2023 | The Year of Inspiring Experiences - Part 3. Promoting Wisdom & Learning

In this series, we define ten experiences that we believe will inspire the workforce over the next twelve months, even as we redesign our organizations and define the human work needed to be ready for the new cognitive economy. Download the full whitepaper here.

Promoting Wisdom & Learning

“Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.” - Peter Senge

It’s been seventeen years since Senge popularized the term “learning organization” in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization. In it, Senge described companies that promoted the continuous, lifelong learning of their employees. Such an organization would provide opportunities and incentives for knowledge sharing among team members.

A half-century earlier, Peter Drucker had coined the term “knowledge worker”. He believed that the people who knew how to bring relevant information and data to their decision-making were going to be the most influential individuals on the planet.

Today, organizations continue to embrace the idea of developing iterative lifelong learning processes, knowledge work, experimentation, and the building of new conceptual and physical models as part of digital transformation in an effort to achieve not only operational excellence but also to leverage imaginative ideas on innovation.

In 2023, we believe organizations will demonstrate a deeper understanding of the changing nature of customer and worker expectations in a cognitive economy enabled by machines and algorithms. As AI and machine learning continue to expand and usurp more complex tasks, we will see a drive for not just ‘learning’ and ‘knowledge’, but also that of wisdom come to prominence in progressive Fourth Industrial Revolution companies.

Companies that promote wisdom and learning are essentially adding “crystallized intelligence” - acquired knowledge that stems from learned knowledge and skills – to the everyday work equation. At a basic level, this could be de?ned as using everything we’ve ever learned, our cultural influences, life experiences, and our comprehension of the world in order to make wise decisions.

Crystallized intelligence, as described by Arthur Brooks in his 2022 book From Strength to Strength, is fed by our natural creativity and acts as the counterpoint to fluid intelligence, which allows humans to identify complex relationships. The outcome is defined as wisdom – a form of knowledge, understanding, insight, and reflective thinking - a compilation of individual views and individual interests that considers the interests and welfare of others.

This leads to the kind of holistic and systemic problem-solving that is crucial when we talk about human-machine collaboration. Instead of competing for a limited supply of talent, organizations will promote both wisdom and learning through skill-building, tapping creative sources of talent, and providing a compelling talent experience.

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Next Article: Part 4. Finding Me On My Terms

Logical Design Solutions (LDS) is a digital strategy and design consultancy for global enterprises. We create experiences that transform business and help people work successfully in the new digital organization. Clients come to LDS because of our reputation for intellectual rigor, our foundation in visionary experience strategy, and our commitment to enabling digital transformation inside the enterprise.?Learn More?about how LDS has dramatically improved the way that some of the largest corporations in the world do business.