Learning
Never Stops!
by
Gary
Ryan
Blair
In
the years to come, the case
for learning
with knowledge creation as its
primary goal, will be overwhelming. Propelled by the
competitive imperatives
of speed, global responsiveness
and the need to innovate constantly
or perish, learning will be the
essential hedge against extinction.
Learning must be
the dominant responsibility
of everyone. Your success WILL come
from learning and its application.
Successful
organizations will also require
superior infrastructure for
building, gathering,
and disseminating
knowledge. These organizations
must be capable of
delivering strategically
relevant information to the
right people in
real time.
Perhaps most difficult
of all, learning means surfacing and re-examing all those
assumptions that operate today
in your business
and life.
Learning is about
more
than simply acquiring
new knowledge
and
insights; it is also
crucial to unlearn
old
knowledge that has
outlived its
relevance.
Thus, forgetting
is probably at least
as
important as learning.
Old
cultural
and psychological
habits die extremely
hard.
Rooting
out and challenging
obsolete assumptions
can expose critical
discrepancies
between
external reality
and internal mental
models. It is these
gaps that
provide
much of the creative
tension
and
dynamic energy that
drives learning.
Hallmarks And Prerequisites Of Learning:
This list is ambitious; ideally, it is not
even
fully attainable.
Learning
is a journey with
no end in sight.
But the conscious
pursuit
of learning
and
growth is what really
counts.
INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY-
A
passion to understand
the
changing forces swirling
around you,
an
eagerness to learn
them faster, and
a recognition that
learning
is an unending journey.
HUMILITY- A pervasive
acknowledgement
that no one can have
all
the
answers. You must
have a willingness
to learn from others.
SELF-CRITICISM � A logical
extension
of humility. A constant
questioning of conventional
wisdom
and a keen
awareness that success
invariably sows the seeds
of failure.
TOLERANCE
FOR
AMBIGUITY, COMPLEXITY,
AND CHANGE
-
An acceptance of
the fact that change
is an inherent reality.
Thrive on
change; don't allow
yourself to be intimidated
by its rough and
unpolished exterior.
EXPERIMENTATION
- A willingness
to try out new approaches,
to monitor the results,
and to incorporate
the feedback into
new initiatives.
HUNGER
FOR FEEDBACK - A
genuine eagerness
to
reach out and get
performance feedback
from a variety of
sources, and a willingness
to listen to it
and make changes.
FAILURE
- A view of experiments
as desirable,
mistakes as inevitable,
and failures
as offering the
raw material of success.
Learning is more
a product of failure
than of success.
CREATIVE
SELF-DESTRUCTION
- No advantage lasts
forever. Render
yourself obsolete
before
others do it for
you. It's the price
world-class
innovators
gladly pay for staying
ahead of the pack.
Learning is the most
strategically
compelling task to
which everyone should
dedicate themselves.
We
are until we
run
out of time a work
in progress. Learning
never
stops.
Everything
Counts!
Gary Ryan Blair
[email protected]
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