Stalling at the Top of the Learning Curve

I like the concept of the learning curve and in the context of a conversation about learning to learn, being aware of our individual learning curve around a particular topic can be valuable.

For example, I feel as if I have reached a point on the learning curve around this theme of "learning to learn" where the returns have become minimal.  I read these types of articles (previous posts) but I've come to the point where it's really a scanning process rather than deep reading.  I'm looking for something new, a new concept, a new idea, and 90% of the time, I'm a little disappointed because it's not new (to me).  It's almost become boring.

What should/could I do about it?

1. Look at it with different lenses
It would be arrogant to think that I know everything there is to know about "learning to learn".  Let's assume for a moment that I've been looking in the wrong places for additional knowledge.  I need a new direction, a new angle.  Perhaps I should revisit another recurring interest, neuroscience, and see if there are useful connections with "learning to learn" that I have yet to explore.

2. Look away for a while
This is just a symptom of being bored with too much of the same thing.  I just need a break from "learning to learn."  I should consciously avoid the topic for a while (perhaps a year) and then get back to it with fresh eyes.  For example, my recent interest in permaculture has created a nice break from standard knowledge management and related topics which I constantly read about.

Learning to Learn - what's new?

A recurring theme:  Learning to Learn.

• "Talking to Yourself (Out Loud) Can Help You Learn," by Ulrich Boser, May 05, 2017.
• "If You're Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You Won't Learn Anything," by Andy Molinsky, July 29, 2016.
• "Learning to Learn," by Erika Anderson, March 2016.
• "You Can Learn and Get Work Done at the Same Time," by Liane Davey, January 11, 2016.
• "4 Ways to Become a Better Learner," by Monique Valcour, December 31, 2015. 

All in the Harvard Business Review.  I don't care how much AI and machine learning are going to transform our world, I'm ready to bet that learning to learn with our own little human brains is never going to be obsolete. In fact, critical thinking and rapid learning are going to be at a premium.

Too funny:  As I was ready to publish this little item, I came across the following:

• "In the AI Age, "Being Smart" Will Mean Something Completely Different," by Ed Hess, June 19, 2017, Harvard Business Review. 

What is it that we are not learning?

An interesting question was asked of me recently.  What is it that we are not learning?

I was giving a presentation about my work over the past 9 years helping projects document their insights and lessons from experience and facilitating knowledge flows across projects and across the functional areas of the organization (project managers, scientists, engineers).  One of the questions I was trying to answer was "Are we a learning organization?  Are we learning?"

My answer was "Yes, but perhaps we're not learning fast enough.  We're not adapting fast enough to keep up with rapid changes."  I was trying to emphasize the dynamic nature of knowledge and the fact that knowledge flows and the learning process itself are becoming more important than ever, whereas static knowledge assets are becoming obsolete more rapidly.

A member of the audience asked, "What is it that we are not learning?"

I can identify two situations where we are not learning:

• First, if we define learning as changing a behavior or a process as a result of a lesson and the lessons is really only LEARNED when some action is taken, Identifying the correct action is not always simple. Getting agreement on that action is not always simple.  Getting the right people to take action is not always simple. In short, the assumption that once a lessons is identified it can easily be translated into action is unrealistic in many cases.  

• Second, there are many unknown unknowns we are not paying attention to.  What is it that we are not seeing?  These things are not even on our radar.  One way to try to discover/uncover these is to involve experts in other fields who will see what we are doing through a completely different set of lenses, using a different frame of reference.

Permaculture and Knowledge Management - Learning in Conversation

I have been posting about permaculture in the past month and anyone surfing by might wonder what permaculture has to do with knowledge management.

The easy answer is that knowledge management can be applied to ANY topic of interest and therefore if I'm posting something about permaculture I might just be talking about my (limited) knowledge of permaculture and how I'm going about learning more on the topic.

More seriously though, whenever I explore a new topic of interest (in this case, permaculture), I tend to try to draw parallels with things I already know.  That's a very common way to absorb new information, by developing analogies, by comparing it to what's already in our knowledge banks.

I'm primarily interested in permaculture as a set of practices to apply (as appropriate) in my own back yard, but as I read about it and learn more from permaculturalists and fellow permaculture apprentices, I am reminded of a lot of what I learned during my graduate studies.  I had intended to develop my dissertation around food policies in Africa and therefore I took a lot of classes and read a lot about agricultural practices and policies.

My fellow permaculture apprentices in the class are hearing the exact same information, but their objectives might be quite different -- therefore they are paying attention to different things, giving some information more weight than I would -- and their pre-existing knowledge is quite different from mine.  They may not know much about agricultural practices and policies in Africa but most of them have much more hands-on experience with agriculture.

The same thing is true when we share lessons learned in a knowledge management context.  We individually absorb the information (accept/reject/interpret) based on our own prior experiences and knowledge. And this is what makes conversations so important.  There is as much if not more knowledge to be gained in conversations with my fellow permaculture apprentices as in listening to the instructors, but it requires a different approach to listening and perhaps some additional probing.  The good news is that people like to talk about their own experiences and their own knowledge. Listening, without becoming too much of an interviewer, is key.

And just for fun, here is another kind of map (i.e, not an insight map).  This one is called a base map and is meant as a starting point for my permaculture experiments.

Base mapping for future permaculture mini-site.