Tuesday Essay #3: Learning from other People
TODAY: Absolutely crucial understanding about Managing with Aloha as a workplace philosophy:
We learn best from other people.
PREFACE: In the past three weeks we talked about core assumptions with learning within the Managing with Aloha workplace philosophy. If you have not yet read those 2 essays, I would encourage you to start from the beginning and come back to this: This will be the only essay here for another week; you could even take your time and read one a day (preferable really, then you can truly engage, and do something wonderful with what you have read!)
- Day One Essay: July 1st ~ ‘Ike loa, the Hawaiian Value of Learning
- Tuesday 1: July 8th ~ Learning as a process: Beginning, Middle, and End
- Tuesday 2: July 15th ~ The Learning Process of Managing with Aloha
- Tuesday 3: July 22nd ~ is this essay; Learning from People
Aloha, thank you for joining me for more on ‘Ike loa.
‘Ike loa learning is about “long knowledge.” In other words, how can we go beyond the simple collection of facts, to knowledge that is lengthened and strengthened over time? How do we incorporate knowledge so that our work is directly improved as a result?
Up to now we have talked about learning as a process. “Learning from other people” is where we jump to the workplace curriculum, and where I would encourage you to start.
That’s right. For now, totally IGNORE all of these: (Gasp, did she really say that?!?)
When you start with the people you presently have working with you, you reap immediate and highly relevant benefits. Let’s look at five of them.
Benefit 1: Capitalization of Assets
You ‘walk the talk’ of a phrase that many unfortunately find is meaningless in most organizations, and that phrase is that “our people are our greatest asset.” If you believe that to be true (and I hope that you do!) you have an asset waiting to be tapped into. Starting with an existing asset is capitalizing on what you have, without needing to finance something new.
Benefit 2: Need-Based Design
You begin the design of curriculum based on present need, and not on trends. If a cool and sexy training trend is irrelevant, it is not useful (and ‘useful’ was our U in those MUH deliverables).
Benefit 3: Value-Based Learning
Remember last week’s homework? I had asked you to define which values would be your alignment-critical ones. Values reside in the people within your organization, and so in starting to design your curriculum around their needs, you will simultaneously be working on value-alignment with new learning: When learning is value-aligned, it is personal, it is highly relevant, and it is eagerly anticipated.
Benefit 4: Immediate Action and Retention
When all the above is true, retention of any new learning sky-rockets because it is likely to be immediately applied within workplace context. Imagine: No more flavor-of-the-month training classes!
Benefit 5: Increased ROI
Learning + immediate application and long-term retention = increased ROI with whatever learning investment you have made. This is music to the ears of bosses and owners everywhere, and if you are an employee with the MWA business partner mentality and an entrepreneurial mindset, it is music to your ears too.
Learning based on Relevant Need fosters Creativity
When we have learning based on relevant need, we have learning which is about The Student and NOT about The Teacher and their fancy schmancy seniority or tenure-riddled curriculum. We have said that the key deliverables of the MWA learning process is that it is Meaningful, Useful, and connected to Ho‘ohana. Meaningful and useful to who? To the student, and to their Ho‘ohana.
When we have learning based on the needs of people, we will also have workplace learning for BOTH student and teacher. Each models learning for the other, and teachers will model something that is the epitome of learning: Creativity. In the workplace, this creativity by the student will result in the creation of new or improved-upon business ideas.
What workplace teachers learn from other people, has to do with the learning of discovery. Their discovery is what any given group of students at any given time need to be learning, so they can connect the production and profitability of a business with their personal Ho‘ohana as a result. When teachers do so, they do not simply organize training curriculum they have purchased from other experts, they actively create and design it.
When you look at workplace training curriculum in this way, you also realize that just about anyone with the desire to teach can be the teacher.
Take a moment to go back and read this short section again. This time, substitute the word ‘teacher’ for ‘manager.’
Put yourself in the shoes of the student, and think about how work would change for you if your boss looked at the teaching they give to you in this way: What would you ask them to teach you? Can you have this conversation with them readily? Is it a conversation that reoccurs as often as you need it to, and immediately, when your desire to learn is at the forefront of your mind?
This is what the Daily 5 Minutes of MWA is all about.
It is the BEGINNING of this discovery process on what students want to learn and need to learn to grow within an organizational culture.
The Daily 5 Minutes is about cultivating the workplace relationship wherein student (employee) will tell the teacher (manager or boss) what they need to learn for their Ho‘ohana, within the workplace language that it is best articulated in.
The workplace is CONTEXT for the learning first, and then AFTER the Ho‘ohana connection is made, the workplace becomes one of the PLACES the student will express and use the learning, i.e. connect ACTION to it.
Despite the fact that we are alive, vocal and mobile, people are way too easy for us to take for granted, especially those we work with (and live with) every single day. By nature of the mo‘o ōlelo [succession of talk, wherein all stories were oral and not written] those of old Hawai‘i didn’t do this as much as we tend to. They directed their focus to everyday conversations, not just story-telling, and we can learn from them.
I have often thought that age-old school triage of “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic” in our Western world would probably have been translated to “talking, listening, and conversation” in old Hawai‘i. In MWA, this is the triage we seek to bring back to the modern workplace via the Daily 5 Minutes, a process that touches every single person in an organization. This week, you will review the D5M within your homework.
Here is this week’s Homework:
a) Review the How-To of the Daily 5 Minutes. The first link will take you to a current introduction here on MWAC, and the second one to the Ho-To which resides on www.ManagingWithAloha.com:
b) If you are not yet using the D5M, set it in motion. If you have been using the D5M, use the article linked in a) above to audit your current use and practice of this critical tool with “talking, listening, and conversation” so that you are sure it is being practiced with full integrity.
I’ll see you back here next Tuesday, when we will wrap up our learning of ‘Ike loa with the relevant habit creation we need to work on in addition to the Daily 5 Minutes.
As usual, we will Ho‘ohana in our rhythm of learning together.
~ Rosa
I feel like a little kid that got caught Rosa. I started to read this but I felt your insistence to go back and read these lessons from the beginning. And I wanted so badly to jump into this one just because of the title.
Did you get that? "I felt your insistence!"
How is it I ask you, that a small, petite woman 7,000 miles away from me has such control over me?
....hrrrrrr, like a little kid that can't get the candy bar until he does his chores. I love it!
Posted by: dave | July 23, 2008 at 11:14 PM
Ah Dave, it's not the "small, petite woman 7,000 miles away" as much as it's the aloha :) Enjoy your jumping in!
Posted by: Rosa Say | July 24, 2008 at 06:14 AM