Learning by doing is not enough

We all know the saying that we learn by doing, not by sitting to listen to a lecture. And it's not just a saying, research has confirmed this (see the picture). Real learning happens only when we do stuff.

Have you ever spent a full day doing plenty of stuff ... ? For sure you have. Meetings, reviews, phone calls, discussions, preparing a presentation, dealing with all the emails that pop up without interruption. So much doing, the whole day long ! With hardly time to breathe in between these events. Lunch lasts about 20 minutes, or happens at your desk, doing some more email stuff. So on your way home, at then end of that busy day where you did so much, what was playing in your mind ? Were you telling yourself "Wow, so a great day full of learning by doing !". Probably not. It was more something like "Thank God this day is over and done with !". So there was all that doing, but apparently no learning ? What is missing to turn doing into real learning ?

Doing requires an external focus. And thinking or reflecting brings an internal focus. Recent research lead by HBR has shown that the internal focus, of thinking or reflecting, increases the learning retention by up to 22%. How do you bring this internal focus into a busy day of doing ? The key trick is to use questions ! Spending some time at the end of a day, or better still, at different times during the day, to ask yourself a few questions, makes all the difference. Questions such as ... How was this meeting ? Did we achieve the objectives ? How was the team dynamic ? What was the quality of the decisions we took ? How was this meeting different from the one before ? These simple questions and the reflection that follows them, are where the doing gets transformed into learning. Reflecting on what we did, why things happened they way they happened, is where the learning happens, not just in the doing part.

Now all this thinking and reflecting does not need to take more than 5 minutes, so "We are really so busy" is not a valid excuse ! And if you skip the reflection part, you will just move from doing lots of stuff one day, to doing even more stuff the next day. Train yourself to reflect and help yourself learn on how to grow. Even on a busy day.

This blog originally appeared on my personal blog www.teamexcellencedelivered.blogspot.com. Check it out for more on learning and team development.