I was speaking with a colleague the other day, discussing some of the ways we could work together to bring learning and education to a technology company. In going through the various options, it became clear that this company's needs were for specific skill development: the how-to learning so prevalent in the world of "corporate training." And it got me thinking, what does it mean to bridge the gap between business and education? Why is it so important - and powerful - to marry these concepts? And what, ultimately, is it good for?
What it means
Often times, when we talk about bringing education into the business world, we picture the rumpled corporate trainer reading verbatim from slides that haven't been updated in the last election cycle, to say nothing of the latest PowerPoint version. Participants engage periodically - in between glances at the email inbox - and a couple attendees walk away with a few new ideas of how to do their job. It checks the box.
But really, the best learning experiences, the ones that make you sit up and listen, think critically, and participate are much more powerful than we even give them credit for. Clients and colleagues will know my affinity for Randy Pausch's last lecture presentation to Carnegie Mellon in 2007. Without giving anything away, I'll remind the reader of his reliance on "head fakes" - the learning technique that captures our attention in one direction and uses it to open our eyes to the possibilities extant in so many other areas. It's the perfect analogy for what good education can do for business. My clients don't walk into a meeting with me expecting to find relevance for themselves in the subprime mortgage market…but find it they do. It just takes a bit of a head fake.
A case study
I recently had the good fortune of working with a senior leadership team on some group dynamics issues. The problem, I was told, was a lack of trust among team members. Seems like an easy treatment, right? Open the lines of communication, create dialogue with the organization, and capitalize on the successes that result. Kotter would be proud.
Instead, we put all that aside and talked about the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. That's right. We discussed commercial and investment banks, Glass-Steagall, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps. Riveting stuff, I know! Why did we do all this? Head fakes.
While they were busy analyzing the nuances of corporate finance and the poor decisions made in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, I was busy building the case for how they weren't listening to each other, how they were over-complicating simple problems, and how ultimately, they weren't willing to trust one another. From there, we spent the time to get to know each other, identify the root causes for a perceived lack of trust, and address them directly as a high-functioning team. But it all started with an educational head fake.
Why bother?
A far smarter man than me once said that "the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically." (It was MLK.) Skill-development has its place. A worksheet, template, or model can be transferred from the classroom to the desktop quickly. It gives the sense of having learned something. But education…critical thinking skills applied to the topic or task at hand…is something else. It's not the "how to." It's the WHY.
With the WHY, we can start to make actual changes: in ourselves, our group, or even the broader organization. With the WHY, we can engage in open, honest dialogue about the future. With the WHY, we have a litmus test for replicating past successes (and avoiding past failures). With the WHY, we leave the room different than the people that entered.
We got head faked into solving a completely unrelated problem, only to realize that the solution is just as transferable as that skill-development worksheet. We just have to think a little more critically about the WHY. Pausch would be proud.