It is in our nature, and we love it.
What images are evoked when you hear the word "learning"? Sitting passively in classrooms or meetings and listening?
Taking in information is not the same as learning.
When we have learned we are able to do something we never were able to do. Learning is about expanding our ability to produce the results we truly want. We never "arrive". It's a process.
The best learners get comfortable being uncomfortable. The way you like to learn is what makes you comfortable, but isn't necessarily how you learn best. Practicing something before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it. Accelerating learning requires you to use your knowledge as you acquire it.
The most powerful learning comes from direct experiences. As babies we learn eating and walking by trial and error. We didn't learn to speak our mother tongue in a textbook, starting with grammar and, checked by bi-quarterly exams, systematically fitting words to the acquired rules.
There is a dilemma here. Yes, we learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important business decisions. How do you and your organization learn then?
Teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. When teams are learning, the individual members are growing more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise.
Is it crazy to say that the primary objective of a team is to learn? Isn't the primary goal to deliver value? But how do you know you deliver optimal value without learning? The faster you learn, and the quicker you can integrate those insights into your delivery, the more value is created.
One of the best measures of any group's culture is its learning velocity - how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.
You probably have performance goals. What about learning goals? Getting A in French vs. Learn to speak French. Which one leads to mastery?
But hey, we don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience someone said. But we are busy, so we don't have time to just sit around and talk, right? We barely have time to think.
Reflection that isn't connected to action is what makes people think they don't have time for this. We need a culture and the discipline to integrate reflection and action.
Teaching others is a surprisingly powerful method of learning. My favorite. The protégé effect.
If we know that others are going to learn from us, we feel a sense of responsibility to provide the right information, and fill our own gaps. It is simple. Next time you have learned something, explain it to someone else.
Learning starts with me. I can never expect the people around me to be more open and willing to learn and improve than I am.
To learn I must be humble enough to realize I have something to learn.
