Our Most Valuable Ability - to Learn

Great article in Harvard Business Review, March 2016 by Erika Anderson (p. 98-101) - Managing Yourself Learning to Learn. I've observed in my work with scaling agile and introducing business agility that this ability to sense, respond, and adapt - where in most cases adapt means learning to work differently or thinking about the business differently - is required. Erika Anderson refers once again to the well-known quote:

The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
- Arie de Geus

But what really hit me was the research she shared and how it applies to me specifically and individuals more generally - for an organization doesn't learn or learn faster, we do. So I thought it was worth sharing more broadly even if it may come across as common sense. Some ideas are worth revisiting regularly. 

Erika shares her definition of learning not from the perspective of reading or attending structured education, but from one of self-awareness and management:

• Overcoming your resistance to trying new things
• Actively searching for growth opportunities
• Driving yourself to mastering entirely novel skills

And she outlines some attributes present in clients that learn in this manner:

1. Aspiration - you want to learn and have the ambition and motivation
2. Self-Awareness - recognize the value of and actively seek feedback
3. Curiosity - the insatiable drive to experience or understand something new
4. Vulnerability - accepting and being comfortable as a novice

Aspiration

What I particularly liked about aspiration is the recognition that many of us naturally focus first on the negative - all the reasons why we have no need for something new and different. Research has shown that by shifting our focus to benefits from challenges can increase aspiration, even for endeavors we might initially consider unappealing:

• What are the potential benefits from learning this?
• Imagine a future when you have mastered the skill, what might you experience?
• Why do I even consider this unappealing - many others have different perspectives, why is that?

For me, what works best is to consider not only what might benefit me but how I might be able to create new and interesting experiences for both myself and those around me. I value experiences, even over accomplishments, so this is energizing. Over my career, with many achievements along the way, it is the people and the experiences that I remember and value most fondly. 

Self-Awareness

The stance I appreciate most in the area of self-awareness is that the most effective results come not from external feedback but from understanding and accepting that my perspective - good or bad - is probably flawed. At the very least it is only partially correct, and requires the mental discipline to discriminate and strive for objectivity. This is similar to a belief I have about group dialogue - the effectiveness really lies within the mental processes of the participants and not the skill of a facilitator (as beneficial as that may be for many other reasons). 

What I try to consider as I separate the mental wheat from the chaff are:

• What do the facts actually say?
• What are my underlying assumptions here?
• How did I come to embrace this particular point of view?
• What questions have I not asked yet?

For some of us, thinking about the thought process comes more naturally, and is even oddly amusing - but it is hard work nonetheless to attend to the genesis of our mental formations, the creation of our reality. 

Curiosity

Curiosity opens new worlds and possibilities, provides the energy to keep trying for something new, and fuels the fire for knowledge and novelty. And, again, in group processes, is a secret sauce for generative and genuine dialogue - put a group of passionate, smart, AND curious people together and watch the magic show. 

But is can also be pretty straight-forward. The article references psychological research that supports the power of curious questions and to simply consider how work could be done differently to make it interesting. I've experienced this with trying to combine smart devices, web services, and other tools to handle mundane tasks such as submitting expense reports. Now who in their right mind would be curious about expense reports - well, those of us with natural curiosity. Take that to the question of portfolio management, staffing, performance mastery and ideas start flying that can potentially transform how we work. 

Vulnerability

Last, but far from least for me anyway, is vulnerability. Over the years I've had to actively learn to embrace being a novice. I manage it, but hate making mistakes, hate being wrong, hate providing less-than-stellar advice. What a prison that is!

The article asserts that "Great Learners" are not only comfortable with the novice state, but heartily embrace it. But what I took away and can apply myself is the self-talk to frame our minds while learning something new:

"I'm going to be bad at this because I've never done it before...."
- Michael to Michael

but followed by:

"...AND I know I can learn to do it over time, and will eventually master it because that is also part of my DNA."
- Michael never thinking to share this with Michael

So here is my game plan, I encourage you to read the article and see what you might take from it - some of these are new for me, others have been reinforced:

• Aspiration - think broadly about the new experiences I could create in this world by investing in learning novel abilities. 
• Self-Awareness - always beware of my bias and self-assessment, never rest on laurels, there is ALWAYS more to learn.
• Curiosity - there is nothing so mundane or so well-know to stifle curiosity - always ask curious questions. 
• Vulnerability - learn to not tolerate the state of being a novice, embrace it and enjoy the journey of learning something new, irregardless of the destination. 
• Overcoming resistance to try new things - this is never ending. My last attempt was to attend an improv class. It was devastatingly challenging. 
• Actively searching for growth opportunities - for me this involves actively seeking feedback and not relying on performance management processes or issues to drive these conversations. 
• Driving myself to mastering novel skills - I'm still thinking about this one. Right now I'm focused on more formally learning and integrating graphic facilitation skills into everything I do. It is novel and a quite interesting journey.