Learning to Learn

Savvas Koufou: Learning to Learn

The importance of lifelong learning has gained widespread currency in the business world over the last couple of years. That is especially true in financial services, where workplaces are being transformed by the rapid evolution of digitisation and AI.

However for me, this is much more than just a hot topic. As clients and colleagues know, I have always been a huge believer in building a culture of learning.

Why is that? After more than twenty years in the learning and development space, I have recently been reflecting upon and connecting the dots in understanding as to why I do the work that I do. The truth is that there is a deeply personal reason for the importance I attach to ‘learning to learn’. It is one that I have never spoken about to anyone outside my close friends and family – until very recently.

When I was 20 years old, I was in a car accident that put me into a coma. I suffered a traumatic brain injury, paralysis in my face and arm, and spent months in hospital undergoing multiple operations.

This was only the beginning. I spent many years retraining myself to perform physical and mental processes that I had carried out without a thought before the accident. I not only had to relearn how to use my body, but also how to use my brain; how to think, how to remember and how to reason.

It was a difficult time – the most challenging of my life. However, in retrospect, it was probably the most enlightening too. I learned some painful lessons about the importance, and the difficulty, of learning itself. In particular, I found out that:

• Learning takes practice, patience and persistence. With the right approach, what does not come naturally at first can eventually become a habit.
• Learning requires curiosity. Pushing yourself towards areas where you feel the greatest natural resistance is hard. But it is important – if something is difficult, it is probably because you are learning something useful.
• Learning is a team sport; it comes from multiple people and places. It took a whole team of people to restore, support and encourage me. We are social creatures and the lessons we learn collectively are often the most powerful.

Looking back, I have no doubt that this long and challenging experience sparked my enduring fascination with learning. But there is more to this than personal reflection. I suspect that the lessons I learned are increasingly relevant for us all in the modern workplace. We are lucky enough to be living ‘in interesting times’ – an era in which we all need to keep challenging ourselves, keep learning and stay mentally agile.

And if I had to pick one lesson above all, I think it would be the last one. We are genetically programmed to relate to others and that is frequently how we learn best. There is a limit to what we can learn alone, looking at a screen. For me, a true culture of ‘learning to learn’ has to understand and value the ways we learn from each other.

Savvas Koufou - Director, Financial Services People Consulting

KPMG in the UK