7

Lifelong Learning

“Those who will succeed in the 21st century are not those who can read and write, but those who can unlearn, learn and re-learn, again and again.”

–Alvin Toffler

We live in times when breathtaking technological changes; dramatic business-paradigm shifts are occurring all around us. If you are out of touch with things for a week, you begin to feel like Rip van Winkle and seem several steps behind. In this super-charged climate, only the fittest survive and if you are not constantly aware of the changing environment around you—and able to adapt and change as necessary—you will find yourself slowly dropping out of the race.

It used to be that most people from the previous generation (at least in India) took up a job and stuck to it for their entire career. As a result, there was not much change in the environment and the people around them. But today, very rarely do you find that people stay in the same job for more than a few years (and sometimes, just a few months). Hence, the change in the people around you, exacerbated by the rapid changes in technology and business practices, makes it imperative that the information and skills needed to succeed in this changing environment be constantly honed. If we don’t spend time sharpening the saw, then we will no longer be able to do our job.

This chapter is about learnability and the process of lifelong learning also called continuous learning. Learnability is another important soft skill and is the ability of an individual to continuously keep learning in the context of ever changing technology and environment. It comprises having a spirit of inquiry, an air of inquisitiveness and not having reservations about learning from any source. It transforms into a lifelong learning experience—unlearning and re-learning any shifting paradigm.

In Section 7.1, we outline the steps that you can practice to inculcate lifelong learning. We discuss some of the challenges in the quest for learning in Section 7.3. The chapter concludes with a set of tips for pursuing lifelong learning.

7.1 The Steps in Lifelong Learning

There are four essential steps you go through, as shown in Figure 7.1 below:

 

Fig. 7.1 Steps in lifelong learning

Learn to learn: Learning to learn is itself a challenging process. How you learn anything will depend on what you learn, your preferences, from whom you learn and finally, the learning environment. When you are working in an organization, you are already likely to be set in your ways and your learning preferences and styles are already well entrenched in you. Your learning preference and style (that has been built over the years) is like a tide or wave confronting you. You have to go with the tide for some distance and then, if necessary, turn against the tide. You have to learn to learn—learn how to go against the tide when required. This may first involve

• Unlearning some of what you have already learnt
• Unlearning some of your learning styles and methods
• Learning to adapt yourself to a new learning environment
• Learning the new content you have to learn.

Learn to apply: All the learning to learn done in the previous phase will bear fruit only when you start applying what was learnt. Mere classroom training is not sufficient. Whether it is programming or making presentations, application of what was learnt is what makes the difference between success and failure. Most classroom learning materials are either theories of an idealized world or techniques, followed by illustrative examples of application of such theories and techniques. But real life situations are seldom cookie-cutter versions of these scenarios. They are combinations of the various basic scenarios you studied in the classroom. The ability to figure out which technique to use in what circumstance or scenario is what brings the learning to fruition.

Learn to teach: In order to gain full conviction and appreciation of the new things you are learning, the next step is to be able to teach others what you have learnt. ‘Teaching’ in this context does not mean just taking classes of others. It could involve mentoring, the process by which you help another person to further his or her skills. It also involves management and leadership, by which you leverage another person’s strength and competence for mutual benefit. Doing a thing or knowing a thing well does not always translate to being able to teach others how to gain mastery. But lifelong learning is not complete without learning to teach others. Unless your expertise is inculcated into others, you are going to be indispensable in your current job and thus, you will be expected to keep doing the current job forever. While this may give you a sense of job security, it will reduce your own learning and career opportunities. Further, from an organizational viewpoint, the expertise you have is not widespread enough, and so the organization becomes too dependent on your individual heroics. In order to increase the depth of your own knowledge and to enhance the collective learning of an organization, learning to teach is an important step in lifelong learning.

Teach to learn: When you teach or mentor someone else, first and foremost, you will want to have mastery over every aspect of the subject matter, so as to be prepared for any question from the audience. This will give you a depth of understanding that would be otherwise difficult to acquire. Further, when you teach or preach something, you will develop an internal conviction about what you teach and this will drive your understanding of the subject matter further. Finally, when you teach or mentor someone else on a subject, you will be surprised to find out how many new perspectives they can bring to the table. They can even surprise you by stretching your concept or idea to new dimensions that you did not even imagine possible. You will find you are actually learning new things about a topic that you thought you were an expert of. Realization of the fact that there is much more to learn is by itself a great learning experience that is central to the goal of lifelong learning.

7.2 Tips to Achieve Effective Learning

In order to go smoothly through the four stages described above, the following tips would be useful:

Listen to the appropriate stakeholders: Listening is the first step towards learning. How many times have we heard our teachers, right from kindergarten through college, ask us to keep quiet and listen attentively? As we will discuss in Chapter 17, listening is a whole body process. This includes observing what is happening around you and modifying your response by continuous learning. This also involves active participation with the environment. The net summary of this is to keep your mind open and free of distortion.

Question to remove any doubts: A questioning mind is often the one that learns best. Whenever a new concept or idea is to be learnt, it is very vital to internalize the concept or tool by removing any doubts you may have yourself. Blindly accepting anything will make you a less effective learner. When someone talks about a new technology and promises a two-fold increase in performance, ask yourself questions like: How can they achieve this improvement? If this improvement was possible, why was it not achieved earlier? At what cost is this improvement achieved? Are there any side effects? Is there anything in the fine print that is being missed? By this, we do not mean that you should be the permanent nay-sayer and get labelled as a pessimist. All this implies is that you be objective and meticulous and not be afraid to ask questions.

Apply and gain value by doing: As we saw in the previous section, you will gain value from any new learning only when you start applying your learning to your life. You can get that brand new leather-bound time management diary, but if you don’t start using it properly, it is just as bad as the ad-hoc planning you used to do before.

Do not be afraid to make some mistakes: While today’s environment does not allow you to make any errors, it is almost impossible to learn without making mistakes. So, the challenge is to make some mistakes to learn, but not serious ones that would endanger your job performance. One of the ways to achieve these seemingly conflicting objectives is to be able to get some of the learning you need before you actually need it in your job. Proactively picking up the skills you need by making mistakes in environments that are not ‘live’ would be one way to make mistakes that are not very expensive. Another way to minimize the impact of mistakes is through, what we call in project management parlance, ‘project closure’ as depicted in Figure 7.2. At the end of each project, the project team meets as a group and debriefs one another on mistakes that happened in the project and how to avert these in future, as well as things that went well that need to be institutionalized. This learning is captured in an organization-wide system and propagated to the entire organization by a ‘quality group’.

Internalize and make it a habit: When you start applying something, it grows on you and slowly becomes a habit. For example, if you have chosen to learn about how to be punctual in meetings, you will find that this becomes almost irresistible and second nature to you. You will soon find that not only are you in time for your official meetings, but that you have also become more disciplined in your personal life. You will keep your commitments both at work and in your social groups. All this will definitely leave you with more time on your hands that you can utilize to learn new things which will in turn make you more effective. Once something becomes a habit, it comes more naturally and effortlessly. Good habits are natural by-products of effective learning.

 

Fig. 7.2 Using Project Closure to institutionalize the learnings

Be a role model: This ties in with the last two stages of learning—learning to teach and teaching to learn. As you move up in your career, your success will depend on being a role model, a person who will be looked upon as a lifelong learner.

7.3 Some Challenges in Lifelong Learning

Much as we all know that it is essential to have this skill of learnability, let us not underestimate the substantial challenges that we are likely to encounter in this quest. In this section, we will highlight some of those challenges that you have to look out for and ways in which you can protect yourself against such challenges.

Making time to learn: ‘I have already been hit with tough deadlines and am working eighteen hours a day to meet these deadlines. How do I make time to learn?’ This is always given as a convenient excuse for not allocating time for any skill upgrading and learning. As you will see in the chapter on time management, you will always find that you will have time once you prioritize correctly. As someone said, ‘Work expands to fill up all time.’ Time is perhaps the most elastic, and at the same time the most rigid, of all things ever created.

Deciding what to learn: ‘When I look at what I don’t know and what I want to know, there are truck-loads of things. There are changes in technology; new processes have come in; new organizational certification mechanisms are becoming popular and this places demands on how I do my work. Which of these do I learn?’ Merely jumping on the bandwagon of today’s fads will not help you to be a lifelong learner. It is important that you consider the synergy between your competence, your desire and your organization’s needs to ascertain what you need to learn.

Getting over personal ego: Sometimes challenges like making time, deciding what to learn and so on may be no more than camouflages or mere excuses to hide the true reason—the sense of personal ego. People become defensive and mistakenly assume that learning a new way of doing things is admitting that what you have been doing so far is sub-optimal or wrong. On the contrary, everything we do can be done better, more efficiently and more effectively. Further, this learning can come from any source—your bosses, your subordinates, your colleagues or even a book you read. You need to get over your personal ego, set aside the ‘Not Invented Here (NIH)’ syndrome and start the learning process.

 

Fig. 7.3

Not having inclusiveness: Closely related to the previous point is inclusiveness, which means an ability to listen to contrary points of view and being able to assimilate the best of all viewpoints, even if they don’t agree with what your opinions are. One of the most common barriers for lifelong learning is the lack of inclusiveness. The first step in learning anything new is to accept the possibility that what you are going to learn may well contradict the beliefs you may have held so far. If this is not there, you will find excuses to reject the new learning experience.

Organizational or managerial blocks: Even if you are fully motivated and fired up to learn, it is quite possible that you will face a roadblock from your manager, who will force you to keep chugging along without giving you time to sharpen the saw. He may always swamp you with those ridiculous deadlines that don’t make sense and keep you at work for eighteen hours. He may have some of the bad habits we discussed above, like not being open, and he may rub off these negatives on you. In these cases, it is better to have an open discussion with him or any other relevant authority to remove these blocks and make your learning aspirations clear. Have clearly spelt-out learning plans in your annual reviews—what workshops, seminars or courses you will participate in. If that does not work, you should seriously consider moving to a different job or role. Continuing in such an environment is like forgetting to do your exercises regularly— you may get through the short-term deadlines, but your long-term lifeline is dead!

7.4 Some Misconceptions About Lifelong Learning

Learning is optional and can be done only if one gets free time: Some of us seem to think that we are knowledgeable enough to carry on with our jobs perpetually and that we don’t need to acquire any more knowledge. If time permits—after we finish the never-ending cycle of projects and activities—we might consider attending a workshop or a seminar. Giving learning such a low priority can come back to hurt us in the long run and we might find ourselves high and dry in our career ambitions, with obsolete and unmarketable skills. We should have the mindset that we have no choice but to keep learning for life and therefore, should make time for it. Even if formal learning opportunities conflict with our work schedules, workplaces offer enough informal and impromptu opportunities for learning and we should exploit them. Lifelong learning is an attitude and not something to be quickly rationalized as ‘good to have, but not necessary’ or something that can be delayed forever.

Learning means attending classes and getting a certificate of some sort: A lot of times learning is equated with attending classes and passing an examination to get a certificate. There are several modes of learning, each with their own advantages and disadvantages (see Table 7.1). Neither of these needs to be true in a business context. While formal classroom based training is preferable for certain areas, most of the learning you do in the business context is by observation and experience. In fact, ‘On the Job Training’ (OJT) is a euphemism for a person learning by being thrown in to the deep end of the pool. These learning avenues are usually far more productive than certificate-based or classroom-based training.

Unmonitored learning is not fruitful: The learning environment we are used to is always monitored, with a teacher looking over your shoulder and exams and tests galore. But today, the resources available over the Internet for self learning are enormous. E-learning, e-teaching and automatic evaluations are features of today’s self-paced learning. In addition to the OJT mentioned in the previous paragraph, self-paced e-learning that goes on due to self-initiative without anyone monitoring or pushing you, is one of the most effective ways to keep your learning skills in top shape. This fuels initiative and kindles the fire within—one of the first soft skills we looked at!

Table 7.1 Various modes of learning

 

Fig. 7.4

Learning can be acquired only from professional teachers or people with a lot of experience: Somehow, we tend to accept to learn only from experienced people or people from outside the organization. Neither of these need be the case in the work-place. Given the fast pace at which technology changes around you, it is quite likely that the junior engineer in your organization probably has more technical knowledge than you do. You should not hesitate to learn even from juniors. Learning can come from any source. Keep your eyes, ears and mind open!

7.5 In Summary

The first step in lifelong learning—and this is a lifelong first step!—is

By consciously prioritizing learning and making time for it, you can overcome this first major obstacle.

Your learning will be continuous, lifelong and experiential. Experience will bring its share of ‘failures’ and rejections. Instead of getting disillusioned by such rejections, keep in mind that

Remember, your learning involves not just what you do, but how you take it and apply it to your life, how it changes your life and the lives of others.

Finally, the quality of your life depends directly on the quality of lifelong learning.