The #1 Barrier to Success and Fulfillment
Failure to truly learn is the number one barrier to sustained success and fulfillment. In a brilliant and fun TED Talk in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson, says education is meant to take us into a future that we can’t grasp. Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Yet, nobody has a clue what the world will look like in 5 years, let alone in 2065. Watching his talk is worth the 20 minutes it takes.
Sir Ken is quite entertaining but the subject of his talk couldn’t be more serious. He criticizes the prevailing approach to education as one that crushes creativity and doesn’t prepare us for the future. The prevailing approach to learning has been characterized as a “banking approach.” We gobble up information, and deposit it in our “brain bank,” so that we can withdraw it when we need it. We learn so that we “know about” things. But this interpretation of learning is very weak. Knowhow will beat “know about” any day. Just because you’ve read a book about business (or even a hundred), doesn’t mean you know how to generate great business results.
Learning is not just gobbling up information so that we have it at hand when we need it. That doesn’t work. True leaning is about becoming more skillful, even more masterful, in producing results that satisfy us and our customers. True learning expands the horizon of what’s possible. What previously looked impossible now looks possible, once we have learned. True learning is innovative and creative. True learning is cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational, and even spiritual. True learning takes us beyond what we know today. True learning enables us to unfold our potential, to express what’s ours to express, and to make the difference we want to make in the world.
True learning is alive, engaged, creative, fun, and freeing. True learning requires the freedom to make mistakes. If you don’t take risks, you never really learn how to do something. Going beyond what we know requires us to take creative leaps that may fail. Making mistakes is stigmatized in our culture today and we get marked down in school for making them. This crushes creativity and turns learning into a dead, disengaged, and dull thing.
As the world continues to change, the only sustainable competitive advantage for any business or service professional is true learning. Those that have learned how to truly learn, effectively and efficiently, will have the edge. Learning to learn will open up new possibilities for you to live in a future of your own design. This is our not-so-secret agenda at Booked Solid U.
As a service professional, the best gift you can give yourself is permission to make mistakes. Doing this is one of the most powerful ways of supporting your true learning.
The future belongs to the learners. Does the future belong to you?
You are right, Sir Ken is entertaining.
I agree that we must redefine “learning”.
I love the distinction between knowing and knowing about.
“Knowhow will beat “know about” any day”
Great Article, Steve. Thank you.
P.S. I have read Sir Ken’s book, but was not aware of his TED presentation.