Learning
It’s 2 hours until showtime here in Boston, and I’m nervously pacing around, wondering what will happen in the intervening moments. Disclosures being what they are, I’d love to give more insight into what’s happening, but honestly, I’m in the place where I’ve got more energy to chat about than to stay glued to a screen, so disclosures will have to wait. In the interim, enjoy an idyllic scene of Mara munching some hay.
One of the overarching concepts I’ve been wrestling with lately is education, training, and paths. Much of what we do in life is proscribed for us, marked in the halls of schools, universities, and the various places we’re employed. Many, if not most of us, have followed rather traditional paths in our education, parents guiding us until it came time for post-secondary school hijinks, and fewer maintained their hands on the tiller. We’ve looked at the role of education as being fundamental to success, even in the face of contrarian evidence.
This isn’t to say that education, traditional or not, is invalid. Regardless of the method, all education is valuable for reinforcing behaviours and learning. Some learn better from the “school of life”, while others benefit from the hallowed halls. So this begs the question: which way is best?
The answer is, of course, “yes.” All education, butts in seats or hands on the wheel is valid. All education aims to shape and form plastic minds to incorporate conventional and new wisdom, experiences, and novel understandings. Our curiosity drives us to these things, like a horse to hay, but it behooves us (pun intended) to push it further.
When we look at professional education within organizations, things get murky. We tie metrics and quantization to educational pursuits, whether certifications or sectorial requirements like continuing education credits (CEC, CME, CEE, etc.). The goal is to reinforce the good behaviours and contemporary learnings and stigmatize the bad through disincentivization. In an increasingly complex world, this becomes more nuanced, especially as the developments of new technologies like generative artificial intelligence, photonics, and other such things become a rapidly rolling boulder of opportunity, careening downhill. In essence, you either conform to the new technologies or “die” trying, obsolescence being the most terrible death.
When you reach a certain age, your neural plasticity and learning ability become slightly more complicated. It’s as if those chemicals rocketing through your brain have carved their deterministic trenches, and floods be damned; they’re always going to go a certain way. Education, then, must somehow “lift” the whelming tide above the channel edge and engage new pathways and methods of incorporation.
Organizationally, many people get complacent and comfortable in their positions. They don’t find the exhilaration of new challenges to trigger the need for more learning. The forcing function of “learn or become obsolete” doesn’t approximate a forcing function, and, to many, it’s a sign to move on and look for something that fits the rubric of the already understood.
Frankly, education should be exciting. The ability to learn something new, be it photography, AI, or dancing, should be an opportunity to shake off the dust of the “always been that way” and we should relish those moments where we’re afforded the chance, incentives or not. Be that as it may, we often need the carrot to dangle closer to our mouths and the stick closer. And this, dear reader, is where I find myself.
The challenges for the road ahead are in understanding what motivates us to learn, what fires our curiosity, and what keeps us in thrall to the idea that by learning, we succeed. It’s not for everyone, and the hard truth is that those who disagree with that model will be challenged in their roles by those who do. Curiosity may not kill the cat, but complacency will erase a few.
I firmly believe that methods and means are at our disposal that don’t precipitate costly spending on equipment, tooling, software, and other things. People become one of the greatest assets in education. The ability to mentor, be mentored, ride along with, and engage in conversations with all is focused on the necessary engagement of one person with another. We spend so much energy on getting a digital certificate of achievement that we neglect the fertile soil of relationships, driven by curiosity and conversation, lying right in front of us. Learning to hold a conversation, grounded in the unscratchable itch of curiosity, is the best education one can get.
I am aware that I am not an expert despite having experience with both academic and organizational learning systems. I have found both systems to have their limitations. However, I believe these limitations can be addressed by recognizing that learning is not always a straightforward process or path. I’ve fallen into the cracks and seams of these systems more often than not, having to choose my education path over what has been prescribed. Regardless, I view my outcome as being one of success, having grabbed ahold of my curiosity and used it to good effect in my world.
My hope for you is that you will find the same. As moments of instruction and education approach, rather than eschew them as being noisy and overly rigid, perhaps there’s a method and madness you can apply from your history to make it more livable and learnable. If there’s the possibility of engaging your soul in the process, even better, for being a whole human is better by far than the opposite.
May it ever be so.
