Comments on: Six Essential Adult Learning Principles

By: Kaj Voetmann

Kaj Voetmann — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:46:36 +0000

Do you know that the best companies almost never uses the word motivation? (Jim Collins: Good to Great)
They seem to choose to live in a permanent self induced crisis of Big Hairy Goals. If you look closely at Peter Senge’s ideas on Personal Mastery and Shared Visions you can see they are very similar to Big Hairy Goals.
I think it is connected to a smart detail in human development: We develop competent solutions and learn to master them so well they become habits. They represent a huge investment of energy, time and effort. We often forget this kind of hard learning, because it is common for us. It is often called adaptive learning and equals single loop learning.
We seem to remember the special times where we learn fast in quite extreme situations. It is called generative learning and equals second loop learning, where you have to break your habits and develop new habits.
Catastrophies sends us into deutero learning, where we have find completely new sets of solutions and learn the new habits fast.
We need them all, but it is never a good idea to sit and wait for the catastrophy. You need to create controlled crisis, which is what you can see people in extreme sports doing all the time.
You can see Karl Weicks ideas on how to benefit from the unexpected in Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty.
If you take Theory U, the first step in profound learning is to give up your habits and habitual thinking. Changing roles forces you to change your habits.

By: Shaun Killian

Shaun Killian — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:56:09 +0000

I agree that motivation is critical to learning and that the worry/fear sparked by a crisis can be a powerful motivator (see The Psychology of Fear In Leadership Development). However, I do not see crises as the only window of opportunity to motivate leaders to learn. People are also motivated when they move from one role to another (see Transition Programs: A Neglected Window of Opportunity) and there are things that you can build into any program design that will help motivate learners (see 3 Ways To Motivate Learning). Cheers Shaun

By: Kaj Voetmann

Kaj Voetmann — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:16:22 +0000

If a principle is a tendency to prefer something over something else (the positive opposite) then we also learn when we are not motivated and so on.
When I have asked people when have you learned the most? They almost all of them mention catastrophies as a very powerful source of learning. Flight simulators are designed to help you train in catastrophies as well as under normal circumstances. The whole concept of the learning organization started in a world wide oil-crisis.
What is your experience?