Accelerating Learning in a Human System (Part I)
What do you do if you want your team, department, organization, community to work better and have a greater impact? Ask yourself the question: “how might we accelerate learning in our organization?”
I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now, and here I am attempting to crystallize and share my thoughts.
Individual Learning
I think of learning in a human system in terms of individual and collective. Individual learning is about four core elements:
- Awareness: what we notice about ourselves and what’s around us at a moment in time
- Beliefs, perspectives and mindset: the lens through which we perceive and interpret what happens around us, and our own role and agency
- Behaviors: our beliefs, mindset, past experiences (and conscious or unconscious trauma) as well as our current awareness determine our behavioral patterns
- Skills: we build practical skills every day, even unconsciously, whether it’s working with Excel or managing interpersonal conflict. We can actively choose which skills to further develop and how
When most companies think about and design their “learning and development”, they tend to focus on the last element — skills improvement. The predominant thinking is “we build people’s individual skills, they become better performers, and we rake in more money”. So they offer workshops on a vast array of topics such as strong writing, effective presentations, sales and influencing, etc. While improving skills is a worthy endeavor, it doesn’t accelerate learning.
Accelerating individual learning is about deep inner work, about sitting with the simple and yet profound question “who are you” until you feel unease and discomfort. It’s about Increasing awareness: greater awareness leads to a deeper examination and reevaluation of one’s beliefs and mindset, which then helps inform why we act the way we do, and forces us to choose: who we want to be, and how we behave in alignment with our identity and values. As we gain greater clarity, we start identifying gaps and exploring ways to bridge those gaps. For example, if we want to have deeper relationships with others, we may decide to focus on active listening and empathy.
Collective Learning
I define collective learning as the collective ability of a given human system, as manifested through its individual actors’ interactions with one another, to make sense of reality, adapt, and evolve. Here’s how the same core elements play out on the collective level:
- Awareness: how does the system see and sense itself? What kind of reflective processes take place and how often? Are the blind spots becoming more visible?
- Beliefs and mindset: what are the values and tacit rules that govern the organization? Are they in sync with those of the individual actors, or is there dissonance?
- Behaviors: what kind of policies, processes and practices guide how people are supposed to interact?
- Skills: how is the system able to respond to different challenges? Do its policies, processes and practices enable, or stand in the way of, the effective pursuit of the organization’s mission and goals?
Designing the Learning Infrastructure
To accelerate learning in a human system then:
- Acknowledge the individual and collective levels of learning
- Realize that learning is about much more than skills-building
- Thoughtfully design and continuously tweak a holistic learning infrastructure that integrates individual and collective learning
What might such a learning infrastructure look like? Most importantly, it needs to include and be accessible to everyone, be co-designed and co-developed with as many people within the system as wish to be involved, and evolve organically, in response to shifting context, feedback, and the fundamental needs of the system.
What are the core elements of such a holistic learning infrastructure? Continue to Part II.
Zarko strives to activate the potential of human systems — a small team, an organization, or a community — by unlocking individual and collective learning and transformation.
