Why and How Lifelong Learning Matters for Us All
Everywhere you turn these days the reminder hits you right between the eyes. Your college degree’s half life is decaying faster than ever and your job is gonna be replaced by AI (artificial intelligence). If you don’t keep learning you’ll be irrelevant in the workforce whether you’re in Silicon Valley, Pittsburgh, London — really anywhere for that matter. As a CEO, I get it. The pace of change is dramatic and we rely on the innovative, entrepreneurial, and growth-mindset capabilities of the people in our companies to propel our companies forward. Thus, one of the best things we can do as a leader is encourage and support lifelong learning across our team.
So when the McKinsey Institute’s recent article “Putting Lifelong Learning on the CEO’s Agenda” hit my inbox, I took notice. In fact, I more than took notice — I actually read it!
Below are a few of the most salient soundbites and takeaways from the McKinsey piece which, by the way, is co-authored by two very credible experts in the field of learning: Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School and Bror Saxberg from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Indeed, a lesson from experts in “learning” helps us process important meta points, yet sometimes the points and anecdotes these experts convey are too meta, too high level to help leaders and managers. For those of us living with the daily pressures of building a company amidst accelerating technological advances, it’s helpful to translate expert recommendations into practical approaches for how people might invest in their own lifelong learning so career opportunities remain rich and robust. I share some of these actionable ideas below as well.
Edmondson and Saxberg observe correctly that “In the future, more and more of your people will need to use complex cognitive skills for more and more of their time.” Yes, all of us will need to evolve our ability to process data effectively, tie together the work of disparate groups (think sales meets engineering), and map this data and organizational understanding to the external world of customers, partners, and competitors in ways that allow our companies to grow.
Based on the premise that in our future world, complex cognitive skills become paramount, Edmondson and Saxberg posit that “The dynamics we described at the outset, in which information-rich tools become ubiquitous and people are a differentiator, paradoxically, increase the importance of such ‘soft’ attributes as collaboration, empathy, and meaning making.” Yes, again. Let’s look at these three key areas of empathy, collaboration, and meaning making in more detail and, in turn, let me share how our team and I think about these three critical areas at Remind.
Empathy per the McKinsey article: “In an era of customization, empathy matters more because it requires putting yourself in the minds of many different kinds of customers, not just the familiar ones for whom a product or service was designed.” Remind perspective: We think of “users” — teachers, students, and parents as stakeholders who most actively engage with Remind day in, day out— and “customers” — school administrators who make the decision to purchase the advanced version of our communication platform. Further out, we must imagine the many 3rd party learning services that might integrate within Remind so that both our users and customers can more easily engage with these services in concert with how they use Remind.
Collaboration per the McKinsey article: “This is because, as knowledge expands, expertise both deepens and narrows — necessitating collaboration across fields to produce great results.” Remind perspective: Internally, collaboration speaks to how we work cross-functionally, or in an “xfn” manner. Engineers diving in to support our sales and success teams or marketers crafting go-to-market plans that heighten the use of new product features, represent two such examples of our xfn efforts. Externally collaboration represents the deep relationships we create with teachers, students, parents, and administrators — learning what each of these important personas need from Remind every day.
Meaning making per the McKinsey article: “We would assert, though, that articulating the purpose of your organization (and evolving that message as technology and customer needs change) is about to become an even more crucial part of your job.” Remind perspective: We start with our vision: “to give every student an opportunity to succeed”, and our mission: “to build a communication platform that helps teachers, students, parents, and administrators work together.” Our purpose is clear. And while technology and customer needs change, thankfully we don’t need to drastically redefine our purpose along the way to shape meaning making at Remind.
Finally, Edmondson and Saxberg close with a section titled “Hard Results” — essentially a tip of the hat to the notion that investments in lifelong learning must be evaluated, as with all investments, based on the age old metric return-on-investment (ROI). Four points are spelled out in the McKinsey article, but the punchline is twofold:
First, focus on your company’s top performers and do your best (through teaching and training) to help people learn how they might replicate what these top performers do to achieve results.
Second, it’s hard work to pull this off. Your company must go beyond the idea of wanting lifelong learning to magically transform your organization . Everyone in the company needs to really work at it, measure it, and then “rinse and repeat” to infuse your company culture with this recurring desire to learn.
So there you have a McKinsey Institute description of how to think about lifelong learning (or at least a brief summary thereof). How about some real lifelong learning recommendations that people can apply to their daily pursuit to broaden their ability to perform in tomorrow’s workforce? Here are a few that might be helpful:
You need to own it. Don’t rely on your manager to map out your future and the lifelong learning path you should pursue. Take agency and spend the time to figure out where you want to be in 2, 3, or 5+ years from now, and map this view to the curriculum you should be learning to move you in this direction.
Take the time to learn what talents you possess and how they apply to what you do — or should be doing — every day. Talent is defined by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their book “First, Break All The Rules” as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.” As Buckingham and Coffman describe, talent is innate, it isn’t something that can be learned or developed, but as such, talent most accurately defines the types of work experiences that you’ll be most passionate, and therefore most successful pursuing.
Augment your innate talents by learning new skills (i.e. the how-to’s of a role) and knowledge (i.e. what you are aware of either factually or experientially) that together will help you keep your “saw sharp” as technology rapidly transforms the world around you.
Improve your ability to manage and lead people. Whether this means studying more psychology or learning the “soft skills” about work, however you define it, managing and leading people will only become more critical as the need for empathy, collaboration, and meaning-making take center stage in the workplace.
Pursue new experiences totally unrelated to your work — subjects or topics that stretch your brain in new directions and that give you a different lens through which you look at your job, work, and career. This means if you’re a sales person, learn a bit about data science, or if you’re an engineer, bone up on the different line items in a P&L statement.
ABL — “always be learning”. Your brain may not be a muscle in the physiological sense, but treat it like one and run it through workouts all the time. Stop wasting your time passively consuming Youtube videos or binge watching show after show on HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc., and take a class, earn a credential, or pursue a new degree online. Or, just read a book!
Finally, for you leaders and people managers out there, be a teacher first and foremost. The relationships you foster with those you manage and lead create powerful learning environments for your people. At the same time, spend time within those relationships encouraging your team members to seek out learning opportunities that they map to the personal and professional goals that they too craft for themselves. And be a role model yourself. Pursue your own lifelong learning efforts that you are drawn to in an effort to remain deeply rooted in the profession you pursue both today — and tomorrow.
So what does my lifelong learning practice look like? For 2018 I aim to learn something new every month. Some months it may be a simple class like the one I took earlier this month at 18Reasons.org about ShiZen SaiBai, the natural farming movement in Japan. Other months I might go deeper and take a course or class that more directly augments my work as a CEO. Whatever path you choose, I encourage everyone to chart their own lifelong learning path…so get going on those brain workouts now!
Originally published on Medium on January 27, 2018. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.