Many HR departments haven’t figured this out yet, but in reality, it’s less important to know Java, Ruby, .NET, or the iPhone SDK. There’s always going to be a new technology or a new version of an existing technology to be learned. The technology itself isn’t as important; it’s the constant learning that counts.
Historically, it hasn’t always been this way; medieval farmers tilled the soil pretty much exactly as their fathers did, as did their fathers before them. Information was passed along in an oral tradition, and until recently, one could provide for one’s family with minimal formal education or training.
But with the advent of the information age, that stopped being the case. It feels as though the pace of change is the fastest it has ever been, with new technology, new cultural norms, new legal challenges, and new societal problems coming at us fast. The majority of all scientific information is less than fifteen years old. In some areas of science, the amount of available information doubles every three years. It’s quite possible that the last person to know “everything” was British philosopher John Stuart Mill—who died in 1873.[97]
We have a lot to learn, and we have to keep learning as we go. There’s just no way around that. But the very word learning may have some unpleasant baggage, conjuring up images of youthful chalk dust torture, the mind-numbing tedium of corporate-mandated “copy machine training,” or similarly ersatz educational events.
That’s not what it’s all about. In fact, it seems we tend to misunderstand the very meaning of the word education.
Education comes from the Latin word educare, which literally means “led out,” in the sense of being drawn forth. I find that little tidbit really interesting, because we don’t generally think of education in that sense—of drawing forth something from the learner.
Instead, it’s far more common to see education treated as something that’s done to the learner—as something that’s poured in, not drawn out. This model is especially popular in corporate training, with a technique that’s known as sheep dip training.
A sheep dip (for real) is a large tank in which you dunk the unsuspecting sheep to clean them up and rid them of parasites (see Figure 16, Sheep dip: alien, toxic, and temporary). The sheep line up (as sheep do); you grab one and dunk in the tank for an intensive, alien, and largely toxic experience. It wears off, of course, so you have to dip them again.
Sheep dip training follows the same model. You line up unsuspecting employees, dunk them in an intensive, three-to-five-day event in an alien environment, devoid of any connection to their day-to-day world, and then proclaim them to be Java developers, .NET developers, or what have you. It wears off, of course, so next year you need to have a “refresher” course—another dip.
Companies love standardized “sheep dip” training. It’s easy to purchase, it’s easy to schedule, and everyone fits in a nice little box afterward: you now have a nine-piece box of .NET developers. It’s just like fast-food chicken nuggets. There’s only one drawback. This naive approach doesn’t work, for several reasons:
Sheep dip training doesn’t work.
Learning isn’t done to you; it’s something you do.
Mastering knowledge alone, without experience, isn’t effective.
A random approach, without goals and feedback, tends to give random results.
As Plutarch pointed out in the epigraph that opened this chapter, the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled—your own fire. It’s not something that someone else can do for you (see the full version of the quote in the sidebar). This is very much a do-it-yourself endeavor.
In addition, and perhaps surprisingly, simply mastering a syllabus of knowledge doesn’t increase professional effectiveness.[98] It’s useful, certainly, but by itself it doesn’t contribute all that much to what you do in the actual, daily practice of your craft.
This has some interesting implications. Besides a continuing indictment of sheep dip training methods, it casts serious doubt on most, if not all, technology certification programs. The “body of knowledge” is demonstrably not the important part. The model you build in your mind, the questions you ask to build that model, and your experiences and practices built up along the way and that you use daily are far more relevant to your performance. They’re the things that develop competence and expertise. Mastery of the knowledge alone isn’t sufficient.
A single intense, out-of-context classroom event can only get you started in the right direction, at best. You need continuing goals, you need to get feedback to understand your progress, and you need to approach the whole thing far more deliberately than a once-a-year course in a stuffy classroom.
In the rest of this chapter, we’ll look at how to make learning more effective in the real world. We’ll see how to accelerate learning by approaching it more methodically and by using the best tools available for the job at hand.
To start, let’s take a closer look at how to manage goals and planning by using SMART goals and the Pragmatic Investment Plan.