Your choice: Evolution or Revolution
How much time do you really invest in learning?
Sometimes it feels like living on a different planet. For some people all the innovation, technology and (digital) options feel very disruptive, the future completely unclear, even frightening. Others can’t wait to get the next update…
If change feels like a revolution – re-think your priorities!
Electric cars, Wearables, Bitcoins, Virtual Reality… what a Buzzword bingo, but hey, there is nothing revolutionary or disruptive:
todays technology is around for quite a long time!
There have been electric cars 20 years before Ford or Daimler invented combustion engines, Virtual Reality came up in the 1970’s. I bought my first PDA (what we call Smartphone today) 1997 – the same year I started Video-conferencing too.
There are not so many new things, they just became ?normal“
PSION 3a / 3c, Compac iPaq, HP, Sony, Siemens, Samsung, Nokia…
How much time do you ?invest“ in learning
If you start learning for ONE HOUR per week now, by the end of this year, you will have collected 20 hours of new knowledge already!
We underestimate the power of little habits!
If you read the ?newspaper“ (15 minutes) every morning for 30 years, you might be up to date about wars, politics, love affairs of VIPs and who won the last football game, but you also spent almost 300 days (8 hours each)!!!
If you spend just 1 hour per week to learn something new for 30 years, it adds up to 200 days of relevant knowledge about innovation, technology or new trends in your expertise.
evolution versus revolution – technology and learning
Of course, if you do not have time for learning, it must be overwhelming.
Everyone says Learning is Top Priority!
Well most studies tell us: 99% claim learning (specifically in the digital age) is top priority. Specially in the upper hierarchy, learning time is absolutely rare – no time, is the most common excuse.
Since beginning of this year (2019), I am doing the following test with different audiences (employees, leaders, assistants, at congresses and workshops, with CEOs, CFOs and Project Managers):
I ask them:
?Do you have time blocked for learning in your calendar?“ Almost no one I asked, could show me blocked time for learning in their calendar.
Calendars don’t lie!
Isn’t it funny, that meetings, workshops, even team building, doctors appointments or picking up groceries deserve a space in your calendar, not learning.
I did not stop there and kept asking:
What if you would block 1 hour for learning every Friday – who could take-over this hour? (would you defend it?)
- your executive board … of course
- your boss … for sure
- your customers … no doubt
- your colleagues … yes
Ok, let’s reflect that – if ANYONE can take over a time blocked for learning (which you do not even have)… how important is learning really?
School ends / educational training done: learning is over!!
Once you had your diploma, you have been ?done“ for life-time. If you are an engineer… no one takes that away from you, same for a teacher, a lawyer, hairdresser, taxi-driver, manager.
In the past most job profiles included: ?competences required: Office“…
As an Assistant, 600 keystrokes per minute on the typewriter back than – today handling video-conferences, managing Document Management Systems, running various mobile devices, booking everything online… quite a different profile.
As a Controller… back than, gathering/exporting data, cleaning up in Excel, optimizing in Powerpoint, distributing via eMail – today, running mobile dashboards with real-time, drill-down and predictive analytics … quite a different condition.
Not only the skills and tools needed to be successful in our job have changed dramatically – so did the needed mindset (attitude) to ?survive“ todays information flood, business speed, amount of interfering frame conditions. From hierarchical command & control to transformational leadership on eye-level with emotional intelligence.
Science tells us, most jobs our kids will do, are not even ?created“ yet– but this also means the todays work-generation… many todays job profiles will DIE OUT! … why is no one alarmed about that, or better – taking actions/ownership … and start learning?
Coming back to the required ?Office Knowledge“ in Job profiles – this now includes about 25 tools – most with monthly updates versus 5 tools with three-year update cycles just a decade ago. Are you familiar with Teams, Stream, Forms, Delve, Planner, OneDrive…?
The world we created, get’s frequent updates… what about your skills?
Evolution of learning
In our first 15 years, education is a one-size-fits-all approach: Setup in school has not changed in 100 years – in most areas.
Learning today is as colorful as a rainbow:
- from 5 minute microlearning to full time camp’s
- analog, digital, hybrid
- self, peer, group, social, mooc
- various methods and formats
- holistic approach (mindset, skillset, toolset)
- continuous setups, journeys, safaris
No excuses, please!
Most heard excuse about new software: ?It is not intuitive!“
A piano has a pretty simple user interface: just white and black keys, but playing something nice, is not intuitive… that takes learning and practice
I can surely understand where this comes from: For decades, software or their user interfaces have been user-unfriendly, for sure. But todays new platforms and tools are not about the ?user interface“ not being clean or easy to understand. Those new tools require a different understanding, a different attitude: ?Letting go“, ?Trust“, ?Collaboration“, ?Shareconomy“, ?Real-Time“, ?exponential“…
Many fail in todays new tools, because they try to copy their known behavior into the new tools…
Learning means to be open for something new, not to force something or someone to follow my experience.
By not being curious about what new things have to offer, we kill their magic and leverage effects.
How to start?
If you start your personal learning journey today, I can promise you, soon today’s feared ?revolution“ will become just another step in a long term evolution – you gaining back confidence and security and fun!
There are many ways to start learning, for sure to many to list them here, but I want to inspire you for this fountain of youth:
Start Social Networking – get connected
Learning from a mentor, with a friend, together with trusted peers, time- and location independent, on eye-level is such an appreciative way of living or working. Your physical connections are great, but once you experience the power of a strong virtual network, which inspires you every day, which makes you laugh or think, you will never want to miss it.
Learning in the digital age is all about relationships!
But isn’t Social Media ?evil“?
Well, no. If people tell you, there is only ?bad stuff“ – ask them about their friends/connections and why they follow people writing bad stuff?
But what about all the negative new from Twitter, Facebook…? YOU decide, what you get, how often and from whom – once you learn it!
As with every other tool, there are negative and positive sides, maturity means knowing about it and being able to enjoy the advantages but not suffer from the issues.
Knives can kill, cars can kill, even your hair dryer can kill, if you do not know how to use it right.
It’s not the tool, which is bad, it’s our missing competence!
WOL:
Start your Working Out Loud circle: 1 hour, 12 weeks, 5 peers towards one self-defined goal… along a simple, structured and easy to follow curriculum (without test, grades but lots of appreciation): www.workingoutloud.com
Social media is like a fountain of youth – inspiration wherever you are.
Getting started with LinkedIn:
Getting started with Social Media (LinkedIn or Twitter)
Getting started with Twitter:
and don’t forget to have fun!
Accompanying organizations on their journey into their future
5 年At least I already reserved one hour on Friday but it’s difficult to defend this space for learning
Supporting human-centered design in the public sector
5 年Thank you Harald Schirmer for this concise reminder to plan learning and to make it regular practice. Especially independent self-employed folk like myself need to follow this advice to keep up and to exercise purposeful learning as you and John Stepper advise. BUT I would also like to urge everyone not to sacrifice keeping up with politics and society in order to learn skills they feel are important for work. Especially during these disruptive transformative times we need to be very aware of what is happening around us. OK the private lives of so-called VIPs don't really count!
Organizational Consultant Metaplan. Founder MountainMinds. Host ESPACIO Ayampe.
5 年Sophia R?diger?that‘s the article of our friend Harald?I‘d like to include in our upcoming Digital Leadership Workshop for Daimler Mobility
Director People & Organization Development, Freudenberg Performance Materials at Freudenberg Group
5 年Thank you #HaraldSchirmer for this beautiful and pragmatic article! I would like to go even one step further and suggest: What if it is a question of attitude rather than a question of time in the calendar? With a learning attitude, every minute of every day brings about a potential learning opportunity. #DrJohnJScherer said this nicely in the introduction to his book "Five Questions that Change Everything": "Every day you are at work, you are having literally thousands of moments, each one chock full of life-transforming potential. The Workplace School of Life has a lot going for it: *This classroom is tuition-free. There are some costs associated with being in this school, but, as you will see, the cost is all internal, involving reflection and self-mastery. *Your faculty is always there - the ones you like and the ones you can't stand. In fact, as you will see, the ones you don't particularly like will be the most important ones for your development. *There are no grades, only your own inner critic. There is, however, continuous, real-time feedback happening all the time. The trick is to figure out what it means. *School is always in session and the lessons are always the right ones for you in that moment. *There are never any exams - only moment-by-moment tests. By the time we get to the final exam, it's too late!" ... "If you start to see your entire life as a classroom for becoming who you are and what you are capable of being, then every meeting, phone call, interaction, decision, crisis, failure or success you have at work is an opportunity to learn and to develop yourself. Furthermore, those "turkeys" you have to work with every day are your Faculty, carefully selected by the universe to be the perfect teachers for you, bringing up exactly what you need to be learning or developing next in your life..." Thank you John for this ongoing inspiration! For me, we are responsible for our own learning and it would not be wise to sit and wait until someone (a company, a leader) comes and offers us some "training". This excellent article by Harald Schirmer brought to me the learning opportunity to write my first comment here on LinkedIn.
Digital Workplace Architect
5 年Thank you Harald Schirmer putting your thoughts on that important topic together. I fully agree and can relate so much with it. As Christoph Schmaltz was pointing out we have still the training mindset with someone who tells us what we should learn. This is not enough if we want to keep up. We need to learn again how to learn. At school and also at university we are giving IOM the wrong message that your done once you have received your exam. One challenge will be to make the people curious to learn about new things. We started our journey at #Amadeus https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/lets-learn-together-hans-juergen-sturm/ with formats like #benchlearning as learning together is a lot of fun. it’s still a long way to go. cc Marco Ruiz González Lisa Martinez