fans First
💡 Big ideas: Get clear on what matters, question the familiar, and become a fan of what you create.

At this summer’s Learning Forward Texas conference, I was intrigued by my friend Laura Moore’s session, “PL That’s Bananas: Creating Fans, Not Just Participants.” I couldn’t attend, but when she told me her workshop was based on Jesse Cole’s Fans First: Change the Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience, I decided to pick up the book.

Fans First includes plenty of baseball Banana Ball, and I frequently caught myself looking up videos of the games and moments referenced in the book. But I also kept noticing connections to ideas that already shape my thinking: Priya Parker’s beliefs about gathering with purpose, Will Guidara’s attention to hospitality, and Chip and Dan Heath’s invitation to intentionally create moments that matter.

I don’t keep up with much sportsball, but I do keep thinking about Jesse Cole’s ideas, the Savannah Bananas, and how their philosophy might apply to designing learning experiences. I’m now a fan! I keep reflecting on and sharing the principles, and I’m looking for ways to apply them to my own work.

So, in the spirit of Banana Ball, this month’s newsletter breaks the usual script with three innings of ideas I’ve admired and acquired from Fans First.

What business are you really in?

Jesse Cole writes:

Once Cole determined that the Savannah Bananas were in the entertainment business (his heroes include Walt Disney and P. T. Barnum) it became OK to break the “normal” rules of baseball in service of that purpose. The organization’s motto, “Fans First. Entertain Always.,” guides its decisions and keeps the experience aligned to what matters most.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker makes a similar case for getting clear on purpose:

That made me wonder if I’m not really in the professional learning business either.

I’m in the learning and connecting business.

That distinction matters. When I’m clear about the deeper purpose of my work, other design decisions become easier. If something doesn’t contribute to learning or connecting, perhaps I can let it go.

Getting clear on the business you’re really in means looking beyond what you do to ask what you’re actually trying to make possible.

An instructional coach isn’t in the coaching-cycle business. A professional learning designer isn’t in the workshop business. A professional learning team may deliver workshops, webinars, and courses, but they’re not really in the delivery business.

Naming that deeper purpose gives us more than a mission statement. It gives us a lens for making decisions about what to keep, what to change, and perhaps even what to stop doing.

And once some of those familiar structures are no longer the point, we have permission to question them, which raises a very Banana-like question:

What if we did the opposite?

Once you’ve decided the familiar structures are negotiable, what happens next?

Jesse Cole offers a wonderfully simple strategy: “Whatever’s normal, do the exact opposite.”

The Savannah Bananas take that advice pretty literally. Baseball players dance. Instead of traditional cheerleaders, there are Banana Nanas and the Man-Nanas. Even the rules of Banana Ball challenge what we expect a baseball game to look and feel like.

But “do the opposite” stuck with me less as a rule to follow and more as a design prompt.

What do we assume professional learning is supposed to look like? What happens if we imagine the opposite?

I’ve asked versions of that question many times without having a name for it. During 2020, so many of our usual structures disappeared overnight that we had little choice but to reimagine them. More recently, I’ve used the question when brainstorming new experiences with colleagues and while designing my PD Design Collective.

CoffeeEDU might be one of my favorite examples. Professional learning usually has a presenter, predetermined content, an agenda, and some sort of planned outcome. What if we removed all of those? Show up with a cup of coffee, find some educators, and talk about whatever you want to learn from one another.

And as I’ve been building the PD Design Collective, I’ve repeatedly asked myself: What’s the opposite of a website resource hub?

I don’t want people to arrive, download a resource, and leave. So I’ve been experimenting with wonderings, connections, rabbit trails, and small invitations to notice or try something…and then return to discover another design surprise.

For me, imagining the opposite is an act of creativity. It can expose assumptions I didn’t realize I was making and give me another place to look and experiment.

But questioning the usual way of doing things raises another question: Do I believe in the experience I’m creating enough that I would choose it myself?

Jesse writes:

In one interview, I heard Jesse mention that he owns seven(!) yellow tuxedos. From everything I’ve seen of his work, there’s little doubt that he believes deeply in the entertainment business he and his team have created.

This concept is a little more complicated for me, and I’m still wrestling with its implications.

I am a huge fan of learning, connection, and exceptionally well-designed adult learning experiences. I’m first in line when I see one of my favorite presenters on a conference schedule. I gladly preorder books from authors I trust.

But I’ve also endured unending meetings, hours of sit-and-get lectures, and spaces where I felt I didn’t belong. I’m not a fan of any of those experiences. And I cringe when I hear a facilitator say something like, “Let’s hurry up and get started so we can hurry up and get out of here.” That signals to me that the facilitator isn’t a fan of the experience either.

That tension is part of why my mission is to normalize excellence in adult learning design. Educators deserve thoughtfully designed learning experiences, not something to simply endure.

I’ve discovered another point of dissonance in my own work. I’m trying to build an online community, yet right now I struggle to participate consistently in other online communities or on social media. I know how meaningful those spaces can be; over the years, I built wonderful relationships and learned alongside educators I would never have met otherwise.

So Cole’s challenge leaves me with a question I haven’t completely answered yet: What would make me a fan of sharing online again?

Maybe being a fan isn’t simply about enthusiasm for the thing we’re designing. Maybe it means believing deeply enough in the experience we want to create that we keep noticing what isn’t working and keep refining it until it becomes something we would genuinely want to experience ourselves.

Fans First is ultimately about centering the audience, which aligns closely with my human-centered approach to designing adult learning. I found other PD design connections throughout the book: ushering people intentionally into an experience, eliminating friction points, empowering others, and attending to the smallest details. This post really could have gone nine innings!

But these three ideas keep returning for me: get clear about what you’re really trying to make possible, question the familiar structures that may be getting in the way, and design an experience you can genuinely believe in.

For your own reflection, choose one invitation:

Jesse Cole talks about creating “you wouldn’t believe…” moments. These are the types of experiences people can’t wait to tell someone else about.

That might be my favorite challenge of all.

What if educators left professional learning buzzing with ideas, energized by the people around them, and eager to tell a colleague, “You wouldn’t believe what happened in today’s session…”

That’s the kind of experience I want us to normalize.

Noting, reflecting, connecting,
Kathryn

PS: If something here sparked an idea, please forward this post to an EduFriend who’s also designing professional learning. ✨

This newsletter is inspired by the idea of self-anthropology from Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Just like field notes help researchers make sense of what they observe, these monthly reflections help me capture ideas, tools, and questions from my own work designing professional learning. I share them here in the spirit of experimentation, connection, and ongoing refinement.

🤖 AI helped polish this post, but the ideas, intention, curation, and care are all mine.