Learn Small, Grow Big!
Embracing The Future of Learning; Anywhere, Anytime!
Working in a fast-paced environment, but experiencing slow growth? If you’re going to survive and thrive, you need to develop the skills and competencies required to grow and succeed.
Here, I share a simple framework and a hack that should make continuous learning and improvement part of your everyday life.
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.” — Brain Herbert.
You have an enhanced capacity to learn when compared with other primates. However, the ability to learn effectively is a skill. And like all skills, it must be honed and developed through consistent and deliberate action. “Intentional action built over time produces exceptional results.” — Anonymous.
How can you develop the skill to learn effectively? Let’s examine the simple four-step framework and a learning hack that has been of immense benefit to my personal growth.
The LDLA Framework: Learn; Do; Listen; Adjust.
Learn
This framework isn’t exactly new. You can find versions of it from the Kaizen approach to continuous improvement. A great premise to start from is to assume that everything and everyone is a source of valuable information.
Locked in the world around you are the information you need to solve those nagging problems. A close observation of the ant can teach you teamwork and save for the future; we can learn bravery and leadership from observing the lion; and determination from the spider.
Nature is filled with learning points, but so is our everyday experience with people and the circumstances we face.
The lesson here is to be aware of your surroundings, be sensitive, and take time to stop and observe the world around you. Opening yourself up to learning this way provides you with a vast resource, think of this like constant data points.
According to the psychologist, Elaine Aron, sensitive people process more information than their less-sensitive counterparts. This high level of data intake is the perfect fuel for enhanced learning.
Learning, of course, requires humility. I have engaged with dozens of highly successful individuals. One common thread amongst them is their modesty towards learning.
It takes humility to learn from those younger and perhaps less experienced. I’ll build on the benefits of learning from every micro-moment shortly — I’ll call this micro-learning.
Do
Putting into immediate practice what you just learned is crucial.
Psychologist David Kolb emphasized how experiences influence the learning process. According to Kolb’s four-stage learning cycle, by allowing yourself put newly acquired knowledge into practice, you ensure that this information is retained for future use.
Action as simple as writing down your ideas is important. I have among my notes a quote that I love.
“Knowledge is not power. Applied knowledge is power.” — Anonymous.
It matters not how much you know. It matters what you do with what you know. Data is useless till it is distilled into actionable insights. So, be like Nike, just do it. Form that positive habit, and take on that project.
Start with small experiments to limit your risks, listen to feedback, then scale.
Listen
So next: Listen. A few years ago, Blackberry was the premier mobile gadget on the market. The device was so ubiquitous on Wall Street and Capitol Hill that it earned the nickname CrackBerry.
As recently as 2009, BlackBerry was named by Fortune magazine as the fastest growing company in the world, with earnings exploding by 84% a year. Today, BlackBerry has fallen to the back of the smartphone pack — with a minuscule 3% of the market — as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system have come to dominate the market. What happened to the dominant BlackBerry?
The company insisted on producing phones with full keyboards, even after it became clear that many users preferred touchscreens, which allowed for better video viewing and fluid navigation. When BlackBerry finally listened and launched a touchscreen device, it was seen as a poor imitation of the iPhone.
Always think about the opportunity cost of not listening. It could result in the loss of a job, quality customers, and respect. You could call it feedback or feed-forward, depending on what you decide to do with it.
You can adapt journaling as a personal strategy for listening. Writing down your thoughts and experiences helps to give you clarity. It allows you to step outside yourself and find out exactly what is going on. When you write in a journal, it helps you focus your thoughts and understand where more value can be extracted from those micro-adjustments.
Adjust
It’s okay to think of the big picture. However, people are generally scared to make big changes. My advice is to start small.
Digital marketing, for example, thrives on our ability to test and make little changes over time. Whether it’s the headline on your landing page or the color of your call-to-action (CTA) buttons, you can A/B test and see what works best with your audience.
Don’t get overwhelmed with responding to every feedback though, you’ll have to fall back on your best judgment on which tweaks to make. This is where insight from data becomes crucial. Overall, your decisions should be based on the big picture you set for yourself.
Be flexible, be responsive.
The Hack: Micro-Learning
Education as we know it is evolving. There’s a growing preference for short focused and practicable learning over learning in huge chunks, most of which isn’t useful in our daily experience — think about how much information you gathered at college that you have never had to recall at your current job experience.
Life itself happens moment by moment.
These moments are the building blocks for how your life eventually turns out. Focusing on these data points gives you ample opportunity to constantly tweak the outcome of your life. Be present and stop waiting for those big learning moments.
Perhaps, a great way to describe this is what James Claire speaks about in his book, Atomic Habits, where he explains how tiny changes eventually create remarkable results.
The famous example of changing the course of your plane’s direction by a meager 5 degrees applies here. The results only widen as your journey increases.
So, while you wait for your organization to send you to that MIT course, take your personal growth into your hands, read a book, get on Blinkist or enroll in a free online course. 15 minutes daily and you’ll be shocked how much more competent you’ve become in one year.
One last thing — the framework is a continuous overlapping learning loop you can leverage to create a better outcome for your life.
What did you think about the four-step LDLA framework? Please share your thoughts on what has worked for you.
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