4 Ways to Learn from Experience

There are at least four ways to learn from experience: experimenting, reflective critique, feedback and learning questions.

Experimenting is trying new things and common things in new ways. Experimenting yields far more learning than analysis paralysis and death by discussion.

Reflective critique extracts learning forward from any experiences on the success-failure continuum. Experience is only a teacher when we reflect back from it.

Feedback is discovering how useful or not useful our efforts are for others. It is particularly helpful when it's based on our learning questions.

Learning questions are what we are most curious about, what we want to explore, discover or master. They make us more attuned to new learning from any experiences going forward.

Good listening

I find that a simple way to assess for listening skillfulness is asking people whether they think they're good listeners. The more eager or adamant the yes, the more curiosity needs to be applied. For any response, it's interesting to ask how they know. 

This inquiry gets particularly interesting when we talk about listening as unfolding and discovering the unspoken context for the content shared. That someone says they hear the content of everything said in no way guarantees they are also aware of the context of everything unsaid. Good listening is contextualized listening. Good listening is complete listening.

The power of good work

People feel trusted to do good work when everyone shares a sense of what good work is. Definitions of good should be actionable, context specific and adaptable.  Reflective critique sessions are probably the most useful ways to build and grow this shared sense. The more people do good work, the more they are trusted to do good work.

Goals and fixed mindsets

Unless we translate goals into new questions, they can lead to fixed mindsets. Our commitment to  specific, predictable, near view outcomes can preclude mindful and agile attention to new possibilities to get to the same longer view outcomes. The further out we go in defining the long view good we seek, the richer our potential for a growth mindset. The more we translate direction into new questions, the more growth mindset we engage.

Non-local learning

There people, teams, organizations, networks and communities all over the world thinking and doing differently than we are. The more we pay attention to this ever-churning diversity, the more we feed our creative capacity. This is what seasoned artists do. The opposite of starring at empty canvases, lumps of clay or talking things to death.

Learning at high levels of performance

The more people perform in work with mastery, the more they are performing in territories untravelled. They are pioneers and explorers carving out new opportunity landscapes. Much of their learning is not going to happen by consuming courses or searching for mentors or coaches. It's going to happen through expriments and critiques. Learning how to expriment and critique is vital to their growth potentials. 

The purpose of senior leadership vision

Most senior leadership teams still believe it's their duty to create and communicate a top-down vision to the rest of the organization. 

Realistic leadership teams don't assume the rest of the organization lacks a sense of the future they want to see. They don't assume people will support what they don't create. With this perspective, they see their vision as a way to inspire others into their own and shared vision for the growth and success of the organization. 

2 month momentum

In the Agile Canvas, the easiest way to create 2 week sprint momentum toward 2 quarter projects is translating these projects into 2 month actions, which can be projects, decisions, research, experiments and initiatives.

This implies 2 month refreshes in the content and sequencing of items.

Invention on the floor, not just in space

These days, Elon Musk finds himself sleeping on his factory floor. He's in the midst of a manufacturing crisis for his latest challenge and disruption.

His engineers massively misestimated the utility of robots on production lines. Now in a move very uncharacteristic of this industry, he is in Agile reinvention of the line, featuring replacing robots with humans, which is paying off. Interesting lessons for leaders. 

The right questions

Because questions on the table feel urgent, important, personal or anxiety-provoking doesn't in any way mean it's a good question to spend time on. That's why it's important to get all the live questions on the table and sequence them. Then we see the best order possible. 

Career conversations

Are there more risks or benefits to leaders engaging people in career conversations? There are benefits when they engage everyone and when they focus on multiple pathway possibilities. People feel  a red for. It also gives many unique opportunities, not afforded by those in their personal lives, to explore what calls them and what can be stepping stones to more complex possibilities. 

Another way to get at strengths, beliefs and values

The ongoing awareness of strengths is possible when people share items on their list of "What I need to remember." These typically reflect strengths, beliefs and values. In the context of the next  timeframe, they become personal and shared inspiration for upcoming work. They also provide shared proactive focus for our efforts.

Belonging, the real deal

I've seen as many people lack a sense of belonging in completely homogeneous groups. It doesn't take a diverse group to challenge a culture of connection. 

Belonging is a function of conversation. People feel a sense of belonging when they feel like their stories are appreciated, ideas and efforts valued, learning shared and feedback useful. This can happen in any constellations of generating and color, background and foreground. None of these are the exclusive domain of any demographic. They are possible for any human being with even a minimal growth mindset.

The power of the closed mind

Showing up with a closed mind can take a myriad of expressions. It can show up as authority, expert superiority, bullying, narcissism, zero sum competitiveness, adolescent indolence, parental rigidity, dogmatic intractability.

The last thing we should assume is that it is an indication of intelligence and competence. This frees us up to show up in ways that cause them to feel understood. Only in this space could they possibly venture out into the vast unknown.

What does it mean to care about your markets?

Organizations have three kinds of markets: emerging, engaged and possible. Caring about our markets is at least as important a question as any branding question of how we want to be known.

Much of it comes down to knowing their worlds and what's happening there. Everything in this knowing has power. 

What can we expect from our emotions?

Zat Rana has a recent Medium piece on emotions as probability calculators. Emotional intelligence and freedom is about understanding emotions, all emotions, as information. They give us insights into probabilities. Curiosity opens us up to discovering actualities.

This perspective allows for the emotions of intuition that guide decisions and learning. Core to the practice of intuition is not confusing emotions for reality.

Low trust (slow) teams

Slow teams are slow to everything. In contrast to nimble teams, slow teams are slow to share vision, questions, strengths and learning.

People on slow teams do whatever they think is their work and expect everyone else to do the same. When things don't get done, people expect those who usually take care of them to take care of them. Sharing happens when people feel like it, are expected to, or not at all. Trust is low, meaning minimal or worse.

This is in direct contrast to nimble teams where people share everything because they have shared expectations that this is how work gets done. Trust is high. Work is great.

Nimble teams and cultures of trust

Nimble teams grow and flourish in cultures of trust.

Trust is pivotal In three ways:

• Teams move at the speed of trust 
• Trust accelerates collaborative creativity 
• Trust turns uncertainty into an asset

There are many genres of trust that weave the cultural fabric of nimble teams:

• Trust in shared direction & plans
• Trust in shared expectations & decisions
• Trust in shared learning & strengths

RoboChefs

At the fast food restaurant Creator, tasty and affordable burgers are constructed and delivered by robots. Because this cuts costs, higher quality ingredients become possible and employees are given 5% of their work time to pursue their learning interests. A good example of how robotics can add value to all stakeholders.

Simple, the asset

It's amazing how much team struggle has to do with making things more complicated than they need to be. The worst is when convoluted becomes such a norm that no one, except maybe newbies, even questions it. 

I once suggested an approach to change in a company culture of complication and was rejected out of hand by the chief decision despot whose entire argument was: It's too simple. No one will trust it. That was that. Status quo protected.

Complication is a weapon of control. It's a common irrational bias to assume that complicated ideas represent higher levels of competency and efficacy than the more simple. The difference between jargon and natural language is the difference between complicated and simple.

How we can make anything simpler is a golden question in team context of struggle.