Ch. 7 Summary: Push the curve


Throughout the twentieth century, adaptability—the aptitude for learning--has been understood to be the fundamental characteristic of intelligence. Nearly all psychologists have agreed with that definition. It’s best expressed as the ability to add skills to one’s repertoire in a deeply intimate way, to embed them so that they crawl into your head, eventually reframing your perspective. Embedding, is that final process of learning that integrates a new skill into your work future. In-depth learning not only adds to your repertoire of skills, but alters your ways of thinking and modifies your attitudes so that they reflect the new skill and positively impact your intelligence.

 

What happens in the brain after you’ve learned something new?

 

Your existing knowledge bank interprets the incoming information, and links it to the old. Then neurotransmitters, the chemicals that relay and amplify signals between neurons, reward the brain and the entire organism with feelings of well-being. When the pieces fall into place, your learning is intrinsically rewarding and self-congratulatory. Not quite an orgasm, but intense physical pleasure just the same.

 

In this chapter, I explore the advancements in the new science of learning. I will also insist that one of the most important diagnostic questions you can ask about an organization is what happens when people fail? Since one of the key attributes of long-term work success is the ability to learn from mistakes, you will need to find employment in a firm that permits mistakes. There can be very little learning without failure. Invariably, employees in firms that do not permit failure become highly risk averse, and that prohibits learning. Indeed, over the long term, the wisest move is to opt out of a company that does not permit failure.

 

Here, I will set about to dispel the conventional wisdom about learning by dissecting two serious errors in thinking. First, contrary to the widespread penchant for predicting an employee’s abilities, research reveals that the ultimate reaches of expertise cannot be predicted for anyone, whether artist, sportsman, physicist or businessperson. A second clarification is also very important: studies show it is impossible to estimate the rate at which a person can learn, add competencies, and develop expertise. But it is known that as a person learns how to learn, she gradually speeds up in that discipline.

 

Based on these two brainware facts, I discuss the real limitation of personal learning. It is not a person’s lack of capacity, but the failure to purposefully engage in developing that expertise with the needed instruction and mentors. One of the implications of this rule is that extensive experience does not necessarily lead to expert levels of achievement. Once a kid learns how to drive a car competently, very few go on to become expert NASCAR racers. Their development is arrested because they have no use for expert driving skills unless they decide to become a stunt driver for Hollywood. The surprising fact is that “arrested development” is true of all vocations, including medicine—and that’s worrisome. After a person achieves competency, he rarely goes on to expert levels. Yet, it is those who learn to become specialists who are able to manage vocational survival in any environment.

 

In this segment, I will introduce the reader to Tom Brewster, a low-level manager I coached nearly twenty years ago. Initially perceived as an alert, friendly, manager, he was cast as unexceptional. At thirty-five, a mediocre employee, but at fifty-five, respected and admired as a great leader. How did that happen? Instead of slowing down, he kept learning at the rate we normally associate with children and young adults. This exception to the norm enables the reader see that nothing inherent in human DNA prevents growth later in life—and that you can’t predict even your own abilities.

 

The ability to recall and reuse skills in different settings is a key test for skill acquisition and one of the most fundamental goals of effective learning. A surprising insight from the research is that when an employee spaces the practice of new skills in wider and wider segments, he will learn faster and more effectively than if he simply practiced one skill until his manager assumed it was learned. Law and architectural firms regularly screw this up. Many entry level architects draw toilets in commercial buildings for six months until learned, then they go on to drawing, say, exterior walls for another six months. Not only is the learning not a whit better that way, but it is immensely boring—and a killer for motivation. Medical students are taught far more effectively. They may be working in internal medicine for six months, but they move from this unique patient to that unique patient, to another. It’s very clear that multi-tasking and spacing a number of new skills is far more effective than the traditional method. Entry level workers in the better firms move around and space their learning. However, the majority of firms still cling to the traditional model which works just like test cramming. You’re ready for the test, but it’s all forgotten the next day.

 

Employees at all levels often fail to add new skills to their portfolio because of one common debilitating form of learning resistance: the widespread belief that you can’t try on something new until you fully understand it. To circumvent that problem, I focus upon the ready, fire, aim pattern of learning by doing, rather than the mythological ready, aim, fire model which tends to value thinking rather than action—when action is the real need for effectively gaining new skills. Smart talk has too often become a substitute for smart performance, and I believe in the necessity for action—mistakes and all—for learning.

 

Finally, I show that without sufficient feedback, real learning is impossible and improvement only minimal—even for highly motivated subjects. I examine the personal and organizational barriers surrounding the gaining of feedback in work settings. Although I will address the use of protocols and scripts in a later chapter, this discussion sets the reader up for a deeper understanding of the process in my chapter on communication. Managers fail to give feedback because they want to avoid confrontation. In addition, there is little understanding in most organizations about how to give developmental feedback.

 

Using the experiences of Grant Hadfield, an industrial engineer at a manufacturing plant, the author describes the difficulties he goes through in gaining the needed training and feedback for managing team conflict. Because conflict management can be intricate, the illustration depicts typical learning experiences involved in the gaining of a complex skill over a period of several months. In this narrative I show how he got developmental feedback by coaching his manager. Admittedly, the process seems backward. But my model provides a smart means of gaining constructive feedback from one’s manager with mutual coaching.

 

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