©2001–2008 Global Learning Resources, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Please enter a search term to begin your search.
“.
. .we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training
was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust
that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not
believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be
difficult.”
-Frank Herbert, Dune
This quote from the well-known science fiction novel Dune underlines the difficulty anyone in the corporate university, education, or training arena has to face. Very few of us have ever learned to learn and most of us live in fear of learning. This fear has roots in embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, our society’s worship of “book” learning over experiential learning, and many other fears.
Children have the wonderful gift of total trust that they can, through interaction with their environment, learn. They experiment, test, challenge and in the process learn. Their natural curiosity and excitement over piecing together the world as they discover it is a wonderful thing to witness. Yet, somehow as we go through our formal schooling that innate belief in our own ability to learn, and most of our curiosity, is taken out of us.
Our organizations reflect us as well. Only a few are true learning organizations – ones that can invent the future and do so regularly. One that comes to mind is Apple. It remains youthful and exciting, even now that it is into middle age. It has programmed into itself the ability to take risks, be bold, and go where others are afraid to go.
Ikea also, as well as Starbucks and a handful of other organizations have developed the skills and trust to perpetually learn.
What the organizational development professionals and corporate university experts need to do is to better understand how they do this. I don’t think we have a very good understanding of how to teach a person (or an organization) to learn – which is, as Herbert says, the first lesson of all.