The Digital Learning Journey: Advocate and Disciplines

Workflows are about how we work. Disciplines are about how we think. When we are optimizing workflows, we are defining the most effective and efficient ways to get from one thing to another. Disciplines guide our thought processes as we are thinking about a technology or skill.

Step 8: Disciplines

While someone might apply skills, and demonstrate their use, at a meta level, they are showcasing how they think and the mental processing they use. This is the foundation of disciplines, where we can identify optimal ways to think and approach critical and creative thinking when it comes to a skill.

Think about how you approach cooking and housework. You probably approach both differently—because there are unique circumstances that define your thought processes. Cleaning is about completing a variety of activities including vacuuming, dusting, surface scrubbing, etc. You need to make sure that all the cleaning tasks are complete in the house. The order you do them isn’t as important as completeness. Your thinking about that has a unique set of criteria that you have honed and perfected over a period of many years.

Now consider cooking—it’s a different set of criteria. If you’re prepping for a meal, you have a time you need to serve it. You also have a limited amount of cooking capacity based on the size of your oven or stove. So, you need to plan out the time for when you need to start cooking certain parts of the meal, and in the right order.

So, cleaning requires a strong task management discipline to make sure all the tasks are complete for the project. Cooking requires strong time management, so all the food is ready at the right time in the right state. These disciplines don’t govern the actual tasks and the workflow—but they do define how you think and approach a problem or project.

Now while these are simple examples, the disciplines you need for your own technology and other skill development will undoubtedly be more complicated. But this step is a super important one to take note of.

It is the beginning of a ton of new learning journeys.

When you reach this stage, you are faced with new ways of thinking. You have already, probably unknown to you, been guided to think in a specific disciplinary way, but you didn’t know it. Now, it’s time to consider these disciplines as learning opportunities themselves. You might start that journey past the motivation phase, but there is a wealth of opportunity in focusing on these disciplines to strength and evolve the way you think to do even more with the original skill that led you to the discovery of the discipline. This can help you help others more and be a better advocate.

Where the values grow

This part of our journey requires some rebuilding of our mind. Mostly because we need to think of our skills at a higher level and be more “meta” about how we look at skill development. It can be difficult, but the results are worth it.

If you’re a learner…

Probably the trickiest, and frankly, most humbling part of this step is the discovery of new disciplines of thinking, and the acknowledgement of new learning journeys materializing in front of you. Often, these are the “A-ha” moments that can take something that you “have just gone along with” and it—suddenly—becomes crystal clear.

But that is all part of the lifeline learning journey. Discovering new ways to think and to dive into those as much as you would to learn a tangible technology or skill. Those disciplines will lead to the discovery of other skills that align with that discipline, and then the journey continues.

When you can see and understand the disciplines that are part of the bigger picture, you can learn to see those in others as they start their own journey and can guide them and speak to the importance of different ways of thinking and approaching problem solving. You have already been a trailblazer and now are a guide for others that are going down that path.

If you’re an advocate…

You already know these disciplines and are probably pretty far along the way in their own learning journeys. Part of your job is to seek out and find these disciplines in others.

Here’s the difficult truth: Not everyone will succeed in a particular learning journey. Also, not everyone should be on that learning journey. It isn’t that they have failed, or and done anything wrong. It is often because they are artificially being pushed or forced to go down a certain path. The disciplines and their potential may develop a growing dissonance with the path they are on. But they might never see it. It is your opportunity as an advocate to see that, and to take the time and explore what is truly inside of them and tease apart the goal from the task.

I have encountered many people that have a clear goal in mind—but the tasks they are plotting out to get that goal are in stark contrast with their disciplinary gifts and talents. Why? Because they were told that the only way to reach these goals was to complete these tasks.

You have the ability to bring alignment here and to take what could potentially be a journey of frustration, confusion, and potentially abandoned altogether, and transform it into something natural and adaptable for them.

Up next

We come to the end of our journey (or is it?) with the final step. The next step is looks at the interconnectedness of everything we have learned so far and can see skills, learning, and growth as a complete system.

Doug Winnie is the Chief Learning Officer at MentorNations a startup focused on fostering digital skills around the globe and Director of Learning Experience and Organizational Effectiveness at H&R Block. Doug previously worked in various digital skills, education and product management roles at Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Adobe. Doug is also a LinkedIn Learning author with multiple courses on digital transformation, product management, and computer science. Doug is also the editor of the LinkedIn newsletter, “Digital Mindset” that publishes weekly on LinkedIn.