In case you hadn’t noticed, the pace of change today is staggering. Businesses cannot survive using yesterday’s strategies and tactics. Heck, even today’s thinking will become obsolete very quickly. This does not mean you have to adopt every new fad that comes along. But if you are not regularly reinventing how you do business, you are doomed to eventually fall behind.
Looking at the other side of the coin, perhaps the best hedge against a rapidly changing global marketplace is to adopt for yourself and your organization the mantra of continuous learning.
The word “learning” may conjure up visions of classrooms, teachers and homework where the learning formula seems mostly about memorizing information for long enough to pass a test. For a business – and most other professions – learning must have a component of enabling action. Information alone is useless unless it generates new ways of thinking and acting – better products, better service, reduced costs, improved efficiencies, etc.
One simple way to think about action-oriented learning was depicted in a scene in the long-running NBC series ER. This was back in the day when then-unknown George Clooney was a regular. There was a scene where a young, impatient resident was reminded of the medical learning mantra: see one, do one, teach one.
In the medical model, a resident first learns to perform a task, say, heart surgery, by watching an expert. (OK, there’s a lot more to it, like reading text books, studying related fields of knowledge, etc. But at some point, the resident watches LOTS of surgeries.) Eventually the resident is allowed to do one, that is perform the surgery herself under close supervision. After she has done enough of them, she may become part of the faculty and eventually teach other aspiring surgeons. It’s a nice complete circle, and it describes the progression in life toward mastering subject matter.
This learning model does not always play out fully. For example, business professionals will sometimes disparage academics by saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
If there is any merit to the criticism of teachers it is that success in academia requires retention of conceptual knowledge and rewards the ability to read, study, debate, and excel on tests. But many teachers do not have to apply their knowledge in “real life.” They seem to graduate from seeing it to teaching it without having the in-between phase of doing.
There is nothing wrong with this model per se, and many teachers thrive within this model and effectively impart and guide learning. But in some subjects, the lack of doing can undermine true learning. Imagine a shop teacher, for example, teaching from a text book without demonstrating expertise with the tools. Similarly, it falls flat for some business leaders when a business school professor with little experience outside the ivory walls presumes to teach leadership.
The business community also has a significant gap in the learning hierarchy. Many (most?) owners and executives spent years observing and learning how to perform the essential moves of running a company. But while they succeeded in the see-one and do-one phases, they often shirk the teach-one element. As a consequence, they may not have a good pool of managers ready and willing to step into leadership roles.
I have a client who is a talented senior executive in a large company. She recently complained to me about the slow progress of one of her department heads. She was especially frustrated at breakdowns and disconnects in their communication. Fortunately, I was able to help her see that for her, leadership and management have become easy and obvious. But her underling is still in the do-one phase. So vast is their difference in experience – and perhaps in natural talent – that it is difficult for the seasoned, accomplished pro to relate to the “rookie,” and vice versa.
Of course, not every business person has the natural aptitude or desire to be great managers and leaders. And some things in business are almost impossible to teach. Imagine Wayne Gretzky trying to teach an up-and-coming hockey star how to anticipate where the puck is going to be before it gets there. This is instinctual knowledge that may not be transferable, even by the greatest teachers.
Still, unless there is a lack of natural ability or motivation, future leaders need good teachers, and a masterful executive should have some skill in teaching and mentoring.
I know there are some business executives who will argue that teaching is not a strength of theirs. Further, some will argue that they learned without a mentor in a kind of trial-by-fire fashion, so they expect that others should also learn that way. While experience is indeed the best teacher, it is also a slow and sometimes expensive teacher. Some of my clients ask me to work with new managers. Although it’s not said explicitly, I know part of the motivation is to help these rookie managers avoid catastrophic mistakes, the kind of mistakes that might lead to lawsuits or mass mutiny. It is also understood that timely coaching can help a new manager recognize and recover more quickly from the inevitable mistakes that come with the territory.
Certainly a Darwinian approach will sometimes produce future leaders. But in these times of accelerated change, companies are often impatient to get leaders so fast that experience can’t keep up. A company can also turn to the free market for proven, accomplished leaders, but this can be expensive. Bringing in an outsider has the added downside of potentially demoralizing the internal candidates who wanted or expected a promotion. Finally, if a company’s leaders are unwilling or unable to teach and coach, they can bring in outsiders to provide this help.
But ultimately, the most holistic and cost-effective approach to develop future leaders is for today’s leaders to make teaching a high priority. Even if teaching does not come easily to a business leader, most leaders can become better teachers if they’re willing to learn.
As someone once said, “A leader’s legacy should not be judged by the results they generated so much as by the number of leaders they produced.” In the next post I’ll offer a few guidelines for becoming a better leader-teacher.
