Learning

Learning

social learning is innate

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Social learning is a key theme of mine because imitation is how we learn as a species. Social learning is best explained by Albert Bandura, recognized as the most eminent psychologist of the modern era.

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” —Albert Bandura

Making our organizations open to social learning fosters innovation. Nobody works in a vacuum and we all build upon past ideas and achievements. Open structures that distribute authority can lead to more transparent knowledge sharing which promotes social learning. This open sharing can foster more diverse perspectives which can fuel active experimentation. Innovation emerges from this constant flow of ideas and experiments.

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working collaboratively and learning cooperatively

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Improving Organizational Performance

Organizational performance improvement is comprised of reducing errors and increasing insights, according to Gary Klein. For the past century, management has primarily focused on error reduction, with practices such as Six Sigma, especially in manufacturing.

“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein

Learning and development (L&D) practices reflect this priority on error reduction. But knowledge work, especially creative work, is not mere production.

“Visualize the workflow of a physical job: produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce.

Now visualize the workflow of a creative knowledge worker: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, flash of brilliance, nothing, nothing, nothing.” —Jay Cross (1944-2015)

Based on 120 case studies, Gary Klein identified five types of ‘triggers’ that produced insights.

  1. Contradictions
  2. Creative Desperation
  3. Connections
  4. Coincidences
  5. Curiosity

Most of these five triggers can be enhanced through informal and social learning, and the individual practice of personal knowledge mastery. Insights often come while working, resting, and playing — or even in the shower — but not while undergoing formal education or training.

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the confinement of curriculum

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For the past several weeks I have spent an afternoon in a fifth grade classroom with 30 students, aged 11-12 years old. My wife is artist-in-residence for this class and I, along with a few other adults, am her helper. The students are making ‘trash art’, recycling everyday items into new creations. It has been a pleasure watching the students envision,  problem-solve, and create. The class time passes in the blink of an eye. But there is one aspect of public school that I find extremely frustrating — the one hour class.

The fact that the teacher, who is outstanding, can get 30 kids to focus after arriving from a completely different class, is incredible. However, at the end of the class almost every student wants to keep on working. They are immersed in their creations. But the system will not allow it. Popular science [fiction] states that we now have the attention span of a goldfish. Our schools have not helped with this at all.

Instead, they have taught generations the lesson of the bells.

“Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.” —John Taylor Gatto 1935-2018

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90% of everything is crap

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Currently, I have written 3,170 posts on this blog. I don’t have any surveillance technologies (analytics) here, so I don’t know how many people read my work, or how much they like it. I do use Feedly as my feed reader and subscribe to my own site, so I can ensure that the RSS feed is working. Feedly also gives me an idea of how popular a post is. The number [second column from left] represents some algorithm based on how much more popular a post is than the average one. I don’t know how they determine this.

Over the past 6 years that Feedly has been keeping track of my site I have written over 1,000 posts. Of these, only 13 have been wildly popular. Most of my posts have a popularity rating in the single digits. This aligns with Sturgeon’s Law — “90% of everything is crap”. It’s hard to write a great post every single day. But writing the not-so-good stuff prepares you for the odd good post.

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connected thinking

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“… it’s easy, and it’s seductive, to assume that data is really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another. And how quickly we can forget that wisdom without knowledge, wisdom without any data, is just a hunch.” —Toni Morrison (2019) The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Data needs knowledge to understand it. Those who have this knowledge can then create information about the data to help others understand it. This is why there are so many different interpretations of complex issues. We have limited data and limited knowledge. Therefore experts often disagree. Each expert comes with a different story. Some groups share a story which influences their judgement. But wisdom is being able to understand knowledge and data in context and then make appropriate decisions. Without enough good data, we have no foundation for our knowledge.

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learning as disservice

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It is time to revive an insightful comment by a friend and inspiration, David Jonassen — as his Wikipedia entry says, Dave wrote about “learning with media, not from it”.

“Every amateur epistemologist knows that knowledge cannot be managed. Education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. That is a grand illusion.” —David Jonassen

Knowledge is personal. Knowledge is human. Knowledge cannot be managed.

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toward a network society

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Our current triform society is based on families/communities, a public sector, and a private market sector. But this form, dominated by Markets is unable to deal with the complexities we face globally — climate change, pollution, populism/fanaticism, nuclear war, etc. A quadriform society would be primarily guided by the Network form of organizing. We are making some advances in that area but we still have challenges getting beyond nation states and financial markets.

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we all need an inner circle

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Work has always been about who you know, more than what you know. That’s why the rich and powerful send their children to elite schools. It’s not about the education but rather the connections. We still fool ourselves that a capitalist economy is a meritocracy — which any marginalized group can attest is false. However, the emerging network era and its democratization of media is giving voice to more of these groups.

I have advocated for retrieving gender balance in our organizations as the controlled linearity of the written and printed word — patriarchal in their essence — will be obsolesced by the connected, electric medium. This connected world requires each of us to develop broad and diverse social networks in addition to trusted communities of practice. Today, this is even more important for women than men, though I think it will be essential for all genders in the near future. Social networks are our professional safety nets.

Professor Brian Uzzi studied hundreds of MBA graduates and noted significant differences in the social networks of men and women. While social networks are important to both, successful women also had an ‘inner circle’ of trusted female advisors. Networks and communities are not the same. Communities are the connectors between diverse networks and work teams. They are essential. We all need an inner circle.

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what it’s all about

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Three things are essential for meaningful work in the network era — diversity, learning, and trust.

Diversity

While there is much talk about information overload, it has never been easier for us to find diverse opinions, experiences, and perspectives. To make sense of any complex matter we cannot rely on a single source. As with the blind men and the elephant, each of us can only see a part of the whole. It’s not just gender balance that we need to cultivate in our social networks but overall intellectual diversity.

“All human systems are connected and connected systems cannot be understood in terms of isolated parts.” —Esko Kilpi

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learning myths & superstitions

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In Millennials, Goldfish & other Training Misconceptions my colleague Clark Quinn has written a handy guide for every training shop or L&D department. Using his decades of experience combined with a scientist’s analytical mind, Clark first looks at learning ‘myths’ — beliefs we hold that aren’t true. Each myth is analyzed from seven perspectives:

  1. The Claim
  2. The Appeal
  3. The Potential Upside
  4. The Potential Downside
  5. How to Evaluate
  6. What the Evidence Says
  7. What to Do

This book is a useful job aid for anyone supporting learning in the workplace. Clark uses a different approach for ‘superstitions’ — AKA bad practices. He examines each of these from five perspectives:

  1. The Claim
  2. The Practice
  3. The Rationale
  4. Why it Doesn’t Work
  5. What to do Instead

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