Experimentation over Task Completion

I recently presented on thinking like a scientist in how we learn in the workplace. It was a call for curiosity, a sense of freedom to fail, and a systematic process of discovery, exploration, action, and reflection. And a call to test our ideas with our peers for that review of our outcomes and to encourage these peers to take our concepts further. Thanks to Helen Marshall for continuing the discussion in her recent article. It is so important, I want to keep the conversation going.

Why?

Well, this idea of thinking like a scientist needs unpicking. The most crucial difference between this approach and traditional approaches to learning, development and work-based activity is at the action stage.

Everything about the workplace is task orientated. We love a process and love to complete activities and declare them done. We set goals and deadlines, and when finished, we tick these off our to-do list. We worship at the altar of productivity – sometimes for productivity's sake.

We do the same in learning. If Person A completes Course C, then Objective F has been completed. Tick.

How should this action be done differently?

With an altered mindset.

Rather than, “I will do XYZ”, start your project with “What if I do XYZ, I wonder what the impact will be?”

“I will do XYZ.” This is task completion.

“What if I do XYZ, I wonder what the impact will be?” This is experimentation.

You are someone who unloads the luggage from planes and places them on the trolleys that take them back to the terminal in an airport.

“I will put the bags on the trolley.”

“What if I put the hard square cases on the trolley first, I wonder if that would get more on one trolley?”

It is not that the “What if” question always has a better outcome, and this is experimentation. Sometimes an action taken will be worse than the one you did before. For the baggage handler, it may be more efficient to grab the nearest case first and unload the plane as quickly as possible. An experimentation mindset – thinking about what action you might take and how the outcome might improve you – is fundamental to lifelong learning.

This mindset is more important for Learning and Development professionals than in any other sector. Technology is changing all the time, and the requirements of the business evolve with it. The tools we use to facilitate learning constantly evolve, and the outcomes required do too. Our only option is the “What if” question and the curiosity and courage to find answers we did not exist.

Here's a “what if” we are playing with right now. “What if” we could use the AI used by marketers to personalise content to create the voice of the coach/ mentor required by our learner? What if our app, which helps to scale our solution to thousands across an organisation, could be personalised to such a level by AI that everyone feels they are getting a bespoke experience?

It is one of many experiments I am currently exploring in my work. My boss still gets outcomes, and my efforts are easily measured, though my mindset when undertaking any task is one of the scientists pondering, “Is this the best way to do this?”

How will you experiment with learning in the future? How will you know you are doing the best work for your organisation?