Developing Strengths Across Generations

What an adventure it was at Learning2023?

I was surrounded by a thousand learning leaders who, like me, are on similar journeys to become catalysts in our organizations and help our people grow and evolve for good.?

To have the time and space to speak with luminaries of the field who came before I did.?

The ones who laid the fieldstones and named the new learning concoctions... born of technological advances and human needs.?

The curmudgeons who make me laugh and inspire me to push through and always keep checking to make sure the emperor is wearing clothes…?

As Learning Leaders, we know that razzle-dazzle, pretty visuals, and fluffy content are no substitute for transformative learning experiences that meet immediate needs... growing through follow-on learning opportunities with relevance that lasts long enough to be shared and passed on to others.

After presenting at Learning2023, I was invited to speak with and learn from the 30 Under 30. They are an amazing cohort of upcoming Learning Leaders who bring fresh eyes and a complete lack of assumptions that the broken bits we used to believe were a necessity… were even a good idea…

They approach the learning world of today with

• different assumptions,
• different expectations,
• different deal breakers

for what good learning is.?

Because they are starting this learning race from a completely different starting line than I did, they do not need to make the mistakes of the past.?

In school, they have likely been taught differently.

They have had access to so much more information from a very young age.

It would have been necessary for their learning and thinking processes to shift from just finding the data to the evaluation of data, or they would have drowned in a sea of data.

I was thinking about the differences that a new technology generation makes on foundational learning activities.

Join me on a trip down memory lane...

When I was in 3rd grade, I did a report on birds.

As resources, I had the encyclopedias in my school library, any books about birds the school had purchased, and any books I had at home.

If we were feeling extra fancy, my report partner Kate and I could go to the Public Library.?

We were fancy.?

Our report was 16 pages long.?

Though we were eight, Kate and I were not above using a little razzle-dazzle to try and shine it up to impress!

Lots of the pages were hand-drawn illustrations of the particular birds we liked best, created on tracing paper, colored by hand, and then cut and pasted into the pages we would handwrite in cursive.?

We even had a fancy cover page…we spent weeks working together on it.

When the 30 under 30 were in 3rd grade, they already had access to Google.

Finding information about birds would not have been an issue.

Creating visuals would not have needed scissors or glue to cut and paste.

Their learning focus would not have been curation and display, but to prevent drowning, they would have very quickly needed to shift to evaluating all that was available and synthesizing the vast information into the most relevant facts, images, and data.?

They would not have had to handwrite the report in cursive.?

They would have used a computer, which would have made their process of refinement of the language choices and improvement drafts so much easier.?

Not to disparage Kate’s and my effort, but I would bet dollars to doves, that the 30 under 30’s third-grade report on birds would have been much better!?

The process of getting to “good” is easier when you have tools to lighten the load of the labor required to get to the expression of information phase.

So much time is saved researching and finding source information, crunching data, writing then editing findings, and creating more effective visuals to illustrate the information.

It leaves more time for…well…for more, going deeper wherever we need to advance our understanding or output. You have time to ask questions and validate information.

Fancy is not what you have included but what you do with it.

Sometimes, I hear other learning folks talk disparagingly about what the younger generations of learners are missing because something that their generation struggled with has been made easy and then unnecessary for the next generations.

Sometimes when we fear change, it is because we are scared of losing something we don’t know if it is important to keep.

Sometimes we fear that not knowing if something is important is a sign that we might not be either…

Here is a thought: if there is something that we did in the past that is really valuable, we will carry it forward.?

We will feel its absence if we don’t.?

If it matters, its absence will matter as much as its presence as we change learning for good.

One important thing to note is that when I say for good, it is not used to indicate a finale.?

When I say we are growing forward to change learning for good, ?

I mean to signal the future direction, not the end of the past.?

Organizations and people aligning for good is a strengths-focused way of living and working… as well as managing up, down, and all around.?

This provides us with a new vantage point, and helps us to make monumental shifts "to growth".?

What we measure, we manage.

What we cultivate, we create.

When we focus on reduction, we reduce.?

When we focus on strengths, we strengthen.

It is not Pollyanna to focus on strengths while in the flow of solving existing problems.

There is a mind shift involved with acting as if the desired end state is here while doing the work to make it so. It is a delicate balance, but it is possible.

For example, focusing on increasing revenue can be another way to lessen the impact of expenses that stay flat on the budget. It is not that an organization shouldn’t focus on slashing budgets, and spending freezes to achieve the same impact to the bottom line, but it is important to be thoughtful about the relationship of what we add to what we take away...

Harnessing the full multigenerational experiential knowledge and skills of all is key as you work to be the growth you want to see in your world.?

I believe that what is needed to do learning and talent development well, also incorporates the gifts and speed brakes of all technological generations* and integrates the learned skills with the evolutionary advantages of more efficient ways to achieve better quality outcomes.

There is very rarely one right way to get from here to there.

There is power in respecting the different paths that we take, learning from each other's shortcuts, and taking an interest in those who create their own new ways to get there.

Sometimes, it is about the destination, and sometimes, it is about the trip, but always, it is about getting better at what we do and how we do it.

We must remember that we have far more that we can learn collectively than we will learn from a single data set. Whether we are learning from juxtaposing differences or identifying repeated patterns, learning is a process where change and challenge are constants...and they are often the catalyst for growth...for good.

*For more on Technology Generations, see The Learning Manifesto Volume 3: Stop Swiping Left On Grandma